Measuring the Sounds of Silence: Latency and Duration of Word-Initial Plosives

Naming latency, the latency of the onset of acoustic energy arising from a speeded verbal response, is the primary dependent variable in the vast majority of psycholinguistic tasks. Unfortunately, naming latency is not a valid measure of response latency for words beginning with plosive consonants (the obstruents /p/, /t/, /k/, /b/, /d/, and /g/, and the affricates, /ch/ and /j/) because the onset of acoustic energy occurs 50-100 ms after the articulators are in their target position. This delay arises because airflow through the vocal tract must be occluded while pressure is built up prior to the pressure's explosive release that finally generates acoustic energy. Thus, somewhat paradoxically, the onset of acoustic energy marks the end of plosive consonants, not their beginning.