ABSTRACT
A common approach in the past among researchers directly concerned with perception of speech was to invoke a number of phenomena of speech perception, such as categorical perception or the more general issue of perceptual discontinuities, which could not readily be explained in terms of general auditory principles, as evidence for the existence of specialized processors. An alternative approach, as exemplified by Pastore's discussion, is to attempt to apply the principles of psychoacoustics in a systematic manner to the “facts” of speech, and to invoke specialized speech processors only in those instances when the laws of psychoacoustics proved wholly inadequate as explanatory principles. A major difference between the two positions is the degree to which one will hold to the possibility that more general auditory laws apply before yielding to the assumption of specialized mechanisms.
