creators_name: Pallier, Christophe
type: confpaper
datestamp: 1998-10-19
lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:16
metadata_visibility: show
title: Phonemes and Syllables in Speech Perception: size of the attentional focus in French.
ispublished: pub
subjects: cog-psy
subjects: comp-sci-speech
subjects: ling-phono
subjects: psy-ling
subjects: psy-phys
full_text_status: public
keywords: Psycholinguisics, unit of perception, speech, phoneme, syllable, attention, detection, reaction-times, phonological structure, segmentation
abstract: A study by Pitt and Samuel (1990) found that English speakers could narrowly focus attention onto a precise phonemic position inside spoken words [1]. This led the authors to argue that the phoneme, rather than the syllable, is the primary unit of speech perception. Other evidence, obtained with a syllable detection paradigm, has been put forward to propose that the syllable is the unit of perception; yet, these experiments were ran with French speakers [2]. In the present study, we adapted Pitt & Samuel's phoneme detection experiment to French and found that French subjects behave exactly like English subjects: they too can focus attention on a precise phoneme. To explain both this result and the established sensitivity to the syllabic structure, we propose that the perceptual system automatically parses the speech signal into a syllabically-structured phonological representation.
date: 1997
date_type: published
publisher: University of Patras, Rion, Greece
pagerange: 2159-2162
refereed: FALSE
citation:   Pallier, Christophe  (1997) Phonemes and Syllables in Speech Perception: size of the attentional focus in French.  [Conference Paper]     
document_url: http://cogprints.org/751/3/a0602.pdf