Perceptuo-motor adaptation to speech: an analysis of bisyllabic utterances and a neural model

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Abstract
After repetitive listening to a voiceless plosive contained in a consonant + vowel syllable, the voice onset time (VOT) durations of a voiceless plosiveu t t e r e d in a CV environment are systematically shortened. This effect, which provided initial evidence for a common processor mediating the perception and production of speech, has been extended in this large‐scale study to the case of voiceless plosives embedded in a CVCV́ environment. For the utterances [rephí] and [rethí] shortening effects were observed similar to the effects found earlier for simple CV utterances [phi] and [thi]. Although [rephí] was used as the CVCV́ adapting stimulus, the average magnitude of the perceptuo‐motor effect was considerably larger for [rethí] utterances than for [rephí] utterances (6.5 msec of VOT compared with 2.7 msec of VOT). Additional acoustic measurements revealed that tow other properties of the [rethí] utterances, the vowel duration of the stressed [í] and the closure gap of the voiceless plosive, did not covary with the changes in VOT that accompanied perceptuo‐motor adaptation. These results suggest that the perceptuo‐motor effect observed for VOT does not merely reflect changes in stress and/or speaking rate, but rather fatique within a neural mechanism that controls the perception and production of either VOT or more specific variables associated with this coverall acoustic property. A model of the neural mechanism is proposed to account for the effects observed in both perceptual and perceptuo‐motor adaptation experiments. Subject Classification: 70.30, 70.20.

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