Phonetic Errors in Dichotic Listening to Simultaneous and Time-Staggered CVs.

These data represent further analyses of experiments previously reported [C. I. Berlin, C. L. Loovis, S. S. Lowe, J. K. Cullen, Jr., and C. L. Thompson, J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 48, 70-71 (1970)]. Analysis of the errors made by normal subjects reveal that at simultaneity unvoiced consonants are better perceived than voiced consonants, especially when the unvoiced compete with the voiced consonants. When two voiced consonants compete, the V-V competition yields intelligibility about as good as the U-U competition; however, when U and V compete, then the intelligibility of the unvoiced syllable goes up while the intelligibility of the voiced syllable drops. As time asynchronies are introduced, the intelligibility of the unvoiced consonants remains constant while the intelligibility of the voiced consonant in the competing pair increases until, by 90-msec temporal offset, intelligibility of both voiceless and voiced CVs are the same. A preliminary hypothesis on switching during analysis time will be presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]