Rate dependent speech processing can be speech specific: Evidence from the perceptual disappearance of words under changes in context speech rate
The perception of reduced syllables, including function words, produced in casual speech can be made to disappear by slowing the rate at which surrounding words are spoken (Dilley Pitt, Psychological Science, 21(11) 1664 1670. doi: 10.1177/0956797610384743, 2010) The current study explored the domain generality of this speech rate effect, asking whether it is induced by temporal information found only in speech. Stimuli were short word sequences (e.g. minor or child) appended to precursors that were clear speech, degraded speech (low pass filtered or sinewave) or tone sequences, presented at a spoken rate and a slowed rate. Across three experiments, only precursors heard as intelligible speech generated a speech rate effect (fewer reports of function words with a slowed context) suggesting that rate dependent speech processing can be domain specific.
Attention, perception psychophysics