Extract

Abstract

This paper discusses the implementation of a possible exemplar-theoretic model of the perceptual magnet effect – the apparent warping of the perceptual phonetic space due to which two distinct speech sounds appear to be perceived as more similar if they are close to the prototypical representation of a given category. One prominent computational model of the perceptual magnet effect is examined and some of its weaknesses are pointed out, and an alternative model is proposed. In particular, the consequences of a strict interpretation of exemplars as discrete elements in a set are examined.

Keywords

Perceptual Magnet Effect, Exemplar Theory, computational modeling

*   Corresponding author: daniel.duran@ims.uni-stuttgart.de, Tel: +49 71168581302, Fax: +49 71168581366

a   Institut für Maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 5b, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany ← 225 | 226 →

1.0   Introduction

This paper discusses the implementation of a possible exemplar-theoretic model of the perceptual magnet effect. Listening to speech sounds we perceive very different acoustic stimuli as instances of the same category. One phenomenon in this context is the apparent warping of the perceptual phonetic space: two distinct speech sounds appear to be perceived as more similar if they are close to the prototypical representation of a category. Kuhl (1991) refers to this phenomenon as the perceptual magnet effect (PME). The present contribution examines the prominent model of the PME as proposed by Lacerda (1995), points out some of its weaknesses and proposes an alternative. In...