UC Santa Cruz

This study examines how American English listeners use two temporal parameters, amplitude rise time (ART) and transition duration (TD), to diagnose consonant manner, replicating previous work on the /b/-/w/ contrast (Shinn & Blumstein, 1984). A tripartite free response pattern is found, replicating stop and approximant responses at fast-ART, fast-TD, and slow-ART, slow-TD regions of the stimulus space, respectively, and replicating critical fricative responses in the slow-ART, fast-TD region of the stimulus space. This confirms that listeners do not require frication to report hearing fricatives. However, likely due to changes in synthesis parameters, we fail to replicate the original categorization responses, and find approximant responses in the fast-ART, slow-TD region of the stimulus space, akin to the results of Walsh & Diehl (1991), where the original experiment finds stop responses. Taken together, these results present a complex –if early– picture about the role of periodic information in manner perception.