The listener can be thought of as a device for conversion of acoustic input into meaning. The
purpose of this chapter is to provide an outline, necessarily superficial but we hope not …

The fundamental problem in Speech perception is to determine how the continuously
varying acoustic stimulus produced by a speaker is converted into a sequence of discrete …

The processes by which listeners recognize spoken language are highly language-specific.
Listeners' expectations of how meaning is expressed in words and sentences are formed by …

Comprehending spoken language is a complex process in which the listener constructs a
meaning out of the information provided by the speaker. Constructing meaning out of the …

Considering the psychological mechanisms of language as functioning psycholinguistic
processes, the fundamental question-from the perspective of speech comprehension-is how …

In this chapter Imhof discusses the mental activities which are involved in listening. She
brings together empirical research from cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics to …

Any on-line processing that takes place while an utterance is unfolding is extremely
tentative, with early-formed hypotheses having to be revised as the utterance proceeds. The …

The comprehension of speech is clearly an integrative process. In fact, such a statement
seems so self-evident as to be nearly tautologous; to understand an utterance we must, in …

A central question in psycholinguistic research is how listeners isolate words from
connected speech despite the paucity of clear word-boundary cues in the signal. A large …

Although comprehension of spoken language is ordinarily conducted without apparent
effort, it is among the most complex of human activities. We illustrate this complexity by …