The Effect of Varying Syllable Microstructure on Voiceless Preponderance in Dichotic Listening

Previous data [S. S. Lowe, J. K. Cullen, Jr., C. I. Berlin, C. L. Thompson, and M. E. Willett, J. Speech Hearing, Res. 13, 812–822 (1970); C. I. Berlin, M. E. Willett, C. L. Thompson, J. K. Cullen, Jr., and S.S. Lowe, J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 47, 75–76 (1970)] show that when the onsets of the six English stops are aligned in dichotic CV pairs, voiceless CVs are more intelligible than voiced. This experiment reports the effect of maintaining onset alignments but changing voicing onset times (VOT) of the syllables. Thus, two types of voiceless CVs (+60 and +90 msec VOT) and two types of voiced CVs (−30 and 0 VOT) competed with each other in a dichotic paradigm. Changing VOT for the voiceless items had little effect on overall intelligibility. Using a 0‐msec VOT voiced item, however, generated greater probability that the voiceless dichotic items would be perceived correctly. The relationship of this observation to the “lag effect” and suppression of one item by another will be discussed.