As language users who perceive and produce speech sounds, the link between speech perception and production is inherent in our use of spoken language. Although narrowing down the link is a harder task, understanding the nature of the link is important for better understanding the mechanisms underlying speech perception and production as well as for the better understanding of speech communication in general.
The goal of this project is to better understand how speech perception and production is linked at an individual level. This study investigates this relation using phonetic imitation. We use manipulated natural vowel stimuli varying in spectral quality and duration in both perception and production tasks to explore the perception-production link in a direct and controlled way. We examine (1) whether individual listeners’ perceptual cue weights are related to their patterns of phonetic imitation and (2) the underlying mechanisms of phonetic imitation.