Hearing in categories and speech perception at the “cocktail party”
Fig 5
VAS ratings reveal stark individual differences in categorization and “continuous” vs. “categorial” listeners.
Individual histograms show the distribution of each listener’s phonetic labeling for CV and vowel sounds. Discrete (categorical) listeners produce more binary categorization where responses lump near endpoint tokens (e.g., S2). In contrast, continuous (gradient) listeners tend to hear the continuum in a gradient fashion (e.g., S16). Inset values show Hartigan’s Dip statistic [99] score, quantifying the bimodality—and thus categoricity—of each distribution. Higher dip values = discrete categorization; low values = continuous categorization. (inset) Dip values are similar between CV and vowels suggesting it is a reliable measure of listener strategy that is independent of speech material. errorbars = ± 1 s.e.m.