Definition

Noun: - The process of hearing and understanding spoken language: "Speech perception" refers to the complex cognitive and auditory ability by which listeners hear, decode, and comprehend the sounds of speech to understand spoken words and sentences.

Examples

• Noun:
  • Infants show remarkable abilities in speech perception within their first year of life.
  • The study focused on how background noise affects speech perception in elderly listeners.
  • Damage to certain brain areas can impair speech perception while leaving hearing intact.

Advanced Usage

• "Models of speech perception": Theoretical frameworks that attempt to explain how the brain processes and recognizes speech sounds.
  • The motor theory is one of the most debated models of speech perception.
• "Categorical speech perception": The tendency of listeners to perceive speech sounds as belonging to distinct categories (like /b/ or /p/) rather than as a continuous sound spectrum.
  • Categorical speech perception helps explain why we understand speech despite variations in how people talk.

Variants and Related Words

• Auditory perception (n): The general ability to perceive and interpret sounds.
  • Auditory perception involves more than just the ears; it requires brain processing.
• Phoneme (n): The smallest unit of sound in a language that can distinguish meaning (e.g., /k/ in "cat" vs. /b/ in "bat").
  • Speech perception involves the rapid identification of phonemes.

Synonyms

• Auditory speech processing: The neural and cognitive handling of speech sounds.
• Spoken language comprehension: The understanding of meaning from spoken words.

Related Phrases

• Speech perception threshold: The minimum level at which speech can be reliably understood.
  • The audiologist measured the patient's speech perception threshold.
• Speech-in-noise perception: The ability to understand speech when competing background noise is present.
  • Hearing aids are often designed to improve speech-in-noise perception.

Notes

• "Speech perception" is a specialized term used primarily in psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and audiology. It is distinct from simple "hearing," as it specifically involves the cognitive interpretation of linguistic sounds.

Noun

1. the auditory perception (and comprehension) of speech