The concept of speech perception and auditory problems
Auditory phonetics studies the perceptual response to speech sounds, as mediated by ear, auditory nerve, and brain (Cfr Robins, 1980; Gimson, 1989). According to E.B. Titchener and W. Wundt, perception is the result of learning added to raw sensations. Gestalt psychology sees perception as the result from an innate organizing process. The transactional approach states that perception is based on assumptions about the construction of reality.
To be able to dichotomize between developmental and pathological problems of auditory perception, one has first to understand the mechanisms of perception. Speech perception seems to be idiosyncratic, a unique independent subsystem of the auditory system. The vocal organs evolved to allow speech production; the speech perception organs evolved to receive speech. Sounds are heard as speech or no-speech. This is the conception currently in vogue in the little understood speech perception field.
Two theories of speech perception have been proposed. Active Listening asserts that listeners are active actors in speech perception, i.e. they decode sounds with reference to how they would be produced in speech. In this perspective, the motor theory (1960s) argues that people internally model the articulatory movements of a speaker. They identify sounds by sensing the articulatory gestures that are perceived as having produced them. In analysis and synthesis, listeners use a set of rules to analyze an incoming acoustic signal into an abstract set of features. The other theoretical approach, Passive Listening, is characterized by the listener hearing a message, recognizing the regular distinctive features of the waveform, and decoding it. It is essentially a sensory process: the pattern of information in the acoustic stimulus directly triggers the normal response. There is no mediating process of speech production. Active Listening plausibly exp...