Burst cues, transition cues, and hemispheric specialization with real speech sounds

Subjects listening to dichotically presented real speech stop and fricative consonants, with and without transitions, showed larger laterality effects in the transition-less condition. In a second study, laterality effects for burst cues and transition cues were compared; using the stop consonants /b/ and /d/. Again, burst cues produced a larger laterality effect. These results are not compatible with a lateralized speech “decoder”, and are interpreted as favoring a Semmes (1968) model of hemispheric differences, differential processing.