THE PSYCHOLOGICAL REALITY OF LINGUISTIC SEGMENTS RECONSIDERED

LARSEN, S. F. The psychological reality of linguistic segments reconsidered. Scand. J. Psychol. , 1971, 12, 113–118.–Experiments using the so-called click-technique (Fodor & Bever, 1965) and testing the hypothesis that linguistic constituents are the units of speech perception are shown to rest on logically inadequate analysis of the data. Therefore the hypothesis was submitted to another test in the present experiment, and it was not substantiated. At the same time a predictiondirectly testing the basic postulate of the click-technique, viz., that auditory perceptual units resist interruptions by clicks, was clearly disconfirmed. However, due to insufficient precision of the postulate, results obtained by this technique seems uninterpretable at present.