During speech, what acoustic process explains listeners' ability to distinguish between /b/ and /d/ even when the consonant burst is masked by noise?

💡 Explanation

Listeners can differentiate phonemes, even with degraded consonant bursts, because of formant transitions. The acoustic formant transition mechanism provides sufficient information for perceptual disambiguation; therefore, listeners rely on vowel context, rather than solely on the burst itself, allowing accurate identification despite noise. Auditory streaming and dichotic listening address different phenomena.

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