Rapid Reproduction of Vowel-Vowel Sequences

Abstract

Listeners display extremely short latencies when asked to reproduce (shadow), a random series of vowel-vowel sequences. The latency of the shadowing response is as fast or faster than that obtained when the same subjects are asked simply to produce a predetermined vowel-vowel gesture as rapidly as possible. The speed of the shadowing response suggests a fast and direct linkage of the speech-analysis and speech-production mechanisms.