While there is clear evidence that individuals possess the ability to attend to acoustic variability, even within perceptual categories, it is still unclear from the demonstrations reported thus far whether listeners are influenced by acoustic variability that is attenuated by disattention due to their listening goals. More specifically, it is unclear whether the representations that guide perception are influenced by subtle, within-category acoustic variability, even if it appears to be functionally irrelevant for current listening goals. Even though there is ample evidence that perceptual sensitivity to acoustic variability is attenuated through categorization, this variability may nevertheless be preserved and further, may be incorporated into the representations that guide perception. In this sense, putatively irrelevant acoustic variability, even if not consciously experienced, may still affect subsequent perception. For example, Gureckis and Goldstone (2008) have argued that the preservation of variability (in our case, the acoustic trace independent of the way in which the acoustics relate to an established category structure due to a current listening goal) allows for perceptual plasticity within a system, as adaptability can only be achieved if individuals are sensitive (consciously or unconsciously) to potentially behavioral relevant changes in within-category structure. In this sense, without the preservation of variability listeners would fail to adapt to situations where the identity of perceptual objects rapidly change. Indeed, there is a growing body of evidence supporting the view that the preservation of acoustic variability can be used in service of instantiating a novel category. In speech, adult listeners are able to amend perceptual categories as well as learn novel perceptual categories not present in their native language, even when the acoustic cues needed to learn the novel category structure are in direct conflict with a preexisting category structure. Adult native Japanese listeners, who presumably become insensitive to the acoustic differences between /r/ and /l/ categories through accrued experience listening to Japanese, are nevertheless able to learn this non-native discrimination through explicit perceptual training (Lively et al., 1994; Bradlow et al., 1997; Ingvalson et al., 2012), rapid incidental perceptual learning (Lim and Holt, 2011), as well as through the accrual of time residing in English-speaking countries (Ingvalson et al., 2011). Further, adult English speakers are able to learn the non-native Thai pre-voicing contrast, which functionally splits their native /b/ category (Pisoni et al., 1982) and to distinguish between different Zulu clicks, which make use of completely novel acoustic cues (Best et al., 1988).
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