Abstract
Masking in motor systems was defined as the omission of one act in a sequence due to an earlier or later act in the sequence. A study of phoneme omission in natural speech showed that:
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1.
Masked phonemes were usually preceded or followed by an identical phoneme (referred to as the masking phoneme).
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2.
Backward masking, where the masked phoneme preceded the masking phoneme was as frequent as forward masking.
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3.
The phonemes immediately adjacent to the masked and masking phonemes were usually similar in distinctive features, but rarely identical.
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4.
The masking phoneme usually occurred in a stressed syllable and the masked phoneme in an unstressed one, suggesting that motor intensity may be a factor in masking.
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5.
The components for an adequate model of motor masking were shown to be similar to those in models of other types of errors in speech.
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This work was supported in part by an MIT intramural fellowship, a NASA grant (NS G496) to Dr. H. L. Teuber and UCLA Grant 2428. The author thanks H. Schulze for his help in translating Meringer (1908).
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MacKay, D.G. Forward and backward masking in motor systems. Kybernetik 6, 57–64 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00276905
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00276905