(Pierre Divenyi )

Subject: 
From:    Pierre Divenyi  <marva4!pdivenyi(at)UCDAVIS.EDU>
Date:    Wed, 27 Oct 1993 14:42:16 PDT

ucdavis!auditory(at)VM1.MCGILL.CA

Reply to Bruno Repp:

>        Your comments seem to reflect some kind of emotional reaction to
> Deutsch's results rather than a well-reasoned argument. What leads you to
> declare her results as in principle uninterpretable? Whenever there is a
> reliable pattern of individual differences, that may tell us something
> important about the listeners' auditory systems or their perceptual knowledge.
> People also differ a great deal in how well they understand speech, and
> much has been learned by looking for the origins of these differences in


>>>> hearing acuity, language experience, and cognitive processes.

Voila the crux of the matter: ALL these things (and probably many
more) may provide an interpretation of the results under discussion. Here
is my question to you, Bruno: Can you pick any one of the many possible
interpretations (mentioned during the exchange or not),
and discard all others, on any rational basis?
If you can, then do it -- we are listening. If you can't then
the results look quite a bit as if they had so far eluded interpretation.
OK, I withdraw the "uninterpretable" label, in exchange for "uninterpreted".
I hope it will sound also unemotional. Actually, all this is fun, albeit
time consuming.

        Pierre Divenyi