In the case of speech perception the invariant units are those functional or.
meaningful linguistic entities known as phonemes, morphemes and words. As Strange.
(1995) points out, there have been at least three important theoretical approaches to the.
solution of the problem of perceptual invariance (PI).
The nativist position expressed by Miller (1976) held that PI was the result of natural.
categorization given by corresponding innate mental or psychological categories. This.
view had obvious consequences for linguistic theory since these -natural- ways of.
perceiving would have profound influence on many aspects of human linguistic intuition.
and would indeed be at least part of the basis for the universal grammar whose.
characteristics have been discussed intensively in linguistic research in recent decades.
Another theoretical approach to the PI-problem was that of the ecological psychologists.
James and Eleanor Gibson (Gibson, 1979). This view rejects the assumption that the.
speech signal, or in psychological terms the -proximal stimulus- is ambiguous. The.
information required by the perceiver for the invariant perception which can be observed.
is, according to this view, present in the signal. Our scientific scrutiny has not, as yet,.
revealed the nature of this information or how it is organized and used by the.
perceiver/listener but a series of arguments are presented to support these basic tenants.
By far the most dominate theoretical approach to the solution of the PI problem in a.
linguistic context has been that of associative learning theory. This approach has been.
applied in many varying contexts and could be generally characterized as proposing that.
the perceiver associates some experience stored in the long term memory with features of.
the inherently ambiguous proximal stimulus and by means of an associative or.
comparative process arrives at the invariant precept. An all important aspect of the.