Comprehending speech in our native language is an impressionistically effortless and routine task. We often give little consideration to its complexity. Only in particularly challenging situations (e.g., in noisy environments, when hearing significantly accented speech) do some of these intricacies become apparent. Higher-order knowledge constrains sensory perception and has been demonstrated to play a crucial role in other domains of human language processing. Moreover, incorporating measures of brain activity during online speech comprehension has just begun to highlight the extent to which top-down information flow and predictive processes are integral to sensory perception. This review argues that our phonological system, at a relatively abstract level, is one such source of higher-order knowledge. In particular, I discuss the extent to which phonological distinctive features play a role in perception and predictive processing during speech comprehension with reference to behavioral and neurophysiolog...

中文翻译：

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语音知识和语音理解

用我们的母语理解语音是一项印象派的日常工作。我们经常很少考虑它的复杂性。只有在特别具有挑战性的情况下（例如，在嘈杂的环境中，当听到明显的口音时），其中一些复杂性才变得明显。高阶知识会限制感官知觉，并且已被证明在人类语言处理的其他领域中起着至关重要的作用。此外，在在线语音理解过程中纳入大脑活动的测量方法刚刚开始突显出自上而下的信息流和预测过程对于感觉感知必不可少的程度。这篇评论认为，在相对抽象的水平上，我们的语音系统就是这类高阶知识的来源之一。特别是，