Listeners’ perception of temporal contrasts in spoken language is highly sensitive to contextual information, such as variation in speech rate. The present study tests how rate-dependent perception is also mediated by distal (i.e., temporally removed) rhythmic patterns. In four experiments the role of rhythmic alternations and their interaction with speech rate effects are tested. Experiment 1 shows proximal speech rate (contrast) effects obtain based on changes in local context. Experiment 2 shows that these effects disappear with the addition of distal rhythmic alternations, indicating that rhythmic grouping shifts listeners’ perception, even when proximal context conflicts. Experiments 3 and 4 explore how orthogonal variation in overall speech rate impacts these effects and finds that trial-to-trial (i.e., global) speech rate variation eliminates rhythmic grouping effects, both with and without variation in proximal (immediately preceding) context. Together, these results suggest a role for rhythmic patterning in listeners’ processing of durational cues in speech, which interacts in various ways with proximal, distal, and global rate contexts.

听者对口语时间对比的感知对语境信息高度敏感，例如语速的变化。本研究测试了速率依赖性知觉是如何由远端（即，暂时移除）节奏模式介导的。在四个实验中，测试了节奏交替的作用及其与语速效应的相互作用。实验 1 显示了基于本地上下文变化获得的近端语速（对比度）效果。实验 2 表明，这些影响随着远端节奏交替的加入而消失，这表明节奏分组改变了听众的感知，即使在近端上下文冲突时也是如此。实验 3 和 4 探讨了整体语速的正交变化如何影响这些效果，并发现反复试验（即，全局）语速变化消除了节奏分组效应，无论是在最近（紧接其前）上下文中有变化还是没有变化。总之，这些结果表明节奏模式在听众处理语音中的持续线索中的作用，语音以各种方式与近端、远端和全局速率上下文相互作用。