Glossary / Lexicon

Phoneme boundary effect refers to the phenomenon in which the same acoustic difference, such as a 20-millisecond difference in voice onset time (VOT) is perceptible if the two (2) st imuli are on opposite sides of a phoneme boundary (as in B versus P) but is imperceptible if the two (2) stimuli are within the range of variation perceived as one phoneme. See also Categorical perception.