Brief history of some theories of perception
What is it about?
The basic idea of the modern Motor Theory of Speech Perception (Liberman 1963) is that “the perception of speech is tightly linked to the feedback from the speaker’s own articulatory movements”. The same idea was already formulated by the French philosopher Maine de Biran (1805) and taken up in the second half of the 19th century by German psychologists and neogrammarian linguists. In the 20th century the articulatory perspective is supplemented by the acustic one.
Why is it important?
Whereas in the 19th century the articulatory point of view was not only dominant, but also the only one incorporated in a general theory of language, in the 20th century the articulatory perspective is supplemented by the acustic one. In this respect, Liberman’s Motor Theory has to be considered as a step backwards.