Linking verbal transformations to their causes

The verbal transformation effect (VTE) is a perceptual phenomenon in which Listeners report hearing illusory utterances when a spoken word is rapidly repeated for an extended period of time. The cause of the illusion was investigated by identifying regularities across the transformations that listeners reported and then testing hypotheses about the cause of those regularities. Variants of the standard transformation paradigm were used across 3 experiments to demonstrate that perceptual regrouping of the elements in the repeating utterance is 1 cause of the VTE. Findings also suggest that regrouping is influenced by whether the stimulus is perceived as speech or as nonspeech.