An auditory evoked potential study of consonant perception in different vowel environments.

Auditory evoked responses (AER) to series of consonant--vowel syllables were recorded from temporal and parietal scalp locations from 20 right-handed female college students. Averaged AERs were submitted to principal components analysis and analysis of variance. Seven components of the group's AERs were found to reflect various aspects of the stimulus parameters. One component reflected changes over only the left hemisphere to different consonants independent of the following vowel sound. A second component changed systematically over both hemispheres in response to only consonant changes. A third component systematically changed for the different consonants depending on the following vowel.