Abstract
The purpose of this study was to describe the configuration of auditory speech images, in which phonologically similar words are represented closely to one another. Experiment I was carried out with a set of 10 two-syllable-words, while experiment II was with a set of 12 such words as stimuli. In each experiment, 10 subjects were required to read aloud each pair of two-syllable-words and to rate the auditory similarity between the two items. The similarity responses were analyzed by ALSCAL, yielding three-dimensional configuration. The overall configuration revealed that the vowel of the last syllable was the most important, while the first sound of a word was not critical in judgment of similarity. However, the problems need further research, whether these results remain valid also for longer syllables, or influence of accents on such similarity.
