 First, consider the objects of speech perception. What are the objects of speech perception, and do they differ from those of ordinary or non-linguistic auditory perception? According to the commonplace understanding, hearing speech involves hearing sounds. Thus, hearing spoken language shares perceptual objects with ordinary audition. Alternatively, one might hold that the objects of speech perception are not ordinary sounds at all. Perhaps they are language-specific entities, such as phonemes or words. Perhaps, as some have argued, perceiving speech involves perceiving articulatory gestures or movements of the mouth and vocal organs (see the supplement on  Speech Perception: Empirical and Theoretical Considerations).  Note that if audition’s objects typically include distal events, speech in this respect is not special, since its objects do not belong to an entirely different kind from ordinary sounds. 