Blurb:

Much theoretical and empirical work has been focused on how language learners\users parse multi-dimensional auditory spaces into the phonetic categories of a native or second language. A more fundamental question is how the listener determines the relevant dimensions for the perceptual space in the first place. This chapter explores the makes use neural processing constraints with statistics of the input-provides insights into potential answers to the more general questions about how listeners can solve the “frame problem” of which dimensions are most relevant to an auditory categorization task.