The literature on "contrast" provides no evidence that durational contrast should occur in the speech and nonsence signals used in research cited by Diehl et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 89, 2905-2909 (1991)]. Moreover, there is evidence that, in comparable signals, it does not occur. Accordingly, their own account of the collection of findings on rate normalization is not viable. Their comments on my research do not imperil my interpretation of it or challenge my criticism that classification judgements of acoustically analogous speech and nonsense signals do not permit interpretation, by themselves, in terms of underlying auditory-system mechanisms. Their arguments that in auditory perception, uniquely, we hear proximal stimulation, not its physical causal sources, is implausible. Their theoretical perspective generally, I argue, is unrealistic.
