Background and aims: Fascinations for or aversions to particular sounds are a familiar feature of autism, as is an ability to reproduce another person's utterances, precisely copying the other person's prosody as well as their words. Such observations seem to indicate not only that autistic people can pay close attention to what they hear, but…

This paper assesses certain properties of human mental processes by focusing on the tactics utilized in perceiving speech signals. Topics discussed in the paper include the power spectrum approach to fluctuations and noise, with particular reference to biological structures; "l/f-like" fluctuations in speech and music and the functioning of a…