FIGURE 1.

(A) Perception is determined by the competitive and cooperative interaction between selective attention to the relevant feature, given the event context. In this hypothetical situation, the reference context specifies the feature of interest to be the stop burst, to disambiguate /Kæt/ from /kæp/. (B) Systems consolidation abstracts the information away from the event context and integrates it with pre-existing knowledge. Synaptic consolidation strengthens established connections, thereby facilitating declarative recall of the event context and enhancing the automaticity by which attention is selectively tuned to the feature that was relevant during the event (i.e., stop burst). (C) The resultant phonetic representation of /t/ is contextually flexible. Shift of attention to selectively attend to the stop burst is enhanced, independent of context.