Three experiments were conducted in order to compare the perception of the phonetic features of place and manner of articulation, specifically, the labial‐alveolar and the nasal‐stop distinctions. The results of experiment 1 showed that both features are perceived in a nearly categorical manner, with within‐category discrimination performance being quite poor compared to cross‐category performance in each case. Experiment 2, which used a selective adaptation paradigm, indicated that for each of these features there exist channels of analysis that are sensitive to the critical information specifying the contrast and that these channels operate in a context‐ conditioned fashion. Finally, in experiment 3, a right‐ear advantage was obtained for both place and manner, implicating the left hemisphere in the processing of each of these features. Taken together, the results of the three studies provide strong support for the claim that the place and manner features undergo similar forms of processing, even though they are specified by very different acoustic parameters.