Using a target detection task, this study compared the processing automaticity of phonemes and features in spoken syllable stimuli to determine the primitive representation in speech perception, phoneme or distinctive feature. For this, we modified the visual search task(Treisman et al., 1992) developed to investigate the processing of visual features(ex. color, shape or their conjunction) for auditory stimuli. In our task, the distinctive features(ex. aspiration or coronal) corresponded to visual primitive features(ex. color and shape), and the phonemes(ex. /$t^h$/) to visual conjunctive features(ex. colored shapes). The automaticity is measured by the set size effect that was the increasing amount of reaction time when the number of distracters increased. Three experiments were conducted. The laryngeal features(experiment 1), the manner features(experiment 2), and the place features(experiment 3) were compared with phonemes. The results showed that the distinctive features are consistently processed faster and automatically than the phonemes. Additionally there were differences in the processing automaticity among the classes of distinctive features. The laryngeal features are the most automatic, the manner features are moderately automatic and the place features are the least automatic. These results are consistent with the previous studies(Bae et al., 2002; Bae, 2010) that showed the perceptual hierarchy of distinctive features.