Mandarin tone recognition in acoustic and electric hearing

Abstract

Mandarin tone recognition can be achieved using either spectral cues or temporal cues. Although the pitch contour is the most salient cue for voice pitch perception × Liang, 1963; Abramson, 1978), temporal envelope cues such as amplitude contour, periodicity and duration also contribute significantly to Mandarin tone recognition (Liang, 1963; Fu et al., 1998; Fu and Zeng, 2000). Fu and colleagues (1998, 2000) showed that normalhearing listeners performed approximately 80% tone identification with only temporal envelope cues. However, no studies have been done on whether reliable Mandarin tone recognition could be achieved in the presence of noise. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relative contribution of envelope and fine-structure cues in normalhearing and cochlear-implanted listeners to Mandarin tone recognition in quiet and in noise. We hypothesized that while the temporal envelope can support tone recognition in quiet, it is not adequate in noisy conditions. We further hypothesized that the temporal fine structure is required for tone recognition in noise.