Abstract
This study explores the development of mismatch responses (MMRs) to Mandarin lexical tone changes in infants at 12, 18, and 24 months of age using the multi-deviant oddball paradigm with the low dipping Tone 3 (T3) as the standard, the high level Tone 1 (T1) as the large, and the high rising Tone 2 (T2) as the small deviant. The results show that the large acoustic change between T1/T3 elicited mismatch negativity (MMN) in all three age groups. The small acoustic change between T2/T3 elicited a positive mismatch response (P-MMR) at 12 and 18 months of age, but no MMR was found to the T2/T3 change at 24 months. The coexistence of MMN and P-MMR in the same age group implies that different mechanisms were used for discriminating large and small deviants. Infants were able to detect the T1/T3 change automatically and showed adult-like MMN as early as 6 months of age. However, the detection of the T2/T3 change remains effortful in infants under 24 months of age. These findings support the notion that MMN and P-MMR may be used to index the maturation of speech perception.
Highlights
Discriminating ambient phonetic contrasts is an infant’s first step in processing language
This study applied the same set of stimuli as Cheng et al (2013) to explore how deviant size affects the development of MMRs to Mandarin lexical tone discrimination in infants from 12 to 24 months of age
It is unclear whether the absence of MMR at 24 months implies that a transition from positive mismatch response (P-MMR) to mismatch negativity (MMN) would occur at a later age, our current data suggest that infants under 24 months of age are not able to detect the change between Tone 2 (T2) and Tone 3 (T3) automatically
Summary
Discriminating ambient phonetic contrasts is an infant’s first step in processing language. Studies on how language experience influences the development of speech perception were mainly focused on consonants and vowels. Both behavioral (Werker and Tees, 1984; Polka and Werker, 1994; Kuhl et al, 2006) and electrophysiological (Cheour et al, 1998b; Rivera-Gaxiola et al, 2005) studies have reported declines in discriminating non-native phonetic contrasts and improvement in discriminating native contrasts between 6 and 12 months of age. The current study aims to explore how acoustic characteristics of a contrast might affect the developmental trajectory of electrophysiological response to Mandarin tonal change in infancy
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