Frequency Contours Research Articles

Between Sound and Voice: Teaching Chinese Tones To Non-Tonal Language Speakers

The production of highly intelligible syllables in Mandarin Chinese entails a successful production of tones, which poses a challenge for learners of Chinese as a foreign language. The aim of the current paper is to address this issue by identifying the key tonal features contributing to tone intelligibility in the lexemes produced by Polish learners of Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language. Samples of Polish female students’ tonal pronunciations at two stages of learning were selected and compared with productions made by a female native speaker of Mandarin Chinese from Taiwan. Four syllables produced by the students were selected from a corpus of read-out passages which had already been assessed for the intelligibility of monosyllabic lexemes by native judges. The students’ pronunciation samples (whose pronunciation improved from the A1 minus language level to A2) were analysed using pitch, fundamental frequency contour, and register span criteria, and then compared to the female native speaker’s pronunciations of the same syllables. Importantly, before the results of this analysis are presented, the simplified model of tones widely used in language instruction is compared and contrasted with the acoustic analysis of tonal productions made by the native speaker. This is done to show to what extent the simplified, widely used model reflects real-life tonal productions.

Non-stereotyped amplitude modulation across signature whistle contours

Bottlenose dolphin signature whistles are characterized by distinctive frequency modulation over time. The stable frequency contours of these whistles broadcast individual identity information. Little is known however, about whether or not the amplitude contour is also stereotyped. Here, we examined the relative amplitude-time contour of signature whistle emissions from eight bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) in the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program (MMP) in San Diego, CA. The results suggested that unlike the stable frequency-time contour, the amplitude-time contour of signature whistles were largely non-stereotyped, characterized by large variability across multiple whistle emissions. Relative amplitude was negatively related to log peak frequency, with more energy focused in the lower frequency bands. This trend was consistent over all eight dolphins despite having quite different signature whistle contours. This relationship led to the amplitude contours being slightly more stereotyped within than between dolphins. We propose that amplitude across signature whistle emissions may serve as an avenue for encoding additional communicative information. We encourage future studies to incorporate analyses of amplitude contours in addition to frequency contours of signature whistles in order to begin to understand what role it may play in the dolphin communication system.

Reverberation Degrades Pitch Perception but Not Mandarin Tone and Vowel Recognition of Cochlear Implant Users.

The primary goal of this study was to investigate the effects of reverberation on Mandarin tone and vowel recognition of cochlear implant (CI) users and normal-hearing (NH) listeners. To understand the performance of Mandarin tone recognition, this study also measured participants' pitch perception and the availability of temporal envelope cues in reverberation. Fifteen CI users and nine NH listeners, all Mandarin speakers, were asked to recognize Mandarin single-vowels produced in four lexical tones and rank harmonic complex tones in pitch with different reverberation times (RTs) from 0 to 1 second. Virtual acoustic techniques were used to simulate rooms with different degrees of reverberation. Vowel duration and correlation between amplitude envelope and fundamental frequency (F0) contour were analyzed for different tones as a function of the RT. Vowel durations of different tones significantly increased with longer RTs. Amplitude-F0 correlation remained similar for the falling Tone 4 but greatly decreased for the other tones in reverberation. NH listeners had robust pitch-ranking, tone recognition, and vowel recognition performance as the RT increased. Reverberation significantly degraded CI users' pitch-ranking thresholds but did not significantly affect the overall scores of tone and vowel recognition with CIs. Detailed analyses of tone confusion matrices showed that CI users reduced the flat Tone-1 responses but increased the falling Tone-4 responses in reverberation, possibly due to the falling amplitude envelope of late reflections after the original vowel segment. CI users' tone recognition scores were not correlated with their pitch-ranking thresholds. NH listeners can reliably recognize Mandarin tones in reverberation using salient pitch cues from spectral and temporal fine structures. However, CI users have poorer pitch perception using F0-related amplitude modulations that are reduced in reverberation. Reverberation distorts speech amplitude envelopes, which affect the distribution of tone responses but not the accuracy of tone recognition with CIs. Recognition of vowels with stationary formant trajectories is not affected by reverberation for both NH listeners and CI users, regardless of the available spectral resolution. Future studies should test how the relatively stable vowel and tone recognition may contribute to sentence recognition in reverberation of Mandarin-speaking CI users.

Mandatory dichotic integration of second-formant information: Contralateral sine bleats have predictable effects on consonant place judgments.

Speech-on-speech informational masking arises because the interferer disrupts target processing (e.g., capacity limitations) or corrupts it (e.g., intrusions into the target percept); the latter should produce predictable errors. Listeners identified the consonant in monaural buzz-excited three-formant analogues of approximant-vowel syllables, forming a place of articulation series (/w/-/l/-/j/). There were two 11-member series; the vowel was either high-front or low-back. Series members shared formant-amplitude contours, fundamental frequency, and F1+F3 frequency contours; they were distinguished solely by the F2 frequency contour before the steady portion. Targets were always presented in the left ear. For each series, F2 frequency and amplitude contours were also used to generate interferers with altered source properties-sine-wave analogues of F2 (sine bleats) matched to their buzz-excited counterparts. Accompanying each series member with a fixed mismatched sine bleat in the contralateral ear produced systematic and predictable effects on category judgments; these effects were usually largest for bleats involving the fastest rate or greatest extent of frequency change. Judgments of isolated sine bleats using the three place labels were often unsystematic or arbitrary. These results indicate that informational masking by interferers involved corruption of target processing as a result of mandatory dichotic integration of F2 information, despite the grouping cues disfavoring this integration.

Overview and tutorial on the identification and tracking of pitch and frequency

Many diverse areas of acoustics leverage the identification and tracking of frequency over time. Pitch tracking plays an important role in music information retrieval and performance analysis. Frequency contours are also important features in speech processing and bioacoustics applications, and the identification of frequency content in a signal is widely used. From a signal processing perspective, these applications vary drastically with respect to signal duration and frequency, desired resolutions, and amount of signal interference. In some cases, a single pitch is used to characterize a multicomponent sound, while other applications demand independent tracking of individual components. As such, a wide variety of algorithms exist in both the time and frequency domains. This presentation provides a general overview of commonly used methods and available implementations for tracking pitch and/or frequency. Potential sources of error will be emphasized, focusing on the considerations relevant to selecting and optimizing an algorithm for a given application.

Characterizing Southern Resident killer whale calls using a particle filter for frequency contour extraction

With only 74 Southern Resident killer whales (SRKWs) remaining in the waters of the eastern Pacific, understanding these marine mammals is vital to their conservation. Invasive techniques such as focal follows or tagging whales could introduce stress to SRKWs. Instead, passive acoustic monitoring that uses a network of hydrophones one preferred tracking method, particularly in their critical habitat that overlaps the shipping lanes in the Salish Sea. The acoustic data, if processed in real-time using modern deep learning methods, can be used to detect whales and alert ships of the potential for spatial overlap to reduce risks of collision. In this project, we consider the differences in SRKW whale call types from archived recordings of each of J, K, and L pods recorded on regional hydrophones. The whale calls are extracted as functional observations in the time and frequency space from underwater recordings using a particle filter. Functional data analysis (e.g., functional clustering) are performed to characterize the whale calls and represent the variations in call types. Such statistical insights between pod-level call types should be useful for improving machine learning whale detection algorithms, and for identifying SRKW movement in a high ship traffic region of their critical habitat.

Contralateral noise degrades frequency-coding accuracy in normal-hearing adults

Noise presents a constant challenge in daily communication. Previous research has demonstrated the effects of ipsilateral noise on speech processing in the human brain. In this study, we examined the effects of contralateral noise on the accuracy of frequency coding at the subcortical level. Byusing a speech stimulus that mimicked the English vowel /i/ with a rising frequency contour, we obtained scalp-recorded, frequency-following responses in nine normal-hearing adults. To determine the effects of contralateral noise, we performed two experimental conditions: with and without the presence of contralateral noise. Results indicated that the fidelity of frequency coding, as reflected through Tracking Accuracy and Slope Error, were significantly degraded when continuous white noise was added to the contralateral ear. These findings provide important information and help us better understand how frequency cues are processed in noisy environments.

Call repertoire and inferred ecotype presence of killer whales (Orcinus orca) recorded in the southeastern Chukchi Sea

Killer whales occur in the Arctic but few data exist regarding the ecotypes present. Calling behavior differs among ecotypes, which can be distinguished based on pulsed call type, call rate, and bandwidth. Data included in this study were from a passive acoustic recorder deployed 75 km off Point Hope, Alaska, in the southeastern Chukchi Sea (sampling rate 16 kHz, ∼30% duty cycle). A total of 1323 killer whale pulsed calls were detected on 38 of 276 days during the summers (June–August) of 2013–2015. Most calls (n = 804, 61%) were recorded in 2013 with the majority recorded in July (76% of total calls). Calls were manually grouped into six categories: multipart, downsweep, upsweep, modulated, single modulation, and flat. Most detections were flat (n = 485, 37%) or multipart calls (n = 479, 36%), which contained both high and low frequency components. Comparisons with calls reported in the published literature showed similarities with other transient populations in both fundamental frequency contour point distribution and median frequency. This study provides the first comprehensive catalog of transient killer whale calls in this region and reports on previously undescribed calls, providing new insight into transient acoustic behavior and call diversity in the Chukchi Sea.

A comparison of transient killer whale (Orcinus orca) whistles in Alaska

Several species of dolphins in both isolated and continuous regions exhibit geographic variation in whistles. Although whistles are thought to be learned, possible structural components are exhibited across communities. Whistles from three transient killer whale (Orcinus Orca) groups, Prince William Sound, the Pribilof Islands, and False Pass were compared for spectral and temporal properties. Of 395 randomly selected frequency contours of whistles, there were 32 shape categories of whistles. Overall, whistle shapes from different areas reflect homogeneity, with four whistle shapes comprising 50% of all repertoires. The most common whistle contour shapes were up, down, flat, and oscillatory. Whistles from at St. Paul Island, described here for the first time, had higher fundamental frequencies and shorter durations than whistles from Prince William Sound and False Pass. Surface whistles from St. Paul Island had higher mean frequencies than those recorded at depth with passive acoustics. One identical whistle type was found at both St. Paul Island and False Pass, which suggests the same whales travel between the two areas. The longest whistles and most variable whistles were recorded at False Pass.

Species information in whistle frequency modulation patterns of common dolphins.

The most flexible communication systems are those of open-ended vocal learners that can acquire new signals throughout their lifetimes. While acoustic signals carry information in general voice features that affect all of an individual's vocalizations, vocal learners can also introduce novel call types to their repertoires. Delphinids are known for using such learned call types in individual recognition, but their role in other contexts is less clear. We investigated the whistles of two closely related, sympatric common dolphin species, Delphinus delphis and Delphinus bairdii, to evaluate species differences in whistle contours. Acoustic recordings of single-species groups were obtained from the Southern California Bight. We used an unsupervised neural network to categorize whistles and compared the resulting whistle types between species. Of the whistle types recorded in more than one encounter, 169 were shared between species and 60 were species-specific (32 D. delphis types, 28 D. bairdii types). Delphinus delphis used 15 whistle types with an oscillatory frequency contour while only one such type was found in D. bairdii. Given the role of vocal learning in delphinid vocalizations, we argue that these differences in whistle production are probably culturally driven and could help facilitate species recognition between Delphinus species.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Vocal learning in animals and humans’.

Noise constrains the evolution of call frequency contours in flowing water frogs: a comparative analysis in two clades

BackgroundThe acoustic adaptation hypothesis (AAH) states that signals should evolve towards an optimal transmission of the intended information from senders to intended receivers given the environmental constraints of the medium that they traverse. To date, most AAH studies have focused on the effect of stratified vegetation on signal propagation. These studies, based on the AAH, predict that acoustic signals should experience less attenuation and degradation where habitats are less acoustically complex. Here, we explored this effect by including an environmental noise dimension to test some AAH predictions in two clades of widespread amphibians (Bufonidae and Ranidae) that actively use acoustic signals for communication. By using data from 106 species in these clades, we focused on the characterization of the differences in dominant frequency (DF) and frequency contour (i.e., frequency modulation [FM] and harmonic performances) of mating calls and compared them between species that inhabit flowing-water or still-water environments.ResultsAfter including temperature, body size, habitat type and phylogenetic relationships, we found that DF differences among species were explained mostly by body size and habitat structure. We also showed that species living in lentic habitats tend to have advertisement calls characterized by well-defined FM and harmonics. Likewise, our results suggest that flowing-water habitats can constrain the evolutionary trajectories of the frequency-contour traits of advertisement calls in these anurans.ConclusionsOur results may support AAH predictions in frogs that vocalize in noisy habitats because flowing-water environments often produce persistent ambient noise. For instance, these anurans tend to generate vocalizations with less well-defined FM and harmonic traits. These findings may help us understand how noise in the environment can influence natural selection as it shapes acoustic signals in affected species.

When Music Speaks: An Acoustic Study of the Speech Surrogacy of the Nigerian Dùndún Talking Drum

Yorùbá dùndún drumming is an oral tradition which allows for manipulation of gliding pitch contours in ways that correspond to the differentiation of the Yorùbá linguistic tone levels. This feature enables the drum to be employed as both a musical instrument and a speech surrogate. In this study, we examined four modes of the dùndún talking drum, compared them to vocal singing and talking in the Yorùbá language, and analyzed the extent of microstructural overlap between these categories, making this study one of the first to examine the vocal surrogacy of the drum in song. We compared the fundamental frequency, timing pattern, and intensity contour of syllables from the same sample phrase recorded in the various communicative forms and we correlated each vocalization style with each of the corresponding drumming modes. We analyzed 30 spoken and sung verbal utterances and their corresponding drum and song excerpts collected from three native Yorùbá speakers and three professional dùndún drummers in Nigeria. The findings confirm that the dùndún can very accurately mimic microstructural acoustic temporal, fundamental frequency, and intensity characteristics of Yorùbá vocalization when doing so directly, and that this acoustic match systematically decreases for the drumming modes in which more musical context is specified. Our findings acoustically verify the distinction between four drumming mode categories and confirm their acoustical match to corresponding verbal modes. Understanding how musical and speech aspects interconnect in the dùndún talking drum clarifies acoustical properties that overlap between vocal utterances (speech and song) and corresponding imitations on the drum and verifies the potential functionality of speech surrogacy communications systems.

Individual vocal signatures show reduced complexity following invasion

The manner in which vocal learning is used for social recognition may be sensitive to the social environment. Biological invaders capable of vocal learning are useful for testing this possibility, as invasion alters population size. Some vocal learning species use frequency modulation patterns of acoustic signals for individual recognition. In such species, frequency modulation patterns should be more complex in larger social groups, reflecting greater selection for individual distinctiveness. We used numbers of nests and nest densities as proxies of local population sizes of native range monk parakeets, Myiopsitta monachus , in Uruguay and invasive range populations in the United States. Flock sizes were obtained to estimate maximum social group sizes per range. Supervised machine learning and frequency contours were employed to compare contact call structure between native and invasive range populations, and the effect of urban habitats on call structure was also assessed. Invasive range populations exhibited fewer nests, lower nest densities and smaller maximum flock sizes, which is consistent with a reduction in population size following invasion. Parakeets at invasive range sites also produced contact calls with simpler frequency modulation patterns. Beecher's statistic (HS) revealed reduced individual identity content and fewer possible unique individual signatures in invasive range calls. Simpler individual signatures are consistent with relaxed selection on the complexity of learned calls likely used for individual vocal recognition in the smaller local populations that we identified post-invasion. Frequency modulation patterns were simpler in urban habitats in both ranges, indicating that urban habitats could also alter the social environment and in turn influence the complexity of learned individual signatures. These findings contribute to a growing literature on the use of vocal learning for individual recognition and indicate that vocal learning can be used to produce individual vocal signatures in a manner sensitive to local population size. • Local population and social group size estimates were smaller in the invasive range. • Invasive range parakeets produced calls with simpler individual signatures. • Urban calls had simpler frequency modulation patterns in the native and invasive ranges. • Monk parakeets may use vocal learning for individual vocal recognition.

Effects of Spectral Envelope and Fundamental Frequency Shifts on the Perception of Foreign-Accented Speech.

To investigate the role of spectral pattern information in the perception of foreign-accented speech, we measured the effects of spectral shifts on judgments of talker discrimination, perceived naturalness, and intelligibility when listening to Mandarin-accented English and native-accented English sentences. In separate conditions, the spectral envelope and fundamental frequency (F0) contours were shifted up or down in three steps using coordinated scale factors (multiples of 8% and 30%, respectively). Experiment 1 showed that listeners perceive spectrally shifted sentences as coming from a different talker for both native-accented and foreign-accented speech. Experiment 2 demonstrated that downward shifts applied to male talkers and the largest upward shifts applied to all talkers reduced the perceived naturalness, regardless of accent. Overall, listeners rated foreign-accented speech as sounding less natural even for unshifted speech. In Experiment 3, introducing spectral shifts further lowered the intelligibility of foreign-accented speech. When speech from the same foreign-accented talker was shifted to simulate five different talkers, increased exposure failed to produce an improvement in intelligibility scores, similar to the pattern observed when listeners actually heard five foreign-accented talkers. Intelligibility of spectrally shifted native-accented speech was near ceiling performance initially, and no further improvement or decrement was observed. These experiments suggest a mechanism that utilizes spectral envelope and F0 cues in a talker-dependent manner to support the perception of foreign-accented speech.

Call repertoire and inferred ecotype presence of killer whales (Orcinus orca) recorded in the southeastern Chukchi Sea

Killer whales occur in the Arctic but few data exist regarding the ecotypes present. The calling behavior differs among ecotypes, which can be distinguished based on pulsed call type, call rate, and bandwidth. In this study, a passive acoustic recorder was deployed 75 km off Point Hope, Alaska, in the southeastern Chukchi Sea to identify which ecotypes were present. A total of 1323 killer whale pulsed calls were detected on 38 of 276 days during the summers (June-August) of 2013-2015. The majority of calls (n = 804, 61%) were recorded in 2013 with the most calls recorded in July (76% of total calls). The calls were manually grouped into six categories: multipart, downsweep, upsweep, modulated, single modulation, and flat. Most detections were flat (n = 485, 37%) or multipart calls (n = 479, 36%), which contained both high and low frequency components. Call comparisons with those reported in the published literature showed similarities with other transient populations in fundamental frequency contour point distribution and median frequency. This study provides the first comprehensive catalog of transient killer whale calls in this region as well as reports on previously undescribed calls.

Warm Cloud Evolution, Precipitation, and Their Weak Linkage in HadGEM3: New Process-Level Diagnostics Using A-Train Observations

AbstractThe latest configuration of the Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model, version 3 (HadGEM3), contains significant changes in the formulation of warm rain processes and aerosols. We evaluate the impacts of these changes in the simulation of warm rain formation processes using A-Train observations. We introduce a new model evaluation tool, quartile-based contoured frequency by optical depth diagrams (CFODDs), in order to fill in some blind spots that conventional CFODDs have. Results indicate that HadGEM3 has weak linkage between the size of particle radius and warm rain formation processes, and switching to the new warm rain microphysics scheme causes more difference in warm rain formation processes than switching to the new aerosol scheme through reducing overly produced drizzle mode in HadGEM3. Finally, we run an experiment in which we perturb the second aerosol indirect effect (AIE) to study the rainfall–aerosol interaction in HadGEM3. Since the large changes in the cloud droplet number concentration (CDNC) appear in the AIE experiment, a large impact in warm rain diagnostics is expected. However, regions with large fractional changes in CDNC show a muted change in precipitation, arguably because large-scale constraints act to reduce the impact of such a big change in CDNC. The adjustment in cloud liquid water path to the AIE perturbation produces a large negative shortwave forcing in the midlatitudes.

New criteria for evaluation of electroretinogram in patients with retinitis pigmentosa.

Electroretinogram (ERG) plays an essential role in the diagnosis of retinal disease. Choosing appropriate methods could extract valuable information from ERG. In this study, a new criterion based on time-frequency domain analysis was proposed to investigate the retina in retinitis pigmentosa (RP) patients. The total number of 16 eyes from eight RP patients and 20 eyes from age-matched healthy subjects were assessed. The signals included photopic and scotopic ERGs. Continuous wavelet transform was applied to ERGs. Dominant frequencies were extracted, and the contours related to these dominant frequencies were selected. As a new criterion, the areas related to dominant frequency contours were considered a feature to differentiate the RP and normal groups. To better evaluate the proposed criterion results, the time-domain analysis characteristics of ERG were also considered. The results showed an increase in implicit time and reduced amplitude in RP patients (P < 0.05). A significant decrease of dominant frequencies and increasing their occurrence time were seen in ERG of RP patients. Also, in RP patients, the third dominant frequency was disappeared from the three main frequencies observed in photopic ERGs of normal subjects. The area criterion showed a significant decrease in RP groups (P < 0.05). RP can cause changes in the time and time-frequency components of the ERG. The area index could represent a new view of the characteristics of the ERG in the time-frequency domain. This criterion can help the ophthalmologist to have a better evaluation of retinal disease.

How Visual Word Decoding and Context-Driven Auditory Semantic Integration Contribute to Reading Comprehension: A Test of Additive vs. Multiplicative Models.

Theories of reading comprehension emphasize decoding and listening comprehension as two essential components. The current study aimed to investigate how Chinese character decoding and context-driven auditory semantic integration contribute to reading comprehension in Chinese middle school students. Seventy-five middle school students were tested. Context-driven auditory semantic integration was assessed with speech-in-noise tests in which the fundamental frequency (F0) contours of spoken sentences were either kept natural or acoustically flattened, with the latter requiring a higher degree of contextual information. Statistical modeling with hierarchical regression was conducted to examine the contributions of Chinese character decoding and context-driven auditory semantic integration to reading comprehension. Performance in Chinese character decoding and auditory semantic integration scores with the flattened (but not natural) F0 sentences significantly predicted reading comprehension. Furthermore, the contributions of these two factors to reading comprehension were better fitted with an additive model instead of a multiplicative model. These findings indicate that reading comprehension in middle schoolers is associated with not only character decoding but also the listening ability to make better use of the sentential context for semantic integration in a severely degraded speech-in-noise condition. The results add to our better understanding of the multi-faceted reading comprehension in children. Future research could further address the age-dependent development and maturation of reading skills by examining and controlling other important cognitive variables, and apply neuroimaging techniques such as functional magmatic resonance imaging and electrophysiology to reveal the neural substrates and neural oscillatory patterns for the contribution of auditory semantic integration and the observed additive model to reading comprehension.

Vortex-induced vibration of a cylinder with nonlinear energy sink (NES) at low Reynolds number

Vortex-induced vibration (VIV) is a fluid structure interaction phenomena that can lead to the fatigue failure of high-rise structures. To study the basic principles and method of VIV suppression for a cylinder structure, a two-dimensional simulation model using a cylinder with two degrees of freedom in-line and cross-flow directions is presented herewith. A nonlinear energy sink is added to cylinder structures to assess its impact on vibration suppression. As a result, this study aims to investigate the VIV of cylinder under the action of the NES at low Reynolds numbers. The accuracy of the simulation model is verified by the comparison with the experimental results. Particularly, the VIV response is investigated with different mass ratio $$\beta$$ between the NES and cylinder (namely $$\beta$$ of 0.15, 0.2 and 0.3) at Re = 100 in air environment by analyzing the vibration response, phase diagram, time–frequency and vorticity contours of cylinder and NES oscillator. Three distinct function modes of NES for selected mass ratio $$\beta$$ are also observed. The results indicate that the NES can change between resonance capture states, from weak to strong, when the mass ratio $$\beta$$ increases to a defined value. In this case, the main vibration frequency of the cylinder varies over time, and the motion is in the chaotic state. The NES can also effectively reduce the vibration amplitude in both the in-flow and cross-flow directions.

Aging Effects on Categorical Perception of Mandarin Lexical Tones in Noise.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the aging effects on the categorical perception (CP) of Mandarin lexical Tones 1-4 and Tones 1-2 in noise. It also investigated whether listeners' categorical tone perception in noise correlated with their general tone identification of 20 natural vowel-plus-tone signals in noise. Method Twelve younger and 12 older listeners with normal hearing were recruited in both tone identification and discrimination tasks in a CP paradigm where fundamental frequency contours of target stimuli varied systematically from the flat tone (Tone 1) to the rising/falling tones (Tones 2/4). Both tasks were conducted in quiet and noise with signal-to-noise ratios set at -5 and -10 dB, respectively, and general tone identification of natural speech signals was also tested in noise conditions. Results Compared with younger listeners, older listeners had shallower identification slopes and smaller discrimination peakedness in Tones 1-2/4 perception in all listening conditions, except for Tones 1-4 perception in quiet where no group differences were found. Meanwhile, noise affected Tones 1-2/4 perception: The signal-to-noise ratio condition at -10 dB brought shallower slope in Tones 1-2/4 identification and less peakedness in Tones 1-4 discrimination for both listener groups. Older listeners' CP in noise, the identification slopes in particular, positively correlated with their general tone identification in noise, but such correlations were partially missing for younger listeners. Conclusions Both aging and the presence of speech-shaped noise significantly reduced the CP of Mandarin Tones 1-2/4. Listeners' Mandarin tone recognition may be related to their CP of Mandarin tones.