Linguistic Pitch Research Articles

Perception and Production of Pitch Information in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

This study investigated the categorical perception (CP) of linguistic pitch (lexical tones) and nonlinguistic pitch (pure tones), as well as tonal production in Mandarin-speaking children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A total of 26 Mandarin-speaking children with ASD and 29 age-matched typically developing (TD) children were recruited for this study. The Mandarin T2-T3 contrast and corresponding pure tones with identical pitch contours were adopted to assess the nuanced pitch processing abilities of the child participants via the CP paradigm. Accordingly, tonal production was focused on T2 and T3 with analyses of the dynamic pitch contours and tonal differentiation. Mandarin-speaking children with ASD exhibited atypical CP for linguistic pitch in comparison with their TD peers. However, the categorization of linguistic pitch exceeded that of nonlinguistic pitch among the ASD participants, indicating a global over local processing pattern contrary to autistic individuals in non-tonal languages. Additionally, despite atypical pitch contours in producing T2 and T3, the ASD group showed comparable differentiable degrees of the two tones in production to the TD group. Findings of this study served as a foray into contesting current theories' claims of local bias and/or global impairment in the autistic population, prompting further inspections on individuals with different language backgrounds and stimuli processing with various complexities. Additionally, findings of this study underscore the necessity of developing tailored assessments and interventions to enhance the perception and production of complex and confusable tones, thereby improving perceptual robustness and communication skills in Mandarin-speaking children with ASD.

Mandarin-Speaking Amusics' Online Recognition of Tone and Intonation.

Congenital amusia is a neurogenetic disorder of musical pitch processing. Its linguistic consequences have been examined separately for speech intonations and lexical tones. However, in a tonal language such as Chinese, the processing of intonations and lexical tones interacts with each other during online speech perception. Whether and how the musical pitch disorder might affect linguistic pitch processing during online speech perception remains unknown. We investigated this question with intonation (question vs. statement) and lexical tone (rising Tone 2 vs. falling Tone 4) identification tasks using the same set of sentences, comparing behavioral and event-related potential measurements between Mandarin-speaking amusics and matched controls. We specifically focused on the amusics without behavioral lexical tone deficits (the majority, i.e., pure amusics). Results showed that, despite relative to normal performance when tested in word lexical tone test, pure amusics demonstrated inferior recognition than controls during sentence tone and intonation identification. Compared to controls, pure amusics had larger N400 amplitudes in question stimuli during tone task and smaller P600 amplitudes in intonation task. These data indicate that musical pitch disorder affects both tone and intonation processing during sentence processing even for pure amusics, whose lexical tone processing was intact when tested with words.

Effect of musical expertise on the perception of duration and pitch in language: A cross-linguistic study

This study adopts a cross-linguistic perspective and investigates how musical expertise affects the perception of duration and pitch in language. Native speakers of Chinese (N = 44) and Estonian (N = 46), each group subdivided into musicians and non-musicians, participated in a mismatch negativity (MMN) experiment where they passively listened to both Chinese and Estonian stimuli, followed by a behavioral experiment where they attentively discriminated the stimuli in the non-native language (i.e., Chinese to Estonian participants and Estonian to Chinese participants). In both experiments, stimuli of duration change, pitch change, and duration plus pitch change were discriminated. We found higher behavioral sensitivity among Chinese musicians than non-musicians in perceiving the duration change in Estonian and higher behavioral sensitivity among Estonian musicians than non-musicians in perceiving all types of changes in Chinese, but no corresponding effect was found in the MMN results, which suggests a more salient effect of musical expertise on foreign language processing when attention is required. Secondly, Chinese musicians did not outperform non-musicians in attentively discriminating the pitch-related stimuli in Estonian, suggesting that musical expertise can be overridden by tonal language experience when perceiving foreign linguistic pitch, especially when an attentive discrimination task is administered. Thirdly, we found larger MMN among Chinese and Estonian musicians than their non-musician counterparts in perceiving the largest deviant (i.e., duration plus pitch) in their native language. Taken together, our results demonstrate a positive effect of musical expertise on language processing.

Tone Deafness in Music Does Not Preclude Distributional Learning of Nonnative Tonal Languages in Individuals With Congenital Amusia.

Previous studies have shown that individuals with congenital amusia exhibit deficient pitch processing across music and language domains. This study investigated whether adult Chinese-speaking listeners with amusia were still able to learn Thai lexical tones based on stimulus frequency of statistical distribution via distributional learning, despite their degraded lexical tone perception. Following a pretest-training-posttest design, 21 amusics and 23 typical, musically intact listeners were assigned into bimodal and unimodal distribution conditions. Listeners were asked to discriminate minimal pairs of Thai mid-level tone and falling tone superimposed on variable base syllables and uttered by different speakers. The perceptual accuracy for each test session and improvement from pretest to posttest were collected and analyzed between the two groups using generalized mixed-effects models. When discriminating Thai lexical tones, amusics were less accurate than typical listeners. Nonetheless, similarly to control listeners, perceptual gains from pretest to posttest were observed in bimodally rather than unimodally trained amusics, as evidenced by both trained and nontrained test words. Amusics are able to learn lexical tones in a second or foreign context of speech. This extends previous research by showing that amusics' distributional learning of linguistic pitch remains largely preserved despite their degraded pitch processing. It is thus likely that manifestations of amusia in speech could not result from their abnormal statistical learning mechanism. This study meanwhile provides a heuristic approach for future studies to apply this paradigm into amusics' treatment to mitigate their pitch-processing disorder.

Language experience predicts music processing in a half-million speakers of fifty-four languages

Tonal languages differ from other languages in their use of pitch (tones) to distinguish words. Lifelong experience speaking and hearing tonal languages has been argued to shape auditory processing in ways that generalize beyond the perception of linguistic pitch to the perception of pitch in other domains like music. We conducted a meta-analysis of prior studies testing this idea, finding moderate evidence supporting it. But prior studies were limited by mostly small sample sizes representing a small number of languages and countries, making it challenging to disentangle the effects of linguistic experience from variability in music training, cultural differences, and other potential confounds. To address these issues, we used web-based citizen science to assess music perception skill on a global scale in 34,034 native speakers of 19 tonal languages (e.g., Mandarin, Yoruba). We compared their performance to 459,066 native speakers of other languages, including 6 pitch-accented (e.g., Japanese) and 29 non-tonal languages (e.g., Hungarian). Whether or not participants had taken music lessons, native speakers of all 19 tonal languages had an improved ability to discriminate musical melodies on average, relative to speakers of non-tonal languages. But this improvement came with a trade-off: tonal language speakers were also worse at processing the musical beat. The results, which held across native speakers of many diverse languages and were robust to geographic and demographic variation, demonstrate that linguistic experience shapes music perception, with implications for relations between music, language, and culture in the human mind.

Musicality and Age Interaction in Tone Development.

Vocal pitch, which involves not only F0 but also multiple covarying acoustic cues is central to linguistic perception and production at various levels of prosodic structure. Recent studies on language development have shown that differences in learners' musicality affect the F0 cue development in perception of sentence-level intonation or in prosodic realization of focus. This study aims to contribute toward a fuller understanding of the effect of musicality on linguistic pitch development via a close investigation of the relationship between musicality, age, and lexical tone production covering both F0 and spectral cues in children. Forty-three native Mandarin-speaking children between the ages of 4 and 6 years are recruited to participate in both a semi-spontaneous tone production task and a musicality test. For each age (4, 5, and 6 years) and musicality (below or above the median score of each age group) group, the contrastivity of the four tones is evaluated by performing automatic tone classification using three sets of acoustic cues (F0, spectral cues, and both). It has been found that higher musicality is associated with higher contrastivity of the tones produced at the age of 4 and 5 years, but not at the age of 6 years. These results suggest that musicality promotes earlier development of tone production only in earlier stages of prosodic development; by the age of 6 years, the musicality advantage in tone production subsides.

Categorical Perception of Pitch Contours and Voice Onset Time in Mandarin-Speaking Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Purpose Previous studies have shown enhanced pitch and impaired time perception in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, it remains unclear whether such deviated patterns of auditory processing depending on acoustic dimensions would transfer to the higher level linguistic pitch and time processing. In this study, we compared the categorical perception (CP) of lexical tones and voice onset time (VOT) in Mandarin Chinese, which utilize pitch and time changes, respectively, to convey phonemic contrasts. Method The data were collected from 22 Mandarin-speaking adolescents with ASD and 20 age-matched neurotypical controls. In addition to the identification and discrimination tasks to test CP performance, all the participants were evaluated with their language ability and phonological working memory. Linear mixed-effects models were constructed to evaluate the identification and discrimination scores across different groups and conditions. Results The basic CP pattern of cross-boundary benefit when perceiving both native lexical tones and VOT was largely preserved in high-functioning adolescents with ASD. The degree of CP of lexical tones in ASD was similar to that in typical controls, whereas the degree of CP of VOT in ASD was greatly reduced. Furthermore, the degree of CP of lexical tones correlated with language ability and digit span in ASD participants. Conclusions These findings suggest that the unbalanced acoustic processing capacities for pitch and time can be generalized to the higher level linguistic processing in ASD. Furthermore, the higher degree of CP of lexical tones correlated with better language ability in Mandarin-speaking individuals with ASD.

Harnessing the musician advantage: Short-term musical training affects non-native cue weighting of linguistic pitch

Lexical tone languages like Mandarin Chinese require listeners to discriminate among different pitch patterns. A syllable spoken with a rising pitch (e.g. bí ‘nose’) carries a different meaning than the same syllable spoken with a falling pitch (e.g. bì ‘arm’). For native speakers (L1) of a non-tonal language, accurate perception of tones in a second language (L2) is notoriously difficult. Musicians, however, have typically shown an aptitude for lexical tone learning due to the unique perceptual demands of music. This study tested whether musical effects can be exploited to improve linguistic abilities in the general population. A pre-test, 8-week training, post-test design was used to measure L1 English participants’ sensitivity to tone. Individual Differences Scaling was used to measure participants’ weighting of pitch height and movement cues. Participants took part in classroom Mandarin learning only (+L2), musical ear training only (+Music), or classroom learning combined with musical training (+L2+Music). An L1 Mandarin group served as a baseline. At pre-test, mean sensitivity to tone and multidimensional scaling results were similar across all three L1 English groups. After training, all three L1 English groups improved in mean sensitivity, though only the +L2+Music group did so at a significant rate. Multidimensional scaling revealed that all groups increased their weighting of the more informative pitch movement cue at roughly equal rates. Short-term musical training thus affected change in cue weighting of linguistic pitch in a manner comparable to that occurring after a semester of L2 classroom learning. When combined with classroom learning, short-term musical training resulted in even greater sensitivity to pitch movement cues. These results contribute to models of music-language interaction and suggest that focused application of non-linguistic acoustic training can improve phonetic perception in ways that are relevant to language learning.

Lifelong Tone Language Experience does not Eliminate Deficits in Neural Encoding of Pitch in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Atypical pitch processing is a feature of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), which affects non-tone language speakers' communication. Lifelong auditory experience has been demonstrated to modify genetically-predisposed risks for pitch processing. We examined individuals with ASD to test the hypothesis that lifelong auditory experience in tone language mayeliminate impaired pitch processing in ASD. We examined children's and adults' Frequency-following Response (FFR), a neurophysiological component indexing early neural sensory encoding of pitch. Univariate and machine-learning-based analytics suggest less robust pitch encoding and diminished pitch distinctions in the FFR from individuals with ASD. Contrary to our hypothesis, results point to a linguistic pitch encoding impairment associated with ASD that may not be eliminated even by lifelong sensory experience.

Simultaneous bilinguals who do not speak a tone language show enhancement in pitch sensitivity but not in executive function

Abstract Previous studies have reported perceptual advantages, such as when discriminating non-native linguistic or musical pitch differences, among first-year infants growing up in bilingual over monolingual environments. It is unclear whether such effects should be attributed to bilinguals’ enhanced perceptual sensitivity and/or cognitive abilities, and whether such effects would extend to adulthood. Twenty-four Dutch, 24 Dutch simultaneous bilingual (DSB), and 24 Chinese Mandarin speakers were examined by three sets of tasks assessing their linguistic pitch and music perception, executive function, as well as interactions across these modalities. Results showed degrees of advantages for DSB and Chinese participants’ over their Dutch peers in lexical tone discrimination and pitch-related music tasks. In tasks related to executive function, no difference was observed between DSB and Dutch participants, while Chinese participants’ performances were modulated by cognitive interference of language processing. Findings suggest that listeners’ enhanced sensitivity to linguistic and musical pitch may stem from acoustic (DSB) and experience (Chinese) rather than cognitive factors. Moreover, Dutch participants showed robust correlations between their linguistic and musical pitch perception, followed by limited correlations in DSB, and virtually no correlation among Chinese participants, illustrating how distinct language experiences can lead to specific pitch perception patterns between language and music.

A distributed dynamic brain network mediates linguistic tone representation and categorization

Successful categorization requires listeners to represent the incoming sensory information, resolve the “blooming, buzzing confusion” inherent to noisy sensory signals, and leverage the accumulated evidence towards making a decision. Despite decades of intense debate, the neural systems underlying speech categorization remain unresolved. Here we assessed the neural representation and categorization of lexical tones by native Mandarin speakers (N = 31) across a range of acoustic and contextual variabilities (talkers, perceptual saliences, and stimulus-contexts) using functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) and an evidence accumulation model of decision-making. Univariate activation and multivariate pattern analyses reveal that the acoustic-variability-tolerant representations of tone category are observed within the middle portion of the left superior temporal gyrus (STG). Activation patterns in the frontal and parietal regions also contained category-relevant information that was differentially sensitive to various forms of variability. The robustness of neural representations of tone category in a distributed fronto-temporoparietal network is associated with trial-by-trial decision-making parameters. These findings support a hybrid model involving a representational core within the STG that operates dynamically within an extensive frontoparietal network to support the representation and categorization of linguistic pitch patterns.

Reduced Sensitivity to Between-Category Information but Preserved Categorical Perception of Lexical Tones in Tone Language Speakers With Congenital Amusia.

Previous studies have shown that for congenital amusics, long-term tone language experience cannot compensate for lexical tone processing difficulties. However, it is still unknown whether such difficulties are merely caused by domain-transferred insensitivity in lower-level acoustic processing and/or by higher-level phonological processing of linguistic pitch as well. The current P300 study links and extends previous studies by uncovering the neurophysiological mechanisms underpinning lexical tone perception difficulties in Mandarin-speaking amusics. Both the behavioral index (d′) and P300 amplitude showed reduced within-category as well as between-category sensitivity among the Mandarin-speaking amusics regardless of the linguistic status of the signal. The results suggest that acoustic pitch processing difficulties in amusics are manifested profoundly and further persist into the higher-level phonological processing that involves the neural processing of different lexical tone categories. Our findings indicate that long-term tone language experience may not compensate for the reduced acoustic pitch processing in tone language speakers with amusia but rather may extend to the neural processing of the phonological information of lexical tones during the attentive stage. However, from both the behavioral and neural evidence, the peakedness scores of the d′ and P300 amplitude were comparable between amusics and controls. It seems that the basic categorical perception (CP) pattern of native lexical tones is preserved in Mandarin-speaking amusics, indicating that they may have normal or near normal long-term categorical memory.

The effects of musicality and language background on cue integration in pitch perception.

Pitch perception involves the processing of multidimensional acoustic cues, and listeners can exhibit different cue integration strategies in interpreting pitch. This study aims to examine whether musicality and language experience have effects on listeners' pitch perception strategies. Both Mandarin and English listeners were recruited to participate in two experiments: (1) a pitch classification experiment that tested their relative reliance on f0 and spectral cues, and (2) the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Musical Abilities that objectively quantified their musical aptitude as continuous musicality scores. Overall, the results show a strong musicality effect: Listeners with higher musicality scores relied more on f0 in pitch perception, while listeners with lower musicality scores were more likely to attend to spectral cues. However, there were no effects of language experience on musicality scores or cue integration strategies in pitch perception. These results suggest that less musical or even amusic subjects may not suffer impairment in linguistic pitch processing due to the multidimensional nature of pitch cues.

The embodiment of the prose libretto in opera genre (on the example of the works by M. Mussorgsky, D. Shostakovich, S. Prokofi ev and G. Shantyr)

The embodiment of the prose libretto in opera genre (on the example of the works by M. Mussorgsky, D. Shostakovich, S. Prokofi ev and G. Shantyr)

Integrating Voice Quality Cues in the Pitch Perception of Speech and Non-speech Utterances.

Pitch perception plays a crucial role in speech processing. Since F0 is highly ambiguous and variable in the speech signal, effective pitch-range perception is important in perceiving the intended linguistic pitch targets. This study argues that the effectiveness of pitch-range perception can be achieved by taking advantage of other signal-internal information that co-varies with F0, such as voice quality cues. This study provides direct perceptual evidence that voice quality cues as an indicator of pitch ranges can effectively affect the pitch-height perception. A series of forced-choice pitch classification experiments with four spectral conditions were conducted to investigate the degree to which manipulating spectral slope affects pitch-height perception. Both non-speech and speech stimuli were investigated. The results suggest that the pitch classification function is significantly shifted under different spectral conditions. Listeners are likely to perceive a higher pitch when the spectrum has higher high-frequency energy (i.e., tenser phonation). The direction of the shift is consistent with the correlation between voice quality and pitch range. Moreover, cue integration is affected by the speech mode, where listeners are more sensitive to relative difference within an utterance when hearing speech stimuli. This study generally supports the hypothesis that voice quality is an important enhancement cue for pitch range.

The psychological peculiarities of prospective musicians’ English professional lexicical competence acquisition in listening comprehension

The role of musical training in developing linguistic abilities is of great interest from scientific perspective. In this article, the author provides arguments to show that music education contributes to the effective acquisition of new vocabulary, thereby pointing to the importance of music for speech perception and more generally for teaching foreign languages to music student in listening comprehension. An overview of psychological mechanisms of listening comprehension which enhance the acquisition of English lexical competence for special (music) purposes is also given. The features of musicians’ memory, attention span, thought, anticipation, motivation, reflection and language perception as well as their effect on learning professional vocabulary in the process of listening comprehension are analysed. So, the article aims at a thorough analysis of psychological features of the English language acquisition for specific purposes in listening comprehension. The conducted research is based on studying and analysing the corresponding scientific publications and literature. A drawn parallel between music and language reveals the similarities in functional organisation of both systems. The study shows that musicians are more sensitive to linguistic pitch variations in foreign languages than nonmusicians, being able to decipher and segment phonetic information during conversation. Moreover, musicians’ memory, attention span and thought are different from non-musicians and show signs of speech perception facilitation. Based on the result of the research, the author concludes that music abilities enhance the process of professional vocabulary acquisition in listening comprehension and recommends developing and improving prospective musicians’ mental processes in listening comprehension.

Effects of combination of linguistic and musical pitch experience on subcortical pitch encoding

Abstract Musical experience and linguistic experience have been shown to facilitate language and music perception. However, the precise nature of music and language interaction is still a subject of ongoing research. In this study, using subcortical electrophysiological measures (frequency following response), we seek to understand the effect of interaction of linguistic pitch experience and musical pitch experience on subcortical lexical and musical pitch encoding. We compared musicians and non-musicians who were native speakers of a tone language on subcortical encoding of linguistic and musical pitch. We found that musicians and non-musicians did not differ on the brainstem encoding of lexical tones. However, musicians showed a more robust brainstem encoding of musical pitch as compared to non-musicians. These findings suggest that a combined musical and linguistic pitch experience affects auditory brainstem encoding of linguistic and musical pitch differentially. From our results, we could also speculate that native tone language speakers might use two different mechanisms, at least for the subcortical encoding of linguistic and musical pitch.

Is a High Tone Pointy? Speakers of Different Languages Match Mandarin Chinese Tones to Visual Shapes Differently.

Studies investigating cross-modal correspondences between auditory pitch and visual shapes have shown children and adults consistently match high pitch to pointy shapes and low pitch to curvy shapes, yet no studies have investigated linguistic-uses of pitch. In the present study, we used a bouba/kiki style task to investigate the sound/shape mappings for Tones of Mandarin Chinese, for three groups of participants with different language backgrounds. We recorded the vowels [i] and [u] articulated in each of the four tones of Mandarin Chinese. In Study 1 a single auditory stimulus was presented with two images (one curvy, one spiky). In Study 2 a single image was presented with two auditory stimuli differing only in tone. Participants were asked to select the best match in an online ‘Quiz.’ Across both studies, we replicated the previously observed ‘u-curvy, i-pointy’ sound/shape cross-modal correspondence in all groups. However, Tones were mapped differently by people with different language backgrounds: speakers of Mandarin Chinese classified as Chinese-dominant systematically matched Tone 1 (high, steady) to the curvy shape and Tone 4 (falling) to the pointy shape, while English speakers with no knowledge of Chinese preferred to match Tone 1 (high, steady) to the pointy shape and Tone 3 (low, dipping) to the curvy shape. These effects were observed most clearly in Study 2 where tone-pairs were contrasted explicitly. These findings are in line with the dominant patterns of linguistic pitch perception for speakers of these languages (pitch-change, and pitch height, respectively). Chinese English balanced bilinguals showed a bivalent pattern, swapping between the Chinese pitch-change pattern and the English pitch-height pattern depending on the task. These findings show for that the supposedly universal pattern of mapping linguistic sounds to shape is modulated by the sensory properties of a speaker’s language system, and that people with high functioning in more than one language can dynamically shift between patterns.

A Meta-Analytic Study of the Neural Systems for Auditory Processing of Lexical Tones

The neural systems of lexical tone processing have been studied for many years. However, previous findings have been mixed with regard to the hemispheric specialization for the perception of linguistic pitch patterns in native speakers of tonal language. In this study, we performed two activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analyses, one on neuroimaging studies of auditory processing of lexical tones in tonal languages (17 studies), and the other on auditory processing of lexical information in non-tonal languages as a control analysis for comparison (15 studies). The lexical tone ALE analysis showed significant brain activations in bilateral inferior prefrontal regions, bilateral superior temporal regions and the right caudate, while the control ALE analysis showed significant cortical activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus and left temporo-parietal regions. However, we failed to obtain significant differences from the contrast analysis between two auditory conditions, which might be caused by the limited number of studies available for comparison. Although the current study lacks evidence to argue for a lexical tone specific activation pattern, our results provide clues and directions for future investigations on this topic, more sophisticated methods are needed to explore this question in more depth as well.

Mandarin-English Bilinguals Process Lexical Tones in Newly Learned Words in Accordance with the Language Context.

Previous research has mainly considered the impact of tone-language experience on ability to discriminate linguistic pitch, but proficient bilingual listening requires differential processing of sound variation in each language context. Here, we ask whether Mandarin-English bilinguals, for whom pitch indicates word distinctions in one language but not the other, can process pitch differently in a Mandarin context vs. an English context. Across three eye-tracked word-learning experiments, results indicated that tone-intonation bilinguals process tone in accordance with the language context. In Experiment 1, 51 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 26 English speakers without tone experience were taught Mandarin-compatible novel words with tones. Mandarin-English bilinguals out-performed English speakers, and, for bilinguals, overall accuracy was correlated with Mandarin dominance. Experiment 2 taught 24 Mandarin-English bilinguals and 25 English speakers novel words with Mandarin-like tones, but English-like phonemes and phonotactics. The Mandarin-dominance advantages observed in Experiment 1 disappeared when words were English-like. Experiment 3 contrasted Mandarin-like vs. English-like words in a within-subjects design, providing even stronger evidence that bilinguals can process tone language-specifically. Bilinguals (N = 58), regardless of language dominance, attended more to tone than English speakers without Mandarin experience (N = 28), but only when words were Mandarin-like—not when they were English-like. Mandarin-English bilinguals thus tailor tone processing to the within-word language context.