Tone Perception Research Articles

ASPM-lexical tone association in speakers of a tone language: Direct evidence for the genetic-biasing hypothesis of language evolution.

How language has evolved into more than 7000 varieties today remains a question that puzzles linguists, anthropologists, and evolutionary scientists. The genetic-biasing hypothesis of language evolution postulates that genes and language features coevolve, such that a population that is genetically predisposed to perceiving a particular linguistic feature would tend to adopt that feature in their language. Statistical studies that correlated a large number of genetic variants and linguistic features not only generated this hypothesis but also specifically pinpointed a linkage between ASPM and lexical tone. However, there is currently no direct evidence for this association and, therefore, the hypothesis. In an experimental study, we provide evidence to link ASPM with lexical tone perception in a sample of over 400 speakers of a tone language. In addition to providing the first direct evidence for the genetic-biasing hypothesis, our results have implications for further studies of linguistic anthropology and language disorders.

How musical experience affects tone perception efficiency by musicians of tonal and non-tonal speakers?

PurposeTo investigate if, regardless of language background (tonal or non-tonal), musicians may show stronger CP than non-musicians; To examine if native speakers of English (English or non-tonal musicians henceforth) or Mandarin Chinese (Mandarin or tonal musicians henceforth) can better accommodate multiple functions of the same acoustic cue and if musicians’ sensitivity to pitch of lexical tones comes at the cost of slower processing.MethodEnglish and Mandarin Musicians and non-musicians performed a categorical identification and a discrimination task on rising and falling continua of fundamental frequency on two vowels with 9 duration values.ResultsNon-tonal musicians exhibited significantly stronger categorical perception of pitch contour than non-tonal non-musicians. However, tonal musicians did not consistently perceive the two types of pitch directions more categorically than tonal non-musicians. Both tonal and non-tonal musicians also benefited more from increasing stimulus duration in processing pitch changes than non-musicians and they generally require less time for pitch processing. Musicians were also more sensitive to intrinsic F0 in pitch perception and differences of pitch types.ConclusionThe effect of musical training strengthens categorical perception more consistently in non-tonal speakers than tonal speakers. Overall, musicians benefit more from increased stimulus duration, due perhaps to their greater sensitivity to temporal information, thus allowing them to be better at forming a more robust auditory representation and matching sounds to internalized memory templates. Musicians also attended more to acoustic details such as intrinsic F0 and pitch types in pitch processing, and yet, overall, their categorization of pitch was not compromised by traces of these acoustic details from their auditory short-term working memory. These findings may lead to a better understanding of pitch perception deficits in special populations, particularly among individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Categorical perception of lexical tone contrasts and gradient perception of the statement–question intonation contrast in Zhumadian Mandarin

ABSTRACTWe intended to establish if two lexical tone contrasts in Zhumadian Mandarin, one between early and late aligned falls and another between early and late aligned rises, are perceived categorically, while the difference between declarative and interrogative pronunciations of these four tones is perceived gradiently. Presenting stimuli from 7-point acoustic continua between tones and between intonations, we used an identification task and a discrimination task with an experimental group of native listeners and a control group of Indonesian listeners, whose language employs none of the differences within either the falling or the rising pitch contours in its phonology. Only the lexical condition as perceived by the experimental group yielded sigmoid identification functions and a heightened discriminatory sensitivity around the midpoint of continua. The intonational condition in the native group and both conditions in the control group yielded gradient identification functions and smaller, reverse effects of the continuum midpoints in the discrimination task. The results are interpreted to mean that sentence modality contrasts can be expressed gradiently, but that lexical tone differences are represented phonologically, and hence are perceived categorically, despite low phonetic salience of the contrast. This conclusion challenges assumptions about the relation between linguistic functions and linguistic structures.

Mandarin tone perception in multiple-talker babbles and speech-shaped noise.

Lexical tone recognition in multiple-talker babbles (N = 1, 2, 4, 8, 10, or 12) and in speech-shaped noise at different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs = -18 to -6 dB) were tested in 30 normal-hearing native Mandarin-speaking listeners. Results showed that tone perception was robust to noise. The performance curve as a function of N was non-monotonic. The breakpoint at which the performance plateaued was N = 8 for all SNRs tested with a slight improvement at N > 8 at -6 and -9 dB SNR.

Tonal mapping of Xi'an Mandarin and Standard Chinese.

One long-neglected fact in linguistic research on Standard Chinese (SC) is that most speakers of SC also speak a local dialect, which may share phonological features with SC. Tonal information can be a determinant of the phonological similarities or differences between some Chinese dialects and SC, yet relatively little empirical research has been conducted on the tonal system of other language varieties in Chinese aside from SC. Among these dialects, Xi'an Mandarin (XM) is particularly interesting for the seemingly simple, yet intricate mapping between its lexical tones with those in SC. In this study, the tonal systems of XM and SC were compared empirically. Tones with similar contours from XM and SC were paired, and both tone production and perception experiments were carried out on bidialectal speakers of XM and SC. The two experiments together showed that there is indeed systematic mapping of tones between XM and SC. The degree of similarity of the mapped tone pair in tone perception was largely dependent on the acoustic phonetic similarity between the tones in tone production, with a phonological rule playing a role in the tone pair of low contour.

音乐训练对4~5岁幼儿普通话声调范畴感知能力的影响

音乐训练对4~5岁幼儿普通话声调范畴感知能力的影响

Plasticity in Second Language Learning: The Case of Mandarin Tones

ABSTRACT Adults typically struggle to perceive non-native sound contrasts, especially those that conflict with their first language. Do the same challenges persist when the sound contrasts overlap but do not conflict? To address this question, we explored the acquisition of lexical tones. While tonal variations are present in many languages, they are only used contrastively in tonal languages. We investigated the perception of Mandarin tones by adults with differing experience with Mandarin, including naïve listeners, classroom learners, and native speakers. Naïve listeners discriminated Mandarin tones at above-chance levels, and performance significantly improved after just one month of classroom exposure. Additional evidence for plasticity came from advanced classroom learners, whose tonemic perception was indistinguishable from that of native speakers. The results suggest that unlike many other non-native contrasts, adults studying a language in the classroom can readily acquire the perceptual skills needed to discriminate Mandarin tones.

Examining the underpinnings of loudness dependence of auditory evoked potentials with positron emission tomography

Loudness dependence of auditory evoked potentials (LDAEP) has long been considered to reflect central basal serotonin transmission. However, the relationship between LDAEP and individual serotonin receptors and transporters has not been fully explored in humans and may involve other neurotransmitter systems. To examine LDAEP’s relationship with the serotonin system, we performed PET using serotonin-1A (5-HT1A) imaging via [11C]CUMI-101 and serotonin transporter (5-HTT) imaging via [11C]DASB on a mixed sample of healthy controls (n ​= ​4: 4 females, 0 males), patients with unipolar (MDD, n ​= ​11: 4 females, 7 males) and bipolar depression (BD, n ​= ​8: 4 females, 4 males). On these same participants, we also performed electroencephalography (EEG) within a week of PET scanning, using 1000 ​Hz tones of varying intensity to evoke LDAEP. We then evaluated the relationship between LDAEP and 5-HT1A or 5-HTT binding in both the raphe (5-HT1A)/midbrain (5-HTT) areas and in the temporal cortex. We found that LDAEP was significantly correlated with 5-HT1A positively and with 5-HTT negatively in the temporal cortex (p ​< ​0.05), but not correlated with either in midbrain or raphe. In males only, exploratory analysis showed multiple regions in which LDAEP significantly correlated with 5-HT1A throughout the brain; we did not find this with 5-HTT. This multimodal study partially validates preclinical models of a serotonergic influence on LDAEP. Replication in larger samples is necessary to further clarify our understanding of the role of serotonin in perception of auditory tones.

Evidence of both brainstem and auditory cortex involvement in categorical perception for Chinese lexical tones.

The categorical perception of lexical tones is important to understand tonal languages. Recent studies have provided electrophysiological evidence for the categorical perception of lexical tones at the cortical level; however, whether neural correlates exist at subcortical levels remain unknown. In this study, by using across-category and within-category lexical tone contrasts with the equivalent physical interval, we recorded deviance detection activities at both the brainstem (reflected by frequency following response) and cortical levels (reflected by mismatch negativity) simultaneously. We found that significantly enhanced intertrial phase-locking of frequency following response s was observed only during the across-category deviance detection, which indicates that phonological differences could be detected at the level of brainstem. In addition, the across-category deviants induced stronger mismatch negativity than within-category deviants. For the first time, our results demonstrate that neural correlates of categorical perception of lexical tones exist even in the brainstem, and suggests that both cortical and subcortical processes are involved in the coding and categorization of tonal information.

중국어를 학습하는 한국어 모국어 화자의 중국어 성조 지각과 산출

Non-tonal language speakers may have difficulty learning second language lexical tones. In the present study, we explored this issue with Korean-speaking learners of Mandarin Chinese (i.e., non-tonal first language speakers) by examining their perception and production of Mandarin lexical tones. In the perception experiment, the Korean learners were asked to listen to the tone of each stimulus and assign it to one of four Mandarin lexical tones using the response keys; in the production experiment, the learners provided speech production data for the lexical tones and then their productions were identified by native listeners of Mandarin Chinese. Our results showed that the Korean learners of Mandarin Chinese had difficulty in perceptually distinguishing Tone 2 and Tone 3, with the most frequent production error being the mispronunciation of Tone 3 as Tone 2. We also investigated whether unfamiliar non-native phonemes (i.e., Chinese phonemes) that do not exist in the native language phonemic inventory (i.e., Korean) may hinder the processing of the non-native lexical tones. We found no evidence for such effects, neither for the perception nor for the production of the tones.

Different attributes of creaky voice distinctly affect Mandarin tonal perception.

Previous work has shown mixed findings concerning the role of voice quality cues in Mandarin tones, with some studies showing that creak improves identification. This study tests the linguistic importance of acoustic properties of creak for Mandarin tone perception. Mandarin speakers identified tones with four resynthesized creak manipulations: low spectral tilt, irregular F0, period doubling, and extra-low F0. Two experiments with three conditions were conducted. In Experiment 1, the manipulations were confined to a portion of the stimuli's duration; in Experiment 2 the creak manipulations were modified and lengthened throughout the stimuli, and in a second condition, noise was incorporated to weaken F0 cues. Listeners remained most sensitive to extra-low F0, which affected identification of the four tones differently: it improved the identification accuracy of Tone 3 and hindered that of Tones 1 and 4. Irregular F0 consistently hindered T1 identification. The effects of irregular F0, period doubling, and low spectral tilt emerged in Experiment 2, where F0 cues were less robust and creak cues were stronger. Thus, low F0 is the most prominent cue used in Mandarin tone identification, but other voice quality cues become more salient to listeners when the F0 cues are less retrievable.

The role of talker variability in the perceptual learning of Mandarin tones by American English listeners

Abstract Research on segmentals has suggested that a key component of High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) is high talker variability. However, the extent to which high talker variability improves perception of tones is unclear. This study examined the effects of high talker variability on the perception of Mandarin tones (Tones 1–4) by English-speaking listeners. A training paradigm that used multiple talkers (multitalker group) was compared with a paradigm that used one talker (single-talker group). The results showed that the multitalker group outperformed the single-talker group, and they retained their learning better than the single-talker group did for 6 months. Neither group, however, improved their perception of Tone 1 or generalized their learning of monosyllables to disyllables. The results suggest that although high talker variability can effectively improve tone perception, it does not improve the perception of more tone categories or yield generalization of learning to more contexts compared to low talker variability.

Movement perception of Risset tones presented diotically

Movement perception of Risset tones presented diotically

汉语普通话声调感知的老年化效应：来自ERP的证据

汉语普通话声调感知的老年化效应：来自ERP的证据

Relative Contribution of Auditory and Visual Information to Mandarin Chinese Tone Identification by Native and Tone-naïve Listeners.

Speech perception is a multisensory process: what we hear can be affected by what we see. For instance, the McGurk effect occurs when auditory speech is presented in synchrony with discrepant visual information. A large number of studies have targeted the McGurk effect at the segmental level of speech (mainly consonant perception), which tends to be visually salient (lip-reading based), while the present study aims to extend the existing body of literature to the suprasegmental level, that is, investigating a McGurk effect for the identification of tones in Mandarin Chinese. Previous studies have shown that visual information does play a role in Chinese tone perception, and that the different tones correlate with variable movements of the head and neck. We constructed various tone combinations of congruent and incongruent auditory-visual materials (10 syllables with 16 tone combinations each) and presented them to native speakers of Mandarin Chinese and speakers of tone-naïve languages. In line with our previous work, we found that tone identification varies with individual tones, with tone 3 (the low-dipping tone) being the easiest one to identify, whereas tone 4 (the high-falling tone) was the most difficult one. We found that both groups of participants mainly relied on auditory input (instead of visual input), and that the auditory reliance for Chinese subjects was even stronger. The results did not show evidence for auditory-visual integration among native participants, while visual information is helpful for tone-naïve participants. However, even for this group, visual information only marginally increases the accuracy in the tone identification task, and this increase depends on the tone in question.

Mandarin Tone Identification by Tone-Naïve Musicians and Non-musicians in Auditory-Visual and Auditory-Only Conditions

A considerable number of studies have shown that musical ability has a positive effect on language processing. Extending this body of work, this study investigates the effects of musicality and modality on Mandarin tone identification in tone-naive participants. To examine the effects of visual information in speech, Mandarin tones were presented in auditory-only or auditory-visual modalities to participants with or without musical experience. The Goldsmith Musicality Index was used to assess the musical aptitude of the participants. Overall, musicians outperformed non-musicians in the tone identification task in both auditory-visual and auditory-only conditions. Both groups identified tones more accurately in the auditory-visual condition than in the auditory-only condition. In addition, performance differed by tone: musicality holds its main effect on each level of tone; while the influence of modality differs for individual tones; the identification of tone 3 (a low-falling-rising) proved to be the easiest, while tone 4 (a high-falling tone) was the most difficult to identify for all participants. Out of all the musical skills measured by the Goldsmith Musicality Index, the amount of musical training was the only predictor that had an impact on the accuracy of Mandarin tone perception. These findings suggest that learning to perceive Mandarin tones benefits from musical expertise, and visual information can facilitate Mandarin tone identification, but mainly for tone-naive non-musicians.

Supra-threshold perception and neural representation of tones presented in noise in conditions of masking release.

The neural representation and perceptual salience of tonal signals presented in different noise maskers were investigated. The properties of the maskers and signals were varied such that they produced different amounts of either monaural masking release, binaural masking release, or a combination of both. The signals were then presented at different levels above their corresponding masked thresholds and auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) were measured. It was found that, independent of the masking condition, the amplitude of the P2 component of the AEP was similar for the same stimulus levels above masked threshold, suggesting that both monaural and binaural effects of masking release were represented at the level of the auditory pathway where P2 is generated. The perceptual salience of the signal was evaluated at equal levels above masked threshold using a rating task. In contrast to the electrophysiological findings, the subjective ratings of the perceptual signal salience were less consistent with the signal level above masked threshold and varied strongly across listeners and masking conditions. Overall, the results from the present study suggest that the P2 amplitude of the AEP represents an objective indicator of the audibility of a target signal in the presence of complex acoustic maskers.

Effects of language proficiency in categorical perception of Mandarin Chinese tones

This study compared the perception of Mandarin Chinese lexical tones by 20 adult native Mandarin Chinese speakers and 17 Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners with different levels of Chinese proficiency. We were particularly interested in confirming the effects of language experience and further assessing how Chinese proficiency might influence the perception of Mandarin lexical tones. Three types of continuum were used in identification and discrimination tasks, including tone 1 (T1)/tone 2 (T2), tone 1/tone 4 (T4) and tone 2/tone 4. Unlike the native speakers of Chinese who demonstrated clear categorical perception for all the continua, the CFL learners showed reduced accuracy in identification and discrimination results. Furthermore, proficiency data correlated with categorical perception (CP) of Mandarin lexical tones, suggesting that categorical perception of key phonological contrasts in the second language can be considered as a reliable indicator of language proficiency.This study compared the perception of Mandarin Chinese lexical tones by 20 adult native Mandarin Chinese speakers and 17 Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners with different levels of Chinese proficiency. We were particularly interested in confirming the effects of language experience and further assessing how Chinese proficiency might influence the perception of Mandarin lexical tones. Three types of continuum were used in identification and discrimination tasks, including tone 1 (T1)/tone 2 (T2), tone 1/tone 4 (T4) and tone 2/tone 4. Unlike the native speakers of Chinese who demonstrated clear categorical perception for all the continua, the CFL learners showed reduced accuracy in identification and discrimination results. Furthermore, proficiency data correlated with categorical perception (CP) of Mandarin lexical tones, suggesting that categorical perception of key phonological contrasts in the second language can be considered as a reliable indicator of language proficiency.

Developmental changes in categorical perception of Mandarin Chinese tones

This study examined developmental changes in categorical perception of Mandarin Chinese lexical tones by 22 adults and 16 10-year-olds, who were all native Mandarin Chinese speakers. The speech stimuli included three types of continuum, tone 1 (T1)/tone 2 (T2), tone 1/tone 4 (T4) and tone 2/tone 4. The experimental protocol used conventional identification and discrimination tasks. The results confirmed categorical perception of the tonal continua by both adult and child groups. Refined tests further revealed the existence of T1 category with two phonetic boundaries in the T2/T4 continuum. More importantly, age-dependent differences were observed in discrimination accuracy and sensitivity to pitch height. Collectively, the data suggest that although adult-like categorical perception of lexical tones can be found by 10 years of age and earlier as the literature suggested, the dynamic developmental trajectory in fine-tuning the categorical perception of lexical tones extends beyond the age of 10.

Perceptual asymmetry in lexical tone perception

Directional asymmetries have been documented in both infant and adult perception of lexical tones. For example, Tsao (2008) found that a stimulus change from the background mandarin T1 (55) to the target Mandarin T3 (213) was easier than the reverse among one-year-old Mandarin learning infants. Yeung et al. (2013) reported that 4- and 9-month-old Mandaring learning infants are better at Cantonese tone discrimination after being familiarized with T2 (25) than with T3 (33). Francis and Ciocca (2003) found that native Cantonese speakers’ tone discrimination was better when the first syllable was higher in frequency (about 4 Hz) than the second syllable. Finally, in an ERP study, Politzer-Ahles et al. (2016) found that Mismatch Negativity (MMN) was attenuated among both native and non-native Mandarin listeners when Mandarin T3 was the standard and another deviant in comparison to the reverse. In this talk, we will report results from two studies examining the effects of memory load and first language on perceptual asymmetry patterns in adult lexical tone perception among native English, Mandarin, and Cantonese speakers. Application of theoretical models including the perceptual magnet effects and perceptual assimilation will be discussed.Directional asymmetries have been documented in both infant and adult perception of lexical tones. For example, Tsao (2008) found that a stimulus change from the background mandarin T1 (55) to the target Mandarin T3 (213) was easier than the reverse among one-year-old Mandarin learning infants. Yeung et al. (2013) reported that 4- and 9-month-old Mandaring learning infants are better at Cantonese tone discrimination after being familiarized with T2 (25) than with T3 (33). Francis and Ciocca (2003) found that native Cantonese speakers’ tone discrimination was better when the first syllable was higher in frequency (about 4 Hz) than the second syllable. Finally, in an ERP study, Politzer-Ahles et al. (2016) found that Mismatch Negativity (MMN) was attenuated among both native and non-native Mandarin listeners when Mandarin T3 was the standard and another deviant in comparison to the reverse. In this talk, we will report results from two studies examining the effects of memory load and first language on perce...