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.

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Aging Effect on Categorical Perception of Mandarin Tones 2 and 3 and Thresholds of Pitch Contour Discrimination

American Journal of Audiology ◽

10.1044/2016_aja-16-0020 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 26 (1) ◽

pp. 18-26 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Yuxia Wang ◽

Xiaohu Yang ◽

Hui Zhang ◽

Lilong Xu ◽

Can Xu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Mandarin Chinese ◽

Categorical Perception ◽

Aging Effect ◽

Pitch Contour ◽

Tone Perception ◽

F0 Contour ◽

Identification Function ◽

Tone Discrimination ◽

Mandarin Tones ◽

Mandarin Tone

Purpose The purpose of the study was to examine the aging effect on the categorical perception of Mandarin Chinese Tone 2 (rising F0 pitch contour) and Tone 3 (falling-then-rising F0 pitch contour) as well as on the thresholds of pitch contour discrimination. Method Three experiments of Mandarin tone perception were conducted for younger and older listeners with Mandarin Chinese as the native language. The first 2 experiments were in the categorical perception paradigm: tone identification and tone discrimination for a series of stimuli, the F0 contour of which systematically varied from Tone 2 to Tone 3. In the third experiment, the just-noticeable differences of pitch contour discrimination were measured for both groups. Results In the measures of categorical perception, older listeners showed significantly shallower slopes in the tone identification function and significantly smaller peakedness in the tone discrimination function compared with younger listeners. Moreover, the thresholds of pitch contour discrimination were significantly higher for older listeners than for younger listeners. Conclusion These results suggest that aging reduced the categoricality of Mandarin tone perception and worsened the psychoacoustic capacity to discriminate pitch contour changes, thereby possibly leading to older listeners' difficulty in identifying Tones 2 and 3.

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The categorical neural organization of speech aids its perception in noise

10.1101/652842 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Gavin M. Bidelman ◽

Lauren C. Bush ◽

Alex M. Boudreaux

Keyword(s):

Categorical Perception ◽

Signal To Noise Ratio ◽

Speech Code ◽

Phonetic Category ◽

Neural Responses ◽

Cocktail Party ◽

Signal To Noise ◽

Brain Potentials ◽

Neural Organization ◽

Abstract Categories

ABSTRACTWe investigated whether the categorical perception (CP) of speech might also provide a mechanism that aids its perception in noise. We varied signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) [clear, 0 dB, -5 dB] while listeners classified an acoustic-phonetic continuum (/u/ to /a/). Noise-related changes in behavioral categorization were only observed at the lowest SNR. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) differentiated phonetic vs. non-phonetic (category ambiguous) speech by the P2 wave (∼180-320 ms). Paralleling behavior, neural responses to speech with clear phonetic status (i.e., continuum endpoints) were largely invariant to noise, whereas responses to ambiguous tokens declined with decreasing SNR. Results demonstrate that phonetic speech representations are more resistant to degradation than corresponding acoustic representations. Findings suggest the mere process of binning speech sounds into categories provides a robust mechanism to aid perception at the “cocktail party” by fortifying abstract categories from the acoustic signal and making the speech code more resistant to external interferences.

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Bimodal Benefits Revealed by Categorical Perception of Lexical Tones in Mandarin-Speaking Kindergarteners With a Cochlear Implant and a Contralateral Hearing Aid

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2020_jslhr-20-00224 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 63 (12) ◽

pp. 4238-4251

Author(s):

Hao Zhang ◽

Jing Zhang ◽

Gang Peng ◽

Hongwei Ding ◽

Yang Zhang

Keyword(s):

Categorical Perception ◽

Hearing Aid ◽

Low Frequency ◽

Lexical Tone ◽

Linear Mixed Effects ◽

Lexical Tones ◽

Speech Stimuli ◽

Direct Benefits ◽

Hearing Thresholds ◽

Mandarin Tone

Purpose Pitch reception poses challenges for individuals with cochlear implants (CIs), and adding a hearing aid (HA) in the nonimplanted ear is potentially beneficial. The current study used fine-scale synthetic speech stimuli to investigate the bimodal benefit for lexical tone categorization in Mandarin-speaking kindergarteners using a CI and an HA in opposite ears. Method The data were collected from 16 participants who were required to complete two classical tasks for speech categorical perception (CP) with CI + HA device condition and CI alone condition. Linear mixed-effects models were constructed to evaluate the identification and discrimination scores across different device conditions. Results The bimodal kindergarteners showed CP for the continuum varying from Mandarin Tone 1 and Tone 2. Moreover, the additional acoustic information from the contralateral HA contributes to improved lexical tone categorization, with a steeper slope, a higher discrimination score of between-category stimuli pair, and an improved peakedness score (i.e., an increased benefit magnitude for discriminations of between-category over within-category pairs) for the CI + HA condition than the CI alone condition. The bimodal kindergarteners with better residual hearing thresholds at 250 Hz level in the nonimplanted ear could perceive lexical tones more categorically. Conclusion The enhanced CP results with bimodal listening provide clear evidence for the clinical practice to fit a contralateral HA in the nonimplanted ear in kindergarteners with unilateral CIs with direct benefits from the low-frequency acoustic hearing.

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Effects of L1 tone on perception of L2 tone - a study of Mandarin tone learning by native Cantonese children

Bilingualism Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/s1366728916000195 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 20 (3) ◽

pp. 549-560 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

XINXIN LI ◽

CAROL KIT SUM TO ◽

MANWA LAWRENCE NG

Keyword(s):

Lexical Tone ◽

Accuracy Rate ◽

Identification Task ◽

Lexical Tones ◽

Phonetic Similarity ◽

Perfect Performance ◽

Study Results ◽

Mandarin Tones ◽

Mandarin Tone ◽

Assimilation Model

In the present study, the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) was tested on its applicability in child L2 lexical tone acquisition. The possible effect of L1 (Cantonese) lexical tones on L2 (Mandarin) lexical tone learning was explored. Accuracy rate and error patterns were examined with an AX discrimination task and a forced-choice identification task. Forty-nine native Cantonese-speaking students aged 8 years participated in the study. Results revealed that these children exhibited nearly perfect performance in the discrimination of Mandarin tones. However, significant tone differences were detected in the identification task. Tone 4 (T4) was identified with the lowest accuracy, and T1 with the highest. Error analysis revealed that Mandarin T2-T3 was the most confusing pair, followed by the T1-T4 pair. The inherent phonetic similarity between lexical tones in a language and the tone similarities across languages may also have contributed to perception difficulties, which could help to refine and supplement the PAM in the tonal/suprasegmental domain.

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Detection of nerve action potentials under low signal-to-noise ratio condition

IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering ◽

10.1109/10.936360 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 48 (8) ◽

pp. 845-849 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

H. Nakatani ◽

T. Watanabe ◽

N. Hoshimiya

Keyword(s):

Action Potentials ◽

Signal To Noise Ratio ◽

Signal To Noise ◽

Nerve Action ◽

Ratio Condition ◽

Noise Ratio

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Effects of Lexical Tone Contour on Mandarin Sentence Intelligibility

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/1092-4388(2013/12-0324) ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 57 (1) ◽

pp. 338-345 ◽

Cited By ~ 34

Author(s):

Fei Chen ◽

Lena L. N. Wong ◽

Yi Hu

Keyword(s):

Speech Synthesis ◽

Direct Evidence ◽

Signal To Noise Ratio ◽

Normal Hearing ◽

Lexical Tone ◽

Text To Speech ◽

Signal To Noise ◽

Lexical Tones ◽

Text To Speech Synthesis ◽

Sentence Intelligibility

Purpose This study examined the effects of lexical tone contour on the intelligibility of Mandarin sentences in quiet and in noise. Method A text-to-speech synthesis engine was used to synthesize Mandarin sentences with each word carrying the original lexical tone, flat tone, or a tone randomly selected from the 4 Mandarin lexical tones. The synthesized speech signals were presented to 11 normal-hearing listeners for recognition in quiet and in speech-shaped noise at 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio. Results Normal-hearing listeners nearly perfectly recognized the Mandarin sentences produced with modified tone contours in quiet; however, performance declined substantially in noise. Conclusions Consistent with previous findings to some extent, the present findings suggest that lexical tones are relatively redundant cues for Mandarin sentence intelligibility in quiet and that other cues could compensate for the distorted lexical tone contour. However, in noise, the results provide direct evidence that lexical tone contour is important for the recognition of Mandarin sentences.

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