The effect of duration on categorical perception of Mandarin tone and voice onset time

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Feng ◽  
Gang Peng
Author(s):  
Fei Chen ◽  
Gang Peng

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.


2013 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrin Stölten ◽  
Niclas Abrahamsson ◽  
Kenneth Hyltenstam

1995 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 334-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Treisman ◽  
Andrew Faulkner ◽  
Peter L. N. Naish ◽  
Burton S. Rosner

Problems in modelling categorical perception (CP) and attempts to apply signal detection theory (SDT) to CP are reviewed. An approach based on SDT supplemented by a theory of criterion setting is presented. Criterion setting theory (CST) postulates mechanisms that reset the response criterion on each trial, and it accounts for sequential dependencies. A criterion setting model for discrimination is shown to fit data from the literature. The hypothesis that “sharp” category boundaries may arise from the suppression of noise caused by intertrial dependencies was examined in an experiment on the identification of [ba] and [pa] syllables, and tone combinations of varying tone-onset time. However, it was shown that both positive and negative intertrial dependencies were present. They could be fitted by the criterion-setting model; in this respect, CP resembles standard psychophysical judgements. Examination of the psychometric functions from the two CP tasks shows that they are not normal ogives, as in standard psychophysical tasks: these curves are steeper centrally and flatter at the extremes than a Gaussian ogive; we describe them as “hypersigmoid”. The description of CP identification functions as hypersigmoid provides a new, qualitative characterization of the “sharp” category boundaries traditionally claimed for CP. Their causation remains to be determined.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (118) ◽  
pp. 61-74
Author(s):  
Rafida  Mansoor Mahmood

  The signal sound contains many different features. One of these features is voice onset time henceforth )VOT) and this feature refers to the ways different people of different languages have been distinguished by the way they articulate stop consonants of their own language. This feature (VOT) can be utilized by the human auditory system to distinguish between voiced and devoiced stops such as /p/ and /b /in English, /t/ and /t?/ Arabic. The study is contributed into five sections:- Section One is introductory, which contains the introduction, the problem, the hypothesis, the aim, the limitation and the value of the study. Section Two shows the definitions and types of VOT: positive, negative, zero VOT and role of VOT. Section Three deals with the measurement and categorical perception of VOT, these ways of measurements are spectrograms, waveform and lagtime. Section Four investigates the VOT of two languages, Arabic and English in details with a comparison between these two languages. It ends with a number of conclusions. One of these conclusions is that Arabic VOT is different from English VOT and this approved the hypothesis.


1979 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca E. Eilers ◽  
Wesley R. Wilson ◽  
John M. Moore

ABSTRACTDiscrimination of synthetically produced stimuli differing along the voice onset time continuum was assessed for infants and adults within the context of the Visually Reinforced Infant Speech Discrimination (VRISD) paradigm. English-learning infants' discrimination abilities were compared with two groups of English-speaking adults (a phonetically naive and a phonetically sophisticated group). Contrary to the predictions of the innateness hypothesis, English-learning infants showed evidence of discrimination only across the English phoneme boundary. Adults, on the other hand, were very successful in discriminating both across and within a range of phoneme boundaries. These results are discussed in terms of the presumed relationship between categorical perception and linguistic processing and in terms of synthetic speech continua.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Han Ke ◽  
Lei Pan ◽  
Beth Ann O'Brien ◽  
Suzy J Styles

Phoneme perception is critically involved in alphabetic reading, however current findings may not hold for bilinguals. In the CROWN Game, children hear tokens of familiar words across a voice-onset time continuum (-60ms to 90ms). We measured individual VOT threshold and the slope of the transition between categories in 138 English/Chinese speaking bilinguals in Singapore kindergartens. The task showed a wide spread of scores and good split-half reliability. In a preregistered analysis, we examined whether bilingual balance or order of acquisition influenced categorical perception of English phonemes /b/ and /p/. GLMMs revealed categorical perception was independent from language exposure. This suggests the CROWN Game is valid for use with bilingual children, including as a possible screening tool for future reading difficulties.


1985 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 594-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Jane Collins ◽  
Richard R. Hurtig

The usefulness of tactile devices as aids to lipreading has been established. However, maximum usefulness in reducing the ambiguity of lipreading cues and/or use of tactile devices as a substitute for audition may be dependent on phonemic recognition via tactile signals alone. In the present study, a categorical perception paradigm was used to evaluate tactile perception of speech sounds in comparison to auditory perception. The results show that speech signals delivered by tactile stimulation can be categorically perceived on a voice-onset time (VOT) continuum. The boundary for the voiced-voiceless distinction falls at longer VOTs for tactile than for auditory perception. It is concluded that the procedure is useful for determining characteristics of tactile perception and for prosthesis evaluation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 141 (5) ◽  
pp. 3571-3571 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neal P. Fox ◽  
Matthias J. Sjerps ◽  
Edward F. Chang

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