Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the aging effect on the categorical perception of Mandarin Chinese tones with varied fundamental frequency (F0) contours and signal duration. Method: Both younger and older native Chinese listeners with normal hearing were recruited in 2 experiments--tone identification and tone discrimination…

Behavioral studies have shown that while young infants can discriminate many different phonetic contrasts, a shift from a language-general to a language-specific pattern of discrimination is found during the second semester of life, beginning earlier for vowels than for consonants. This age-related decline in sensitivity to perceive non-native…

The experiments described in this report seek to investigate the characteristics of speech perception using an approach which considers the development of the perception of "voicing," both as it occurs naturally and as it might occur in the laboratory. Investigating voicing discrimination and perception training among adults, infants, and…