Purpose: 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…

Purpose: This study builds upon an established effective training method to investigate the advantages of high variability phonetic identification training for enhancing lexical tone perception and production in Mandarin-speaking pediatric cochlear implant (CI) recipients, who typically face ongoing challenges in these areas. Method: Thirty-two…

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the different degeneration processes of categorical perception (CP) of Mandarin lexical tones in the normal aging population and the pathological aging population with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Method: In Experiment I, we compared the identification and discrimination of Tone 1 and Tone 2 across young…

The present study seeks to determine whether superior musical hearing is correlated with successful production of second language (L2) intonation patterns. Fifty Polish speakers of English at the university level were recorded before and after an extensive two-semester accent training course in English. Participants were asked to read aloud a…

Purpose: Our audio--vocal system involves a negative feedback system that functions to correct for fundamental frequency (f[subscript 0]) errors in production. Therefore, automatic and opposing responses appear when an unexpected change in voice pitch is present in auditory feedback. This study explores following responses to pitch perturbation in…

Purpose: 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…

Adult second language learners often show considerable individual variability in the ease with which lexical tones are learned. It is known that factors pertaining to a learner's first language (L1; such as L1 tonal status or L1 tone type) as well as extralinguistic factors (such as musical experience and working memory) modulate tone learning…

Purpose: This study aimed to examine how aging and modifications of critical acoustic parameters may affect the perception of whispered speech as a degraded signal. Method: Forty Mandarin-speaking adults were included in the study. Part 1 of the study compared the perception of Mandarin lexical tones, vowels, and syllables in older and younger…

Purpose: Previous studies have demonstrated that tone identification can be facilitated when auditory tones are integrated with visual information that depicts the pitch contours of the auditory tones (hereafter, visual effect). This study investigates this visual effect in combined visual-auditory integration with high- and low-variability speech…

Purpose: The aim of this study is to investigate whether human auditory frequency tuning can be influenced by tonal language experience. Method: Perceptual tuning measured via psychophysical tuning curves and cochlear tuning derived via stimulus-frequency otoacoustic emission suppression tuning curves in 14 native speakers of a tonal language…

Languages differ in the importance of acoustic dimensions for speech categorization. This poses a potential challenge for second language (L2) learners, and the extent to which adult L2 learners can acquire new perceptual strategies for speech categorization remains unclear. This study investigated the effects of extensive English L2 immersion on…

Purpose: ?he lexical stress pattern (trochaic vs. iambic) may affect various aspects of word learning and word production in children with cochlear implants (CIs). This study aimed to investigate lexical stress effects in word learning by Greek-speaking children with CIs. Method: A word learning paradigm, consisting of a word production and a word…

Purpose: Humans have a near-automatic tendency to entrain their motor actions to rhythms in the environment. Entrainment has been hypothesized to play an important role in processing naturalistic stimuli, such as speech and music, which have intrinsically rhythmic properties. Here, we studied two facets of entraining one's rhythmic motor actions…

Purpose: Although acquisition of Chinese lexical tones by second language (L2) learners has been intensively investigated, very few studies focused on categorical perception (CP) of lexical tones by highly proficient L2 learners. This study was designed to address this issue with behavioral and electrophysiological measures. Method: Behavioral…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore when and how Mandarin-speaking children use contextual cues to normalize speech variability in perceiving lexical tones. Two different cognitive mechanisms underlying speech normalization (lower level acoustic normalization and higher level acoustic-phonemic normalization) were investigated through the…