The developmental course of lexical tone perception in the first year of life

Mattock, Karen; Molnar, Monika; Polka, Linda; Burnham, Denis K

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2007.07.002

Cited by 177 publications

(179 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Within the domains of language and music, perceptual attunement has been found in numerous studies (e.g. Mattock & Burnham, 2006;Mattock et al, 2008;Trainor & Trehub, 1992;Trehub et al, 1999;Werker & Tees, 1984). What we find here is that not only within-domain perception can be shaped by experience, but also that the connection between language and music does not seem to be hard-wired.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 60%

“…We speculate that infants, regardless of language background, start by perceiving lexical tones acoustically when their ability to discriminate both native and non-native sound categories is still intact (Harrison, 2000;Mattock & Burnham, 2006;Mattock et al, 2008;Yeung et al, 2013). Tone language learning infants then learn to incorporate tonal pitch into their phonology as they gradually get attuned to their native language.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the language domain, as infants grow older, they become more sensitive to native contrasts, but less sensitive to non-native contrasts (e.g. Harrison, 2000;Kuhl, Williams, Lacerda, Stevens, & Lindblom, 1992;Mattock & Burnham, 2006;Mattock, Molnar, Polka, & Burnham, 2008;Werker & Tees, 1984;Yeung, Chen, & Werker, 2013; but see also Liu & Kager, 2014). Similarly, in the music domain, infants become more capable of discriminating melodies that conform to the structure in the ambient input (Lynch & Eilers, 1992;Trainor & Trehub, 1992;Trehub, Schellenberg, & Kamenetsky, 1999).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cross-domain correlation in pitch perception, the influence of native language

Chen

Liu

Kager

2016

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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The current study explores how language experience may shape the correlation between lexical tone and musical pitch perception. A two domains (music and lexical tone) by two languages (tone, Mandarin Chinese and non-tone, Dutch) design is adopted. Participants were tested on their discrimination of Mandarin Chinese lexical tones, Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA), and Musical Ear Test (MET). The Chinese listeners outperformed the Dutch listeners on both MBEA and MET, but had comparable accuracies for the lexical tone discrimination. Importantly, a significant cross-domain correlation was only observed for the Dutch listeners but not for the Chinese listeners. For tone language listeners, once lexical tones have been acquired, native listeners perceive them as phonological categories, and split them from other pitch variations that do not play a phonemic role. Non-tone language listeners, on the other hand, perceive both lexical tones and musical pitch on a psycho-acoustical basis, hence exhibit a unified perception of pitch across the two domains.ARTICLE HISTORY

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 60%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cross-domain correlation in pitch perception, the influence of native language

Chen

Liu

Kager

2016

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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“…First, infants create sound categories for native-language tones early in development through a process of perceptual attunement (17,18) that parallels that observed for other linguistic elements such as vowels and consonants (19,20). Infants learning Chinese show preferences for the tonal contrasts of their native language by about 4-5 mo of age (18), well in advance of the age of adoption (AoA) of participants in the present study.…”

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confidence: 93%

Mapping the unconscious maintenance of a lost first language

Pierce

Klein

Chen

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Significance Using functional MRI we examined the unconscious influence of early experience on later brain outcomes. Internationally adopted (IA) children (aged 9–17 years), who were completely separated from their birth language (Chinese) at 12.8 mo of age, on average, displayed brain activation to Chinese linguistic elements that precisely matched that of native Chinese speakers, despite the fact that IA children had no subsequent exposure to Chinese and no conscious recollection of that language. Importantly, activation differed from monolingual French speakers with no Chinese exposure, despite all participants hearing identical acoustic stimuli. The similarity between adoptees and Chinese speakers clearly illustrates that early acquired information is maintained in the brain and that early experiences unconsciously influence neural processing for years, if not indefinitely.

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“…Categorical perception is not only found with speech sounds, but has also been found in the processing of musical chords and pitch intervals (Burns & Campbell, 1994;Burns & Ward, 1978;Klein & Zatorre, 2011;McMurray, Dennhardt & Struck-Marcell, 2008;Siegel & Siegel, 1977;Zatorre & Halpern, 1979). It has been suggested that 4-to 6-month-old infants discriminate the sound categories in both Mandarin tones and music (Lynch & Eilers, 1992;Mattock, Molnar, Polka & Burnham, 2008), but if they are not exposed to Mandarin language, or a given musical context, these abilities are lost by 9 months for speech tones (Mattock et al, 2008), and by adulthood for music (Lynch & Eilers, 1992). Furthermore, listeners with music training outperformed those without music training in categorical perception studies involving Mandarin tones (Wu & Lin, 2008) or nonspeech frequency continua (e.g., Howard, Rosen & Broad, 1992;Mirman, Holt & McClelland, 2004;Pisoni, 1977).…”

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confidence: 99%

Impaired categorical perception of lexical tones in Mandarin-speaking congenital amusics

et al. 2012

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The degree to which cognitive resources are shared in the processing of musical pitch and lexical tones remains uncertain. Testing Mandarin amusics on their categorical perception of Mandarin lexical tones may provide insight into this issue. In the present study, a group of 15 amusic Mandarin speakers identified and discriminated Mandarin tones presented as continua in separate blocks. The tonal continua employed were from a high-level tone to a mid-rising tone and from a high-level tone to a high-falling tone. The two tonal continua were made in the contexts of natural speech and of nonlinguistic analogues. In contrast to the controls, the participants with amusia showed no improvement for discrimination pairs that crossed the classification boundary for either speech or nonlinguistic analogues, indicating a lack of categorical perception.

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The developmental course of lexical tone perception in the first year of life

Cited by 177 publications

References 45 publications

Cross-domain correlation in pitch perception, the influence of native language

Cross-domain correlation in pitch perception, the influence of native language

Mapping the unconscious maintenance of a lost first language

Impaired categorical perception of lexical tones in Mandarin-speaking congenital amusics

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