Using high variability phonetic training to train non-tonal listeners with no musical background to perceive lexical tones

Abstract

Previous research has not extensively investigated whether High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) is effective in training listeners with no musical background and no prior experience with a tone language in their identification of non-native lexical tones. In this study, it was investigated whether HVPT is applicable to the acquisition of non-native tones by such listeners. Twenty-one speakers of American English were trained in eight sessions using the HVPT approach to identify Mandarin tones in monosyllabic words. Ten of the participants were exposed to words produced by multiple talkers (MT condition), and eleven participants were exposed to words produced by a single talker (ST condition). The listeners’ identification accuracy revealed an average 44% increase from the pretest to the posttest for the MT condition and an average 30% increase for the ST condition. The improvement also generalized to new monosyllabic words produced by a familiar talker and those produced by two unfamiliar talkers. The learning however did not generalize to novel disyllabic words produced either by a familiar talker or an unfamiliar talker. Comparisons between two groups further revealed that the improvement of the listeners in the MT condition was significantly higher than that of the listeners in the ST condition.

Consonant-induced pitch perturbations, domain-initial strengthening, and word learning success in a tone language

“…It remains unclear whether this hypothesis holds across tone languages. The observations of onset consonants and tones across syllable types in Thai by Silpachai (2014) did not consistently match the predictions of this hypothesis. This might have been due to languagespecific effects.…”