title: Evidence for the central origin of lexical tone normalization (L).
abstract: Huang and Holt [(2009). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 125, 3983-3994] suggest that listeners may dynamically tune lexical tone perception via general auditory sensitivity to the mean f0 of the preceding context, effectively normalizing pitch differences across talkers. The present experiments further examine the effect using the missing-f0 phenomenon as a means of determining the level of auditory processing at which lexical tone normalization occurs. Speech contexts filtered to remove or mask low-frequency f0 energy elicited contrastive context effects. Central, rather than peripheral, auditory processes may be responsible for the context-dependence that has been considered to be lexical tone normalization.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA. jingyuan@andrew.cmu.edu
authors.forename: Jingyuan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Lori L
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Holt
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001306:Auditory Pathways / Q000502:physiology*; D002490:Central Nervous System / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D046709:Pattern Recognition, Physiological; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010700:Phonetics; D010898:Pitch Perception; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception