title: The processing of lexical tones by young Chinese children.
abstract: The current study examined five- and seven-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's processing of lexical tones in relation to speech segments by varying onset and rime in an oddity task (onset±rime±). Results showed that children experienced more difficulty in lexical tone oddity judgment when rimes differed across monosyllables (e.g. onset+rime-) than when onsets differed (e.g. onset-rime+). This finding suggests that vowels interfere more than consonants in lexical tone processing. Seven-year-olds consistently outperformed five-year-olds, suggesting that the growth of metalinguistic awareness and literacy exposure may play a joint role in the development of lexical tone processing skills.
authors: Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
authors: Candise Y
authors: CY
authors: Lin
authors: Min
authors: M
authors: Wang
authors: Hua
authors: H
authors: Shu
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002681:China; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D013060:Speech; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility