title: The role of spectro-temporal fine structure cues in lexical-tone discrimination for French and Mandarin listeners.
abstract: The role of spectro-temporal modulation cues in conveying tonal information for lexical tones was assessed in native-Mandarin and native-French adult listeners using a lexical-tone discrimination task. The fundamental frequency (F0) of Thai tones was either degraded using an 8-band vocoder that reduced fine spectral details and frequency-modulation cues, or extracted and used to modulate the F0 of click trains. Mandarin listeners scored lower than French listeners in the discrimination of vocoded lexical tones. For click trains, Mandarin listeners outperformed French listeners. These preliminary results suggest that the perceptual weight of the fine spectro-temporal modulation cues conveying F0 information is enhanced for adults speaking a tonal language.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS, Université Paris Descartes, 45 rue des saints Pères, 75006 Paris, France.
authors.forename: Laurianne
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Cabrera
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Number 1, Section 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei, 106, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Feng-Ming
authors.initials: FM
authors.lastname: Tsao
authors.affiliation: Neurelec, 2720 Chemin de Saint-Bernard Porte, 06224, Vallauris, France.
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gnansia
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS, Université Paris Descartes, 45 rue des saints Pères, 75006 Paris, France.
authors.forename: Josiane
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bertoncini
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire des systèmes perceptifs, CNRS, Institut d'Etude de la Cognition, Ecole normale supérieure, Paris Sciences et Lettres, 29 rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lorenzi
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001302:Audiometry, Speech; D003463:Cues; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D010897:Pitch Discrimination; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013067:Speech Perception; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult