title: Lexical tone variation and spoken word recognition in preschool children: effects of perceptual salience.
abstract: Children undergo gradual progression in their ability to differentiate correct and incorrect pronunciations of words, a process that is crucial to establishing a native vocabulary. For the most part, the development of mature phonological representations has been researched by investigating children's sensitivity to consonant and vowel variation, with a much lesser focus on lexical tones. The current study investigates sensitivity to lexical tones in word recognition with specific attention to role of perceptual salience. Chinese-speaking preschoolers were presented with familiar words that were correctly pronounced, substituted for a subtle tone variant (Tones 2 and 3), or substituted for a salient tone variant (Tones 1 and 4). Results demonstrated that subtle tone variants were mistakenly perceived as correct pronunciations and only salient tone variants were recognized as mispronunciations. Findings suggest that tone integration follows a more complex developmental course that previously concluded.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology,National University of Singapore.
authors.forename: Leher
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Singh
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology,National University of Singapore.
authors.forename: Aloysia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tan
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology,National University of Singapore.
authors.forename: Thilanga D
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Wewalaarachchi
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D046709:Pattern Recognition, Physiological; D010700:Phonetics; D013067:Speech Perception; D014825:Vocabulary