title: Aging Effect on Categorical Perception of Mandarin Tones 2 and 3 and Thresholds of Pitch Contour Discrimination.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The purpose of the study was to examine the aging effect on the categorical perception of Mandarin Chinese Tone 2 (rising F0 pitch contour) and Tone 3 (falling-then-rising F0 pitch contour) as well as on the thresholds of pitch contour discrimination.
  
  
  METHODS
  Three experiments of Mandarin tone perception were conducted for younger and older listeners with Mandarin Chinese as the native language. The first 2 experiments were in the categorical perception paradigm: tone identification and tone discrimination for a series of stimuli, the F0 contour of which systematically varied from Tone 2 to Tone 3. In the third experiment, the just-noticeable differences of pitch contour discrimination were measured for both groups.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In the measures of categorical perception, older listeners showed significantly shallower slopes in the tone identification function and significantly smaller peakedness in the tone discrimination function compared with younger listeners. Moreover, the thresholds of pitch contour discrimination were significantly higher for older listeners than for younger listeners.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results suggest that aging reduced the categoricality of Mandarin tone perception and worsened the psychoacoustic capacity to discriminate pitch contour changes, thereby possibly leading to older listeners' difficulty in identifying Tones 2 and 3.
authors.affiliation: School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China.
authors.forename: Yuxia
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China.
authors.forename: Xiaohu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China.
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China.
authors.forename: Lilong
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China.
authors.forename: Can
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Texas at Austin.
authors.forename: Chang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology; D002681:China; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010897:Pitch Discrimination / Q000502:physiology*; D010898:Pitch Perception / Q000502:physiology; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult