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This study experimented with mobile devices to investigate the effects of tones and time pressure on the voice input experience for Mandarin Chinese. Voice input for Mandarin Chinese is gaining popularity, and its implementation on mobile devices has recently developed very rapidly. Previous studies have focused mainly on technical considerations for designing a voice input system and have not investigated the user experience of voice input. Two experiments were conducted to test single-character and two-character phrases. Four measurements, the number of errors, user satisfaction, mental workload, and skin conductance, were gathered from sixty-four participants for each experiment. The results indicated that Mandarin tones had a significant influence on the number of errors and user satisfaction, and time pressure significantly influenced all measurements. Specifically, the falling-rising tone produced the highest number of errors, and the rising tone led to the lowest satisfaction. A high level of time pressure resulted in low satisfaction, a high mental workload, and high skin conductance. The results indicated that (a) Mandarin tones significantly affected error rates and user satisfaction, and (b) time pressure had a significant effect on user experience. The findings have design implications for voice input systems in terms of user experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intonation is the variation in pitch used in speech, which forms the premise of tonal and non-tonal languages. Interrogative words are words that introduce questions. Previous research lacks clarity regarding the specific cues used in the processing of word intonation. To address this gap, this study used the eventrelated potential electroencephalogram (EEG) research method to explore the intonation processing of tone two (mid-rising) interrogative words in Mandarin. For this, the word “shui,” meaning “who,” was selected as the experimental material. To avoid the influence of the environment, gender, and semantics, the Hum version, corresponding to the stimulus material, was also adopted for the experiment. This study used a passive oddball paradigm to examine the clues of intonation information processing in automatic cognitive processing through amplitude, latency, time window, and evoked location potential mismatch negativity. The standard stimulus was the declarative intonation with a high probability of occurrence (90%), and the deviant stimulus was the interrogative intonation with a low probability of occurrence (10%). In the time window of 370– 450 ms, the mismatch negativity was found at the F3, F4, C3, Cz, and C4 channels. The findings show that, in the passive oddball paradigm, lexical semantics are essential for intonation processing at the pre-attentive level, which is dominated by the frontal and central areas of the brain. The results support the functional and comprehensive hypotheses that the processing of intonation is based on the function of language and that bilateral regions are involved in this processing. This study makes an important contribution by providing event-related potential evidence that lexical semantics plays a key role in the pre-attentive processing of intonation, as shown by the significant differences between semantic and non-semantic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clearly enunciated speech (relative to conversational, plain speech) involves articulatory and acoustic modifications that enhance auditory-visual (AV) segmental intelligibility. However, little research has explored clear-speech effects on the perception of suprasegmental properties such as lexical tone, particularly involving visual (facial) perception. Since tone production does not primarily rely on vocal tract configurations, tones may be less visually distinctive. Questions thus arise as to whether clear speech can enhance visual tone intelligibility, and if so, whether any intelligibility gain can be attributable to tone-specific category-enhancing (code-based) clear-speech cues or tone-general saliency-enhancing (signal-based) cues. The present study addresses these questions by examining the identification of clear and plain Mandarin tones with visual-only, auditory-only, and AV input modalities by native (Mandarin) and nonnative (English) perceivers. Results show that code-based visual and acoustic clear tone modifications, although limited, affect both native and nonnative intelligibility, with category-enhancing cues increasing intelligibility and category-blurring cues decreasing intelligibility. In contrast, signal-based cues, which are extensively available, do not benefit native intelligibility, although they contribute to nonnative intelligibility gain. These findings demonstrate that linguistically relevant visual tonal cues are existent. In clear speech, such tone category-enhancing cues are incorporated with saliency-enhancing cues across AV modalities for intelligibility improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the speech learning model [Flege, J. E. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research (pp. 233–277). York Press], learners whose first language (L1) is a tonal language (e.g. Cantonese) can be confused by similar yet different tones in their L1 and another tonal language (e.g. Mandarin). Encouraged by the biliteracy and trilingualism language policy in Hong Kong, L1 Cantonese learners of Mandarin have been committed to learning the third language (L3) Mandarin tones but are struggling with that task. The main purpose of this study is to examine Cantonese learners' perceptions and production of Mandarin tones, and to investigate learners' performance in production tasks before and after implementing metaphonological awareness protocols. Twenty-five Cantonese learners studying at a local university were recruited to complete the production, perception and verbal protocol tasks. Based on Wrembel's [2015. Metaphonologcial awareness in multilinguals: A case of L3 Polish. Language Awareness, 24(1), 60–83. ] framework, this study categorised the participants' statements of metaphonological awareness shown in their self-correction and self-reflection performances in the introspective and retrospective protocols. The error rates and patterns in the production and perception tasks were analysed. Metaphonological awareness training has a significant positive effect on improving learners' Mandarin tone pronunciation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite pitch being considered the primary cue for discriminating lexical tones, there are secondary cues such as loudness contour and duration, which may allow some cochlear implant (CI) tone discrimination even with severely degraded pitch cues. To isolate pitch cues from other cues, we developed a new disyllabic word stimulus set (Di) whose primary (pitch) and secondary (loudness) cue varied independently. This Di set consists of 270 disyllabic words, each having a distinctmeaning depending on the perceived tone. Thus, listeners who hear the primary pitch cue clearly may hear a different meaning from listeners who struggle with the pitch cue and must rely on the secondary loudness contour. A lexical tone recognition experiment was conducted, which compared Di with a monosyllabic set of natural recordings. Seventeen CI users and eight normal-hearing (NH) listeners took part in the experiment. Results showed that CI users had poorer pitch cues encoding and their tone recognition performance was significantly influenced by the “missing” or “confusing” secondary cues with the Di corpus. The pitch-contour-based tone recognition is still far from satisfactory for CI users compared to NH listeners, even if some appear to integratemultiple cues to achieve high scores. This disyllabic corpus could be used to examine the performance of pitch recognition of CI users and the effectiveness of pitch cue enhancement based Mandarin tone enhancement strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hearing a word that was already expected often facilitates comprehension, attenuating the amplitude of the N400 event-related brain potential component. On the other hand, hearing a word that was not expected elicits a larger N400. In the present study, we examined whether the N400 would be attenuated when a person hears something that is not exactly what they expected but is a viable alternative pronunciation of the morpheme they expected. This was done using Mandarin syllables, some of which can be pronounced with different lexical tones depending on the context. In two large-sample experiments (total n = 160) testing syllables in isolation and in phonologically viable contexts, we found little evidence that hearing an alternative pronunciation of the expected word attenuates the N400. These results suggest that comprehenders do not take advantage of their knowledge about systematic phonological alternations during the early stages of prediction or discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies have shown that infants from cultures with tone languages develop categorical perception of their native lexical tone before their first birthday, but few studies have explored whether, and when, they interpret the phonemic function of lexical tone in word learning. Two habituation-switch experiments were conducted to explore whether Mandarin-learning infants could exploit tonal cues during their word learning, and detect a change when the association of two word-object pairs was switched. In Experiment 1, two words were solely differentiated by their lexical tones (/fāi/ vs. /făi/), and Mandarin-learning infants failed to detect the switch of tones at 14 months, but succeeded at 18 months. In Experiment 2, two words were markedly distinct (/fāi/ vs. /bǒu/), and infants could detect the change of words as early as 14 months. The results indicate that infants may not refer to the lexical function of tone during their novel word learning until 18 months, even though infants from birth are able to distinguish the Tone 1 vs. Tone 3 contrast. Given that lexical tone is expressed by variations of the pitch contours, which are also related to intonation, infants’ increasing knowledge of both tone and intonation may contribute to their misinterpretation of pitch contours in word learning at 14 months and, further, to their development of a sophisticated use of the phonemic function of lexical tone at 18 months of age.

Studies have shown that infants from cultures with tone languages develop categorical perception of their native lexical tone before their first birthday, but few studies have explored whether, and when, they interpret the phonemic function of lexical tone in word learning. Two habituation-switch experiments were conducted to explore whether Mandarin-learning infants could exploit tonal cues during their word learning, and detect a change when the association of two word-object pairs was switched. In Experiment 1, two words were solely differentiated by their lexical tones (/fāi/ vs. /făi/), and Mandarin-learning infants failed to detect the switch of tones at 14 months, but succeeded at 18 months. In Experiment 2, two words were markedly distinct (/fāi/ vs. /bǒu/), and infants could detect the change of words as early as 14 months. The results indicate that infants may not refer to the lexical function of tone during their novel word learning until 18 months, even though infants from birth are able to distinguish the Tone 1 vs. Tone 3 contrast. Given that lexical tone is expressed by variations of the pitch contours, which are also related to intonation, infants' increasing knowledge of both tone and intonation may contribute to their misinterpretation of pitch contours in word learning at 14 months and, further, to their development of a sophisticated use of the phonemic function of lexical tone at 18 months of age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The categorical perception of tones is based not only on word-internal F0 cues but also on external F0 cues in the contexts. The present study focuses on the effects of different types of preceding contexts on Mandarin tone perception. In the experiment, subjects were required to identify a target tone with the preceding context. The target tone was from a tone continuum ranging from Mandarin Tone 1 (high-level tone) to Tone 2 (mid-rising tone). It was preceded by four types of contexts (normal speech, reversal speech, fine-structure sound, and non-speech) with different mean F0 values. Results indicate that the categorical perception of Mandarin tones is influenced only by the normal speech context, and the effect is contrastive. For instance, in a normal speech context with a higher mean F0, the following tone is more likely to be perceived as a lower-frequency tone (Tone 2), whereas with a lower mean F0, the following tone is more likely to be perceived as a higher-frequency tone (Tone 1). These findings suggest that Mandarin tone normalization is mediated by speech-specific processes and that the speech context needs to be intelligible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective This study examined the impact of spectral resolution on the processing of lexical tones and the number of frequency channels required for a cochlear implant (CI) to transmit Chinese tonal information to the brain. Methods ERPs were recorded in an auditory oddball task. Normal-hearing participants listened to speech sounds of two tones and their CI simulations in 1, 4, 8, or 32 channels. The mismatch response elicited by speech sounds and CI simulations in different numbers of channels were compared. Results The mismatch negativity (MMN) was observed for speech sounds. For the 1-channel CI simulations, deviants elicited a more positive waveform than standard stimuli. No MMN response was observed with the 4-channel simulations. A reliable MMN response was observed for the 8- and 32-channel simulations. The MMN responses elicited by the 8- and 32-channel simulations were equivalent in magnitudes and smaller than that elicited by speech sounds. Conclusions More than eight frequency channels are required for a CI to transmit Chinese tonal information. The presence of both positive and negative mismatch responses suggests multiple mechanisms underlying auditory mismatch responses. Significance The current findings of spectral resolution constraints on the transmission of tonal information should be taken into account in the design of the CI devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the framework of traditional pronunciation evaluation system, we try to extract discrete and continuous fundamental frequency features by different methods, use the fundamental frequency features respectively at the speech frame level and syllable level to set up embedded tone models, explicit tone models and their mixed models for the pronunciation evaluation of Mandarin tone, and then compare the influence of different methods and models on the evaluation performance. The results show that the performance of mixed models is the best. The average score error rate (ASER) of mixed models is 0.249 with a relative 29.66% reduction in contrast with the baseline system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The degree to which cognitive resources are shared in the processing of musical pitch and lexical tones remains uncertain. Testing Mandarin amusics on their categorical perception of Mandarin lexical tones may provide insight into this issue. In the present study, a group of 15 amusic Mandarin speakers identified and discriminated Mandarin tones presented as continua in separate blocks. The tonal continua employed were from a high-level tone to a mid-rising tone and from a high-level tone to a high-falling tone. The two tonal continua were made in the contexts of natural speech and of nonlinguistic analogues. In contrast to the controls, the participants with amusia showed no improvement for discrimination pairs that crossed the classification boundary for either speech or nonlinguistic analogues, indicating a lack of categorical perception. The lack of categorical perception of Mandarin tones in the amusic group shows that the pitch deficits in amusics may be domain-general, and this suggests that the processing of musical pitch and lexical tones may share certain cognitive resources and/or processes (Patel , , ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The neural mechanisms used in tone rises and falls in Mandarin were investigated. Nine participants were scanned while they named one-character pictures that required rising or falling tone responses in Mandarin: the left insula and right putamen showed stronger activation between rising and falling tones; the left brainstem showed weaker activation between rising and falling tones. Connectivity analysis showed that the significant projection from the laryngeal motor cortex to the brainstem which was present in rising tones was absent in falling tones. Additionally, there was a significant difference between the connection from the insula to the laryngeal motor cortex which was negative in rising tones but positive in falling tones. These results suggest that the significant projection from the laryngeal motor cortex to the brainstem used in rising tones was not active in falling tones. The connection from the left insula to the laryngeal motor cortex that differs between rising and falling tones may control whether the rise mechanism is active or not. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the present experiment, the authors tested Mandarin and English listeners on a range of auditory tasks to investigate whether long-term linguistic experience influences the cognitive processing of nonspeech sounds. As expected, Mandarin listeners identified Mandarin tones significantly more accurately than English listeners; however, performance did not differ across the listener groups on a pitch discrimination task requiring fine-grained discrimination of simple nonspeech sounds. The crucial finding was that cross-language differences emerged on a nonspeech pitch contour identification task: The Mandarin listeners more often misidentified flat and falling pitch contours than the English listeners in a manner that could be related to specific features of the sound structure of Mandarin, which suggests that the effect of linguistic experience extends to nonspeech processing under certain stimulus and task conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]