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The development of categorical perception of Mandarin tones in four- to seven-year-old children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2016

FEI CHEN ,
GANG PENG ,
NAN YAN  and
LAN WANG
FEI CHEN
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Human-Machine Intelligence-Synergy Systems, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China
GANG PENG*
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Human-Machine Intelligence-Synergy Systems, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR
NAN YAN*
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Human-Machine Intelligence-Synergy Systems, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China
LAN WANG
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Human-Machine Intelligence-Synergy Systems, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China
*
Addresses for correspondence: Gang Peng, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China. tel: (+852) 3400 8462; fax: (+852) 2334 0185; e-mail: gpengjack@gmail.com.
Nan Yan, Key Laboratory of Human-Machine Intelligence-Synergy Systems, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China. tel: (+86) 86392174; fax: (+86) 86392194; e-mail: nan.yan@siat.ac.cn
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Abstract

To track the course of development in children's fine-grained perception of Mandarin tones, the present study explored how categorical perception (CP) of Mandarin tones emerges along age among 70 four- to seven-year-old children and 16 adults. Prominent discrimination peaks were found for both the child and the adult groups, and they were well aligned with the corresponding identification crossovers. Moreover, six-year-olds showed a much narrower width (i.e. a sharper slope) compared to younger children, and have already acquired adult-like identification competence of Mandarin high-level and mid-rising tones. Although the ability to discriminate within-category tone pairs did not change, the between-category discrimination accuracies were positively correlated with chronological ages among child participants. We assume that the perceptual refinement of Mandarin tones in young children may be driven by an accumulation of perceptual development from the tonal information of the ambient sound input.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 44 , Issue 6 , November 2017 , pp. 1413 - 1434
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

[*]

This work was partially supported by grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC: 61135003, 11474300, 91420301), Shenzhen Speech Rehabilitation Technology Laboratory, and Shenzhen Fundamental Research Program JCYJ20130401170306806. We thank all the child participants, from Guangming Central Kindergarten, Taoyuan Secondary Kindergarten, and Taoyuan Zhuoya Primary School, and their parents, for their participation and cooperation.

References

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