Categorical perception of lexical tones in native Mandarin-speaking listeners with sensorineural hearing loss

Abstract

Background: Categorical perception (CP) of lexical tones was examined in normal hearing (NH) people, but it was unclear whether lexical tones can be perceived categorically in sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) people.

Objectives: To explore the characteristic of lexical tone perception in native Mandarin speakers with SNHL.

Materials and methods: Three types of continuum (Tone1/Tone2, Tone1/Tone4 and Tone2/Tone3) were constructed and each of them includes 15 stimuli which were resynthesized by applying the pitch-synchronous overlap and add (PSOLA) method implemented in Praat to the same Mandarin syllable, /a/, with a high-level tone produced by a female speaker. Forty native Mandarin NH speakers and 23 native Mandarin speakers with mild to moderate SNHL were recruited. A two alternative-forced-choice identification task was used to acquire the tonal perceptual data.

Results: All tone perception curves owns the characteristic of CP in SNHL subjects. All tone perception curves were S-shape in SNHL subjects same as those in NH subjects. No significant difference of each continuum was observed between SNHL and NH.

Conclusions: CP of lexical tone perception could be observed in native Mandarin speakers with mild to moderate SNHL. The slight damage in the peripheral auditory system did not change characteristic of lexical tone perception.

Chinese abstract

背景：对正常听力（NH）人群进行了词汇音调的分类感知（CP）的检查, 但是感觉神经性听力丧失（SNHL）人群是否能分类感知词汇音调, 尚不清楚。

目的：探讨患SNHL的普通话母语者的词汇音调感知特征。

材料和方法：构建了三种类型的连续体（音调1 / 音调2、音调1 / 音调4和音调2 / 音调3 ）。每个连续体包括15个刺激。这些刺激通过应用Praat中实施的基音同步重叠和相加（PSOLA）方法来重新合成相同的普通话音节, / a /, 由女声发出的高音调。招募了四十位正常听力的普通话者和二十三个患 轻度至中度的SNHL的普通话者。使用二项替代强迫选择识别法来获取音调感知数据。

结果：所有音调感知曲线在SNHL受试者中均具有CP的特征。 SNHL受试者的所有音调感知曲线均为S形, 与NH受试者相同。在SNHL和NH之间没有观察到每个连续体的显著差异。

结论：在轻度至中度SNHL的普通话母语者中可观察到词汇音调感知的CP。外围听觉系统的轻微损伤并没有改变词汇音调感知的特征。

Keywords:

• Tone
• categorical perception
• sensorineural hearing loss
• Mandarin

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by Beijing Nova Program [Z151110000315064], National Natural Science Foundation of China [81200753, 81371103], and Beijing Natural Science Foundation [7123210].