Categorical Perception of Mandarin Chinese Tones 1 –2 and Tones 1–4: Effects of Aging and Signal Duration

Conclusions The current study suggested that longer duration facilitated categorical perception in the flat –rising tones for the older listeners. Such an aging effect was not found with the flat–falling tones, suggesting that the aging-related deficit in categorical perception might relate to different tone types. Aging resulted in less categoricality of Mandarin tone perception for the flat–rising tones with short duration like 100 ms, possibly due to the aging-related decline in temporal processing.
Source: Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research