Repetition Priming Effects in Proficient Mandarin–Cantonese and Cantonese–Mandarin Bidialectals: An Event-Related Potential Study

The present study adopted a repetition priming paradigm to investigate the bidialectal (bilingual) representation of speakers with different native dialects by event-related potential (ERP) technique. Proficient Mandarin–Cantonese and Cantonese–Mandarin bidialectals participated in the study. They were required to judge whether a word was a biological word or not, when the words (target word) were represented under four types of repetition priming conditions: Mandarin (prime)–Mandarin (target), Mandarin (prime)–Cantonese (target), Cantonese (prime)–Cantonese (target) and Cantonese (prime)–Mandarin (target). Results of reaction time and accuracy primarily indicated larger repetition priming effects in Mandarin–Mandarin and Cantonese–Cantonese (within-language) conditions than that in Mandarin–Cantonese and Cantonese–Mandarin (between-language) conditions. But more importantly, P200 and N400 mean amplitudes revealed distinct repetition priming effects between two types of participants. Specifically, both P200 and N400 indicated that the repetition priming effect in Mandarin–Mandarin condition was larger than that in Cantonese–Cantonese condition for Mandarin–Cantonese participants, whereas it was opposite for Cantonese–Mandarin participants. In addition, P200 also suggested opposite patterns of repetition priming effects in between-language priming conditions for two groups of participants. The repetition priming effect in Mandarin–Cantonese condition was larger than that in Cantonese–Mandarin condition for Mandarin–Cantonese participants, while for Cantonese–Mandarin participants, it was opposite (Mandarin–Cantonese < Cantonese–Mandarin). The results implied a clear asymmetric representation of two dialects for proficient bidialectals. They were further discussed in light of native dialect and language use frequency.     

Left-hemisphere activation is associated with enhanced vocal pitch error detection in musicians with absolute pitch

The ability to process auditory feedback for vocal pitch control is crucial during speaking and singing. Previous studies have suggested that musicians with absolute pitch (AP) develop specialized left-hemisphere mechanisms for pitch processing. The present study adopted an auditory feedback pitch perturbation paradigm combined with ERP recordings to test the hypothesis whether the neural mechanisms of the left-hemisphere enhance vocal pitch error detection and control in AP musicians compared with relative pitch (RP) musicians and non-musicians (NM). Results showed a stronger N1 response to pitch-shifted voice feedback in the right-hemisphere for both AP and RP musicians compared with the NM group. However, the left-hemisphere P2 component activation was greater in AP and RP musicians compared with NMs and also for the AP compared with RP musicians. The NM group was slower in generating compensatory vocal reactions to feedback pitch perturbation compared with musicians, and they failed to re-adjust their vocal pitch after the feedback perturbation was removed. These findings suggest that in the earlier stages of cortical neural processing, the right hemisphere is more active in musicians for detecting pitch changes in voice feedback. In the later stages, the left-hemisphere is more active during the processing of auditory feedback for vocal motor control and seems to involve specialized mechanisms that facilitate pitch processing in the AP compared with RP musicians. These findings indicate that the left hemisphere mechanisms of AP ability are associated with improved auditory feedback pitch processing during vocal pitch control in tasks such as speaking or singing.     

Dichotic Perception of Mandarin Tones by Chinese and American Listeners

The dichotic perception of Mandarin tones by native and nonnative listeners was examined in order to investigate the lateralization of lexical tone. Twenty American listeners with no tone language background and 20 Chinese listeners were asked to identify dichotically presented tone pairs by identifying which tone they heard in each ear. For the Chinese listeners, 57% of the total errors occurred via the left ear, indicating a significant right ear advantage. However, the American listeners revealed no significant ear preference, with 48% of the errors attributable to the left ear. These results indicated that Mandarin tones are predominantly processed in the left hemisphere by native Mandarin speakers, whereas they are bilaterally processed by American English speakers with no prior tone experience. The results also suggest that the left hemisphere superiority for native Mandarin tone processing is similar to native processing of other tone languages.     

Musicians and tone-language speakers share enhanced brainstem encoding but not perceptual benefits for musical pitch

Behavioral and neurophysiological transfer effects from music experience to language processing are well-established but it is currently unclear whether or not linguistic expertise (e.g., speaking a tone language) benefits music-related processing and its perception. Here, we compare brainstem responses of English-speaking musicians/non-musicians and native speakers of Mandarin Chinese elicited by tuned and detuned musical chords, to determine if enhancements in subcortical processing translate to improvements in the perceptual discrimination of musical pitch. Relative to non-musicians, both musicians and Chinese had stronger brainstem representation of the defining pitches of musical sequences. In contrast, two behavioral pitch discrimination tasks revealed that neither Chinese nor non-musicians were able to discriminate subtle changes in musical pitch with the same accuracy as musicians. Pooled across all listeners, brainstem magnitudes predicted behavioral pitch discrimination performance but considering each group individually, only musicians showed connections between neural and behavioral measures. No brain-behavior correlations were found for tone language speakers or non-musicians. These findings point to a dissociation between subcortical neurophysiological processing and behavioral measures of pitch perception in Chinese listeners. We infer that sensory-level enhancement of musical pitch information yields cognitive-level perceptual benefits only when that information is behaviorally relevant to the listener.     

Implicit Association Test (IAT) Studies Investigating Pitch-Shape Audiovisual Cross-modal Associations Across Language Groups

Previous studies have shown that Chinese speakers and non-Chinese speakers exhibit different patterns of cross-modal congruence for the lexical tones of Mandarin Chinese, depending on which features of the pitch they attend to. But is this pattern of language-specific listening a conscious cultural strategy or an automatic processing effect? If automatic, does it also apply when the same pitch contours no longer sound like speech? Implicit Association Tests (IATs) provide an indirect measure of cross-modal association. In a series of IAT studies, conducted with participants with three kinds of language backgrounds (Chinese-dominant bilinguals, Chinese balanced bilinguals, and English speakers with no Chinese experience) we find language-specific congruence effects for Mandarin lexical tones but not for matched sine-wave stimuli. That is, for linguistic stimuli, non-Chinese speakers show advantages for pitch-height congruence (high-pointy, low-curvy); no congruence effects were found for Chinese speakers. For non-linguistic stimuli, all participant groups showed advantages for pitch-height congruence. The present findings suggest that non-lexical tone congruence (high-pointy, low-curvy) is a basic congruence pattern, and the acquisition of a language with lexical tone can alter this perception.     

The role of the auditory brainstem in processing linguistically-relevant pitch patterns

Historically, the brainstem has been neglected as a part of the brain involved in language processing. We review recent evidence of language-dependent effects in pitch processing based on comparisons of native vs. nonnative speakers of a tonal language from electrophysiological recordings in the auditory brainstem. We argue that there is enhancing of linguistically-relevant pitch dimensions or features well before the auditory signal reaches the cerebral cortex. We propose that long-term experience with a tone language sharpens the tuning characteristics of neurons along the pitch axis with enhanced sensitivity to linguistically-relevant, rapidly changing sections of pitch contours. Though not specific to a speech context, experience-dependent brainstem mechanisms for pitch representation are clearly sensitive to particular aspects of pitch contours that native speakers of a tone language have been exposed to. Such experience-dependent effects on lower-level sensory processing are compatible with more integrated, hierarchically organized pathways to language and the brain.     

Semantic interference during object naming in agrammatic and logopenic primary progressive aphasia (PPA)

This study examined the time course of object naming in 21 individuals with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) (8 agrammatic (PPA-G); 13 logopenic (PPA-L)) and healthy age-matched speakers (n = 17) using a semantic interference paradigm with related and unrelated interfering stimuli presented at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of −1000, −500, −100 and 0 ms. Results showed semantic interference (SI) (i.e. significantly slower RTs in related compared to unrelated conditions) for all groups at −500, −100 and 0 ms, indicating timely spreading activation to semantic competitors. However, both PPA groups showed a greater magnitude of SI than normal across SOAs. The PPA-L group and six PPA-G participants also evinced SI at −1000 ms, suggesting an abnormal time course of semantic interference resolution, and concomitant left hemisphere cortical atrophy in brain regions associated with semantic processing. These subtle semantic mapping impairments in non-semantic variants of PPA may contribute to the anomia of these patients.     

普通话和粤语记忆中的语言依赖效应

通过两个实验考察普通话和粤语环境下的记忆语言依赖效应。实验1运用自传式回忆范式,考察语言环境对情境记忆提取的影响。结果表明,在普通话和粤语环境下,普通话-粤语双言被试的回忆体现了对语言环境的依赖。当回忆时的语言环境和事件发生时的语言环境相同时,获得了更多的同类记忆。实验2通过听觉方式呈现词,考察语音和语言表达方式对再认的影响。结果表明,普通话-粤语双言被试对用粤语方言表达的词反应时间短,误报率低,辨别力强,表明语音和语言表达方式是影响普通话-粤语双言被试记忆语言依赖效应的重要因素     

Pitch discrimination without awareness in congenital amusia: Evidence from event-related potentials

Congenital amusia is a lifelong disorder characterized by a difficulty in perceiving and producing music despite normal intelligence and hearing. Behavioral data have indicated that it originates from a deficit in fine-grained pitch discrimination, and is expressed by the absence of a P3b event-related brain response for pitch differences smaller than a semitone and a bigger N2b–P3b brain response for large pitch differences as compared to controls. However, it is still unclear why the amusic brain overreacts to large pitch changes. Furthermore, another electrophysiological study indicates that the amusic brain can respond to changes in melodies as small as a quarter-tone, without awareness, by exhibiting a normal mismatch negativity (MMN) brain response. Here, we re-examine the event-related N2b–P3b components with the aim to clarify the cause of the larger amplitude observed by Peretz, Brattico, and Tervaniemi (2005), by experimentally matching the number of deviants presented to the controls according to the number of deviants detected by amusics. We also re-examine the MMN component as well as the N1 in an acoustical context to investigate further the pitch discrimination deficit underlying congenital amusia. In two separate conditions, namely ignore and attend, we measured the MMN, the N1, the N2b and the P3b to tones that deviated by an eight of a tone (25 cents) or whole tone (200 cents) from a repeated standard tone. The results show a normal MMN, a seemingly normal N1, a normal P3b for the 200 cents pitch deviance, and no P3b for the small 25 cents pitch differences in amusics. These results indicate that the amusic brain responds to small pitch differences at a pre-attentive level of perception, but is unable to detect consciously those same pitch deviances at a later attentive level. The results are consistent with previous MRI and fMRI studies indicating that the auditory cortex of amusic individuals is functioning normally.     

调型和调阶对阳平和上声知觉的作用

使用心理-物理的方法研究了汉语普通话母语者对阳平和上声的感知。实验结果表明：普通话母语者对阳平和上声的分辨呈现出一定的范畴化倾向, 但普通话母语者区分这两个声调的范畴化程度不及他们区分阴平和阳平的范畴化程度; 普通话母语者不倾向于把孤立的低平升调和低平调辨认为上声; 在调阶不高的条件下, 音高曲线终点的“高”对于阳平的感知并不重要。这些结果暗示着, “低降”是和“升”分别是普通话上声和阳平的音系特征, 普通话可能也像吴方言一样存在阴、阳调域的差别, 阳平和上声同属于低调域。     

The effect of gender on the N1-P2 auditory complex while listening and speaking with altered auditory feedback

The effect of gender on the N1-P2 auditory complex was examined while listening and speaking with altered auditory feedback. Fifteen normal hearing adult males and 15 females participated. N1-P2 components were evoked while listening to self-produced nonaltered and frequency shifted /a/ tokens and during production of /a/ tokens during nonaltered auditory feedback (NAF), frequency altered feedback (FAF), and delayed auditory feedback (DAF; 50 and 200 ms). During speech production, females exhibited earlier N1 latencies during 50 ms DAF and earlier P2 latencies during 50 ms DAF and FAF. There were no significant differences in N1-P2 amplitudes across all conditions. Comparing listening to active speaking, N1 and P2 latencies were earlier among females, with speaking, and under NAF. N1-P2 amplitudes were significantly reduced during speech production. These findings are consistent with the notions that speech production suppresses auditory cortex responsiveness and males and females process altered auditory feedback differently while speaking.     

The Puzzle of Absolute Pitch

Absolute pitch—the ability to name or produce a note of particular pitch in the absence of a reference note—is generally considered to be extremely rare. However, it has been found that native speakers of two different tone languages—Mandarin and Vietnamese—display a remarkably precise form of absolute pitch in enunciating words. Given these findings, it is proposed that absolute pitch may have evolved as a feature of speech, analogous to other features such as vowel quality. It is also conjectured that tone–language speakers generally acquire this feature during the 1st year of life, in the critical period when infants acquire other features of their native language. For speakers of nontone languages, the acquisition of absolute pitch by rare individuals may be associated with a critical period of unusually long duration, so that it extends to the age at which the child can begin taking music lessons. According to this line of reasoning, the potential for acquiring absolute pitch is universal at birth, and can be realized by giving the infant the opportunity to associate pitches with verbal labels during the 1st year or so of life.     

双言舌尖现象的产生机制：来自粤语-普通话双言者的证据

舌尖现象(Tip-of-the-Tongue phenomenon, TOT)是言语产生中的一种常见现象。国外研究发现, 双语者和单语者的舌尖现象差异很大。双言和双语既相似, 又存在差异。以粤语–普通话双言者为被试, 比较了普通话熟练和不熟练的被试在使用不同语言命名时的TOT产生率。结果发现：(1)粤语–普通话双言者的TOT率受普通话熟练程度影响。普通话不熟练的粤语–普通话双言者用普通话命名时产生更高的TOT率。(2)语言启动能够调节粤语–普通话双言者的普通话熟练程度与TOT产生的关系。在语言启动条件下, 普通话熟练的粤语–普通话双言者的TOT率更高。(3)粤语–普通话双言者的TOT产生机制符合部分激活理论的预言。     

Functional ear (a)symmetry in brainstem neural activity relevant to encoding of voice pitch: a precursor for hemispheric specialization?

Pitch processing is lateralized to the right hemisphere; linguistic pitch is further mediated by left cortical areas. This experiment investigates whether ear asymmetries vary in brainstem representation of pitch depending on linguistic status. Brainstem frequency-following responses (FFRs) were elicited by monaural stimulation of the left and right ear of 15 native speakers of Mandarin Chinese using two synthetic speech stimuli that differ in linguistic status of tone. One represented a native lexical tone (Tone 2: T2); the other, T2′, a nonnative variant in which the pitch contour was a mirror image of T2 with the same starting and ending frequencies. Two 40-ms portions of f₀ contours were selected in order to compare two regions (R1, early; R2 late) differing in pitch acceleration rate and perceptual saliency. In R2, linguistic status effects revealed that T2 exhibited a larger degree of FFR rightward ear asymmetry as reflected in f₀ amplitude relative to T2′. Relative to midline (ear asymmetry = 0), the only ear asymmetry reaching significance was that favoring left ear stimulation elicited by T2′. By left- and right-ear stimulation separately, FFRs elicited by T2 were larger than T2′ in the right ear only. Within T2′, FFRs elicited by the earlier region were larger than the later in both ears. Within T2, no significant differences in FFRS were observed between regions in either ear. Collectively, these findings support the idea that origins of cortical processing preferences for perceptually-salient portions of pitch are rooted in early, preattentive stages of processing in the brainstem.     

汉语普通话母语者的节奏组块感知偏好

个体对声音节奏的感知具有明显的偏好,强度上表现为扬抑组块偏好,时长上表现为抑扬组块偏好,这被称作抑扬-扬抑规律,但这一感知规律是否具有跨语言的普遍性却存在争议。本研究以汉语普通话母语者为被试,考察他们对非语音音调序列的节奏组块感知情况,结果发现强度和时长参数下被试对扬抑形式的判断比例均显著高于随机水平,说明汉语普通话母语者在两个参数上的节奏感知中均表现出明显的扬抑偏好,在强度上支持节奏感知偏好具有跨语言普遍性的观点,在时长上不支持节奏感知偏好受到母语短语韵律特征影响的观点。     

Hear it playing low and slow: How pitch level differentially influences time perception

Variations in both pitch and time are important in conveying meaning through speech and music, however, research is scant on perceptual interactions between these two domains. Using an ordinal comparison procedure, we explored how different pitch levels of flanker tones influenced the perceived duration of empty interstimulus intervals (ISIs). Participants heard monotonic, isochronous tone sequences (ISIs of 300, 600, or 1200 ms) composed of either one or five standard ISIs flanked by 500 Hz tones, followed by a final interval (FI) flanked by tones of either the same (500 Hz), higher (625 Hz), or lower (400 Hz) pitch. The FI varied in duration around the standard ISI duration. Participants were asked to determine if the FI was longer or shorter in duration than the preceding intervals. We found that an increase in FI flanker tone pitch level led to the underestimation of FI durations while a decrease in FI flanker tone pitch led to the overestimation of FI durations. The magnitude of these pitch-level effects decreased as the duration of the standard interval was increased, suggesting that the effect was driven by differences in mode-switch latencies to start/stop timing. Temporal context (One vs. Five Standard ISIs) did not have a consistent effect on performance. We propose that the interaction between pitch and time may have important consequences in understanding the ways in which meaning and emotion are communicated.     

Cross-Language Perception of Cantonese Vowels Spoken by Native and Non-native Speakers

This study examined the effect of native language background on listeners’ perception of native and non-native vowels spoken by native (Hong Kong Cantonese) and non-native (Mandarin and Australian English) speakers. They completed discrimination and an identification task with and without visual cues in clear and noisy conditions. Results indicated that visual cues did not facilitate perception, and performance was better in clear than in noisy conditions. More importantly, the Cantonese talker’s vowels were the easiest to discriminate, and the Mandarin talker’s vowels were as intelligible as the native talkers’ speech. These results supported the interlanguage speech native intelligibility benefit patterns proposed by Hayes-Harb et al. (J Phonetics 36:664–679, 2008). The Mandarin and English listeners’ identification patterns were similar to those of the Cantonese listeners, suggesting that they might have assimilated Cantonese vowels to their closest native vowels. In addition, listeners’ perceptual patterns were consistent with the principles of Best’s Perceptual Assimilation Model (Best in Speech perception and linguistic experience: issues in cross-language research. York Press, Timonium, 1995).     

汉语口语韵律的作用及其神经机制

汉语是一种声调语言, 在口语韵律表达中存在独特的特点。本项目利用汉语不同于非声调语言的特点, 探讨已有研究中尚未澄清的问题, 即汉语声调在早期自动加工中对语义激活的作用, 以及在不同认知阶段中, 汉语声调和语调加工的神经机制。这些问题是当前的研究热点, 但仍存在着各种分歧和激烈的争论。本项目拟采用ERP方法, 结合LORETA源定位技术, 通过不同的实验范式考察以下内容：(1)在早期自动加工过程中, 汉语声调对词汇语义激活的作用; (2)在早期阶段, 汉语声调和语调加工的大脑激活模式; (3)在晚期阶段, 汉语声调和语调加工的大脑激活模式。对这些问题的考察将有助于澄清当前的激烈争论, 拓展以往基于非声调语言研究建立的口语加工理论的适用范围, 为完善言语认知加工的理论模型提供新的实验证据。     

Temporal order perception of auditory stimuli is selectively modified by tonal and non-tonal language environments

The close relationship between temporal perception and speech processing is well established. The present study focused on the specific question whether the speech environment could influence temporal order perception in subjects whose language backgrounds are distinctively different, i.e., Chinese (tonal language) vs. Polish (non-tonal language). Temporal order thresholds were measured for both monaurally presented clicks and binaurally presented tone pairs. Whereas the click experiment showed similar order thresholds for the two language groups, the experiment with tone pairs resulted in different observations: while Chinese demonstrated better performance in discriminating the temporal order of two “close frequency” tone pairs (600 Hz and 1200 Hz), Polish subjects showed a reversed pattern, i.e., better performance for “distant frequency” tone pairs (400 Hz and 3000 Hz). These results indicate on the one hand a common temporal mechanism for perceiving the order of two monaurally presented stimuli, and on the other hand neuronal plasticity for perceiving the order of frequency-related auditory stimuli. We conclude that the auditory brain is modified with respect to temporal processing by long-term exposure to a tonal or a non-tonal language. As a consequence of such an exposure different cognitive modes of operation (analytic vs. holistic) are selected: the analytic mode is adopted for “distant frequency” tone pairs in Chinese and for “close frequency” tone pairs in Polish subjects, whereas the holistic mode is selected for “close frequency” tone pairs in Chinese and for “distant frequency” tone pairs in Polish subjects, reflecting a double dissociation of function.     

Encoding lexical tones in jTRACE: a simulation of monosyllabic spoken word recognition in Mandarin Chinese

Despite its prevalence as one of the most highly influential models of spoken word recognition, the TRACE model has yet to be extended to consider tonal languages such as Mandarin Chinese. A key reason for this is that the model in its current state does not encode lexical tone. In this report, we present a modified version of the jTRACE model in which we borrowed on its existing architecture to code for Mandarin phonemes and tones. Units are coded in a way that is meant to capture the similarity in timing of access to vowel and tone information that has been observed in previous studies of Mandarin spoken word recognition. We validated the model by first simulating a recent experiment that had used the visual world paradigm to investigate how native Mandarin speakers process monosyllabic Mandarin words (Malins & Joanisse, 2010). We then subsequently simulated two psycholinguistic phenomena: (1) differences in the timing of resolution of tonal contrast pairs, and (2) the interaction between syllable frequency and tonal probability. In all cases, the model gave rise to results comparable to those of published data with human subjects, suggesting that it is a viable working model of spoken word recognition in Mandarin. It is our hope that this tool will be of use to practitioners studying the psycholinguistics of Mandarin Chinese and will help inspire similar models for other tonal languages, such as Cantonese and Thai.