We are happy to announce that the Language & Brain Lab has been awarded a SSHRC Insight Grant from 2012-2017 to continue our research in the areas of multi-lingual and multi-modal speech perception, processing, and learning. See our Funding and Current Projects pages for details.
May 11, 2012 - Journal Article In Press
Cooper, A. and Wang, Y. (in press). The influence of linguistic and musical experience on Cantonese word learning. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
While at the LABlab, Angela Cooper was a PI on two projects: Factors Influencing Cantonese Lexical Tone and Tone Word Acquisition and Effects of Linguistic and Musical Experience on Non-native Perception of Thai Vowel Duration. She is now a PhD student at Northwestern University. http://akcooper.wordpress.com/
A cross-language investigation of phonetic and phonological processing of lexical tone
Date: Thursday May 24, 2012
Time: 10:30am
Location: Bennett Library Room 2020
Please join us for LABlab member Xianghua Wu's PhD Thesis Defense on May 24th, 2012!
In an investigation of how lexical tone is perceived and processed at the phonetic and phonological levels, listeners from diverse language backgrounds participated in three perceptual studies. In the first, native Mandarin and Thai listeners assimilated non-native tones to their native tone categories. Results indicated that occurrence of a lower-level phonetic and a higher-level phonological assimilation process was related to listeners' tone experience, as inexperienced listeners recognized only the phonetic distinctions, whereas experienced listeners were sensitive to both phonetic and phonological distinctions between native and non-native tone categories.
In the second study, native Mandarin, Thai and English listeners participated in a forced-choice tone perception test in which they identified the four Mandarin tone categories. Identification accuracy and confusion patterns revealed that previous tone experience predicted tone perception at the phonetic and phonological levels. Better performance was demonstrated for native than non-native, and experienced than inexperienced listeners. Experienced Thai listeners also showed more native-like performance than experienced English listeners. Lexical information from the carrier words was also found to help Mandarin and English listeners recognize difficult tones.
In the third study, participants from the second one completed a dichotic listening test assessing tone lateralization in the brain. The results demonstrated a strong influence of acoustic properties, as tones with dynamic F0 contours were lateralized to the left hemisphere while those with flatter F0 contours were lateralized to the right hemisphere. Meanwhile, native and non-native tone experience was associated with a larger degree of left hemisphere activation for Mandarin and experienced Thai listeners relative to those in the remaining groups.
In summary, these three studies indicate tone perception and processing at both phonetic and phonological levels. In relation to tone experience, inexperienced listeners may attach more importance to phonetic variation while experienced listeners are sensitive to both phonetic and phonological differences. In terms of theoretical contributions, tone perception results extend the current models of speech perception to the suprasegmental level while tone lateralization results provide evidence supporting the acoustic and functional hypotheses.
Members of Examining Committee:
Chair, Dr. Chung-hye Han
Sr. Supervisor, Dr. Murray Munro
Co-Supervisor, Dr. Yue Wang
Internal Examiner, Dr. Christian Guilbault
External Examiner, Dr. Valter Ciocco
This semester, we are continuing to do work on a number of projects, including the Cross Language Tone Perception (XLTP) study, the Audio-Visual Accent (AVA) study, the Auditory and Articulatory Priming Effects on the Perception and Production of Speech Sounds (3PO) study, and the Pitch-Gesture (PG) study.
If you would like to participate in any of these studies as a subject, visit the Participants Needed section of the LABlab site to see if you qualify. We need lots of participants, so don't be shy - email us today for more information.
Participants receive $10/hour, with our gratitude for your participation in furthering language research!