Abstract
This study examined Mandarin tone identification by 36 English-speaking
musicians and 36 nonmusicians and musical note identification by
the musicians. In the Mandarin task, participants were given a brief
tutorial on Mandarin tones and identified the tones of the syllable
sa produced by 32 speakers. The stimuli included intact syllables
and acoustically modified syllables with limited F0 information.
Acoustic analyses showed considerable overlap in F0 range among the
tones due to the presence of multiple speakers. Despite no prior
experience with Mandarin, the musicians identified intact tones at
68\% and silent-center tones at 54\% correct, both exceeding chance
(25\%). The musicians also outperformed the nonmusicians, who identified
intact tones at 44\% and silent-center tones at 36\% correct. These
results indicate musical training facilitated lexical tone identification,
although the facilitation varied as a function of tone and the type
of acoustic input. In the music task, the musicians listened to synthesized
musical notes of three timbres and identified the notes without a
reference pitch. Average identification accuracy was at chance level
even when multiple semitone errors were allowed. Since none of the
musicians possessed absolute pitch, the role of absolute pitch in
Mandarin tone identification remains inconclusive.
- acoustics,united
- auditory
- perception,china,england,english,language,learning,linguistics,mandarin,music,occupations,pitch
- perception,speech,speech
- pitch,language,music,musicality,perception,pitch,tone
- states,absolute
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