Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

 

Advantages in Linguistic Tone Perception in Speakers with Tone Language Experience Public Deposited

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https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/wp988k120
Abstract
  • The current study compared adult bilingual Mandarin-English speakers and monolingual English speakers’ ability to perceive linguistic (word and non-word) as well as non-linguistic (pure tone) auditory tonal contrasts to investigate the presence of both a linguistic and cross domain advantage based on tone language experience. Accuracy and reaction time were recorded for all three conditions during a tone perception discrimination task. Findings did not reveal such advantage in any context, however the bilingual Mandarin-English group was more accurate in the word condition suggesting additional semantic information contributed to the group’s decisions about tone contrasts. Additionally, the bilingual group exhibited a trend of slower reaction times across all conditions. Randomization of stimuli and both relevant and non-relevant information together may have contributed to an increased cognitive load for the bilingual group. Together, the results show that tone perception may not be a result of tone language experience and further investigation will provide insight into neural perception, processing, and access of tone.
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  • 2017
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  • 2019-11-17
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