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Aging effect on Mandarin Chinese vowel and tone identification
Xiaohu Yang1, Yuxia Wang1, Lilong Xu1
1School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China sherwood@sjtu.edu.cn, yuxiawang@sjtu.edu.cn, babybabybear@sjtu.edu.cn, Helen.Tim.lovelife@sjtu.edu.cn, 8023xc@sjtu.edu.cn.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
|November 2, 2015
Summary
Aging impairs Mandarin Chinese speech perception, particularly for vowel and tone identification. Older adults showed lower accuracy, especially when processing combined vowel-tone information.
Area of Science:
- Auditory Neuroscience
- Speech Perception
- Gerontology
Background:
- Auditory processing declines with age.
- Mandarin Chinese relies on phonemic (vowel) and tonal information for meaning.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of aging on Mandarin Chinese speech sound perception.
- To compare vowel and tone identification abilities between younger and older adults.
Main Methods:
- Presenting vowel-tone stimuli to younger and older native Chinese speakers.
- Assessing identification accuracy for vowel-plus-tone, vowel-only, and tone-only conditions.
Main Results:
- Younger listeners significantly outperformed older listeners in all conditions.
- Older listeners' tone identification scores correlated with age.
- Older adults showed reduced accuracy for combined vowel-tone stimuli compared to isolated features.
Conclusions:
- Aging negatively affects Mandarin Chinese vowel and tone perception.
- The decline is more pronounced when processing integrated phonemic and tonal information.
