Categorical perception of lexical tones based on acoustic-electric stimulation
Yadong Niu1, Yuhe Liu2, Xihong Wu1
1Department of Machine Intelligence, Speech and Hearing Research Center, and Key Laboratory of Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University, Beijing, China.
Abstract:
The effect of low-frequency acoustic input on the categorical perception of lexical tones was investigated with simulated electric-acoustic hearing. A synthesized T1-T2 (flat-rising) tone continuum of Mandarin monosyllables /i/ was used, and they were manipulated as five conditions: unprocessed, low-frequency acoustic-only, electric-only, electric-acoustic stimulation, and bimodal stimulation. Results showed the performance under electric-only condition was the significantly lowest, and the difference of other pairwise comparisons between conditions was quite small. These findings suggest that the low-frequency acoustic input can shape the categorical perception, and the combinations of acoustic and electric hearing within or across ears have no significant effect.
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