Modelling Mandarin tone perception-production link through critical perceptual cues

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Psychology
• Speech Science

Background:

• Theoretical models suggest a strong link between speech perception and production.
• Empirical evidence for this relationship is inconsistent, potentially due to varying perceptual cue importance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the role of critical perceptual cues in the speech perception-production relationship.
• To test the hypothesis using Mandarin tones, which have distinct critical (pitch direction) and noncritical (pitch height) cues.

Main Methods:

• Perception experiments manipulated critical and noncritical cues orthogonally.
• Production data from native Mandarin speakers were collected and analyzed.
• Cross-domain bidirectional statistical modeling was employed to assess perception-production links.

Main Results:

• The critical status of perceptual cues significantly impacted both within-category and between-category perception of Mandarin tones.
• A significant perception-production link was identified exclusively for the critical perceptual cue (pitch direction).
• Including both within-category and between-category perception data strengthened the perception-production link compared to using between-category data alone.

Conclusions:

• The findings support the view that critical perceptual cues are essential for establishing a robust speech perception-production relationship.
• The identified link appears to be driven by phonetic and phonological factors.
• This research clarifies the mixed findings in previous studies by highlighting the differential roles of perceptual cues.