Clear speech effects on Mandarin fricative perception

This study investigated, with 40 young-adult Taiwan Mandarin listeners, the perception of clearly vs conversationally produced Mandarin fricatives in quiet and noisy conditions. Clear speech did not improve identification accuracy but consistently facilitated processing, as shown by shorter reaction times. Correlations with acoustic measures suggest that modifications in spectral variance, skewness, and relative amplitude are associated with this clear speech advantage. These findings underscore processing speed as a dimension of clear speech benefit and extend our understanding of clear speech effects to the full Mandarin fricative inventory.