Processing of Acoustic Cues in Lexical-Tone Identification by Pediatric Cochlear-Implant Recipients

Purpose

The objective was to investigate acoustic cue processing in lexical-tone recognition by pediatric cochlear-implant (CI) recipients who are native Mandarin speakers.

Method

Lexical-tone recognition was assessed in pediatric CI recipients and listeners with normal hearing (NH) in 2 tasks. In Task 1, participants identified naturally uttered words that were contrastive in lexical tones. For Task 2, a disyllabic word (yanjing) was manipulated orthogonally, varying in fundamental-frequency (F0) contours and duration patterns. Participants identified each token with the second syllable jing pronounced with Tone 1 (a high level tone) as eyes or with Tone 4 (a high falling tone) as eyeglasses.

Results

CI participants' recognition accuracy was significantly lower than NH listeners' in Task 1. In Task 2, CI participants' reliance on F0 contours was significantly less than that of NH listeners; their reliance on duration patterns, however, was significantly higher than that of NH listeners. Both CI and NH listeners' performance in Task 1 was significantly correlated with their reliance on F0 contours in Task 2.

Conclusion

For pediatric CI recipients, lexical-tone recognition using naturally uttered words is primarily related to their reliance on F0 contours, although duration patterns may be used as an additional cue.

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