Categorical Perception of Lexical Tones and Stops in Mandarin-Speaking Musicians and Nonmusicians

This study investigates the perception of Mandarin lexical tones and stops to examine the degree of overlap between music and language. Eighteen musicians and 21 nonmusicians participated in a typical categorical perception task. Results showed that musicians and nonmusicians had comparable degree o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSAGE open Vol. 14; no. 1
Main Authors Ma, Junzhou, Zhu, Jiaqiang, Yao, Xiaoguang, Chen, Yang
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.01.2024
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
SAGE Publishing
Subjects
Mandarin
stop
musician
categorical perception
lexical tone
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Summary:This study investigates the perception of Mandarin lexical tones and stops to examine the degree of overlap between music and language. Eighteen musicians and 21 nonmusicians participated in a typical categorical perception task. Results showed that musicians and nonmusicians had comparable degree of categorical perception of tones and stops. Compared to nonmusicians, musicians exhibited enhanced sensitivities to within-category lexical tone stimuli. However, this improved ability was not observed in the perception of stops. These findings imply that musical experience strengthens the acuity of subtle low-level acoustic variations between within-category lexical tone stimuli without interfering with the high-level phonological representations of lexical tones, and this facilitatory effect is selective and could not readily extend to stop consonants in native language.
ISSN:2158-2440
2158-2440
DOI:10.1177/21582440241227703