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Electrophysiological correlates of categorical perception of lexical tones by English learners of Mandarin Chinese: an ERP study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2018

GUANNAN SHEN  and
KAREN FROUD
GUANNAN SHEN*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Temple University
KAREN FROUD
Affiliation:
Department of Biobehavioral Sciences, Teachers College, Columbia University
*
Address for correspondence: Guannan Shen, 1808 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19122guannan.shen@temple.edu
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Abstract

This study examines brain responses to boundary effects with respect to Mandarin lexical tone continua for three groups of adult listeners: (1) native English speakers who took advanced Mandarin courses; (2) naïve English speakers; and (3) native Mandarin speakers. A cross-boundary tone pair and a within-category tone pair derived from tonal contrasts (Mandarin Tone 1/Tone 4; Tone 2/Tone 3) with equal physical/acoustical distance were used in an auditory oddball paradigm. For native Mandarin speakers, the cross-category deviant elicited a larger MMN over left hemisphere sensors and larger P300 responses over both hemispheres relative to within-category deviants, suggesting categorical perception of tones at both pre-attentive and attentional stages of processing. In contrast, native English speakers and Mandarin learners did not demonstrate categorical effects. However, learners of Mandarin showed larger P300 responses than the other two groups, suggesting heightened sensitivity to tones and possibly greater attentional resource allocation to tone identification.

Keywords

ERPsMMNP300lexical tonescategorical perceptionsecond language learnersMandarin Chinese
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , March 2019 , pp. 253 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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