Discrimination and identification of lexical tones and consonants in Mandarin-speaking children using cochlear implants

Abstract

Mandarin-speaking adults using cochlear implants (CI) experience more difficulties in perceiving lexical tones than consonants. This problem may result from the fact that CIs provide relatively sufficient temporal envelope information for consonant perception in quiet environments, but do not convey the fine spectro-temporal information considered to be necessary for accurate pitch perception. Another possibility is that Mandarin speakers with post-lingual hearing loss have developed languagespecific use of these acoustic cues, impeding lexical tone processing under CI conditions. To investigate this latter hypothesis, syllable discrimination and word identification abilities for Mandarin consonants (place and manner) and lexical-tone contrasts (tones 1 vs. 3 and 1 vs. 2) were measured in 15 Mandarin-speaking children using CIs and agematched children with normal hearing (NH). In the discrimination task, only children using CIs exhibited significantly lower scores for consonant place contrasts compared to other contrasts, including lexical tones. In the word identification task, children using CIs showed lower performance for all contrasts compared to children with NH, but they both showed specific difficulties with tone 1 vs. 2 contrasts. This study suggests that Mandarin-speaking children using CIs are able to discriminate and identify lexical tones and, perhaps more surprisingly, have more difficulties when discriminating consonants.

Discrimination of consonants in quiet and in noise in Mandarin-speaking children with normal hearing

“…were not reported. Cabrera et al [10] examined discrimination between manner and place of articulation contrasts in quiet for a group of children using CIs and a group of children with NH. The results showed children with CIs had significantly more difficulty in discriminating consonant place contrasts compared to other contrasts.…”

“…No significant difference was observed between children with NH and HL when consonants were contrasted by voicing and aspiration, although results from individual consonant contrasts were not reported. Cabrera et al [ 10 ] examined discrimination between manner and place of articulation contrasts in quiet for a group of children using CIs and a group of children with NH. The results showed children with CIs had significantly more difficulty in discriminating consonant place contrasts compared to other contrasts.…”

Voice Emotion Recognition by Mandarin-Speaking Children with Cochlear Implants

“…Studies on tone recognition in Cantonese-speaking children with CIs found that such children have a great difficulty with lexical tone perception (Ciocca et al 2002; Lee et al 2002). Mandarin-speaking children with CIs had marked deficits in tone recognition (Mao & Xu 2017; Peng et al 2017; Cabrera et al 2019; Hong et al 2019) and in consonant recognition (Cabrera et al 2019; Hong et al 2019). Studies on tone production in Mandarin-speaking children with CIs showed that the tone patterns were produced imperfectly by children with CIs (Peng et al 2004; Xu et al 2004; Tang et al 2019), but early implantation helped them to develop more normal lexical tone categories (Tang et al 2019).…”