Pitch Perception in the First Year of Life, a Comparison of Lexical Tones and Musical Pitch

Abstract

Pitch variation is pervasive in speech, regardless of the language to which infants are exposed. Lexical tone is influenced by general sensitivity to pitch. We examined whether the development in lexical tone perception may develop in parallel with perception of pitch in other cognitive domains namely music. Using a visual fixation paradigm, 100 and one 4- and 12-month-old Dutch infants were tested on their discrimination of Chinese rising and dipping lexical tones as well as comparable three-note musical pitch contours. The 4-month-old infants failed to show a discrimination effect in either condition, whereas the 12-month-old infants succeeded in both conditions. These results suggest that lexical tone perception may reflect and relate to general pitch perception abilities, which may serve as a basis for developing more complex language and musical skills.

Perceptual Improvement of Lexical Tones in Infants: Effects of Tone Language Experience

“…One-year-old Mandarin-learning infants were more accurate at distinguishing acoustically more distinct tone contrasts than was the case for acoustically more similar contrasts (Tsao, 2008). The difference of improvement in the sensitivity to detecting musical pitch in 4- and 12-month-old Dutch-learning infants was congruent with the improved performance of lexical tone perception; thus, older Dutch-learning infants performed better than younger infants when discriminating the Mandarin tone contrast, suggesting that the improved ability to perceive acoustical features of pitch contour is essential for developing lexical tones (Chen et al, 2017). In addition to fundamental frequency, the perceptual weights of spectral and temporal modulation cues of speech signals also vary between tonal and non-tonal language speakers (Xu and Pfingst, 2003; Cabrera et al, 2014).…”

Constraints on Tone Sensitivity in Novel Word Learning by Monolingual and Bilingual Infants: Tone Properties Are More Influential than Tone Familiarity

“…However, monolingual English learners, when primed with referential cues, continue to integrate tone into word meaning up to 18 months of age (Singh et al, 2014 ). Given this, the finding that English learners did not link pitch movements to word meanings is surprising in light of recent studies suggesting that non-tone language (Dutch and English) infants and toddlers become increasingly sensitive to a range of Mandarin lexical tone distinctions with age (Chen and Kager, 2015 ; Liu and Kager, 2015 ; Chen et al, 2017 ; Tsao, 2017 ). However, see also Shi et al ( 2017 ) who found stable discrimination over age of particular Mandarin tone contrasts by French infants.…”

Perceptual Reorganization of Lexical Tones: Effects of Age and Experimental Procedure

“…While these studies showed a decline in discrimination ability for non-tone language learners, others have found enhanced perceptual abilities with increasing age (Chen and Kager, 2016 ; Chen et al, 2017 ; Tsao, 2017 ). Chen and Kager ( 2016 ) as well as Chen et al ( 2017 ) tested Dutch-learning infants' discrimination of the Mandarin low-rising and low-dipping tones.…”

“…While these studies showed a decline in discrimination ability for non-tone language learners, others have found enhanced perceptual abilities with increasing age (Chen and Kager, 2016 ; Chen et al, 2017 ; Tsao, 2017 ). Chen and Kager ( 2016 ) as well as Chen et al ( 2017 ) tested Dutch-learning infants' discrimination of the Mandarin low-rising and low-dipping tones. Different from Mattock et al ( 2008 ) and Yeung et al ( 2013 ), who used familiarization in the initial exposure phase, infants were first habituated by repeatedly being exposed to one of the tones until their looking time had decreased for a predefined percentage.…”