Mandarin Chinese Tone

Perception Based on Visual and

Auditory Input

Presented by Yingying, Grace and Nannan

Introduction
Research significance: tones play a
crucial role in distinguishing lexical
meanings for tone language.
Four tones in Mandarin chinese
phonological system.
Study focus: the effects of tone
perception training with explicit
instruction, PRAAT graph and auditory
stimuli to enhance the training utility on
English native speakers.

(Chun et al., 2013)

The study
Sources: sound sources are recorded by four native Mandarin Chinese
speakers (two male & two female) & Praat graph

Computer lab

Participants: 90 participants, first-year undergraduate students, 3 groups

Procedure: pre-survey, pretest, treatment, immediate posttest and delayed

posttest

one-week training program, consisting of 7 sessions of 30 min each

Two types of questions: tone identification and tone pairs

The study
Research questions:
1. Do PRAAT visualization and explicit instruction have positive effects on tone
perception?
a.PRAAT isolated
b.Explicit instruction isolated
c. PRAAT and explicit instruction paired
2. Does training with PRAAT visualization, explicit instruction, or a combination
of the two have positive effects on longer retention of Mandarin Chinese tones?
3. Does tone perception training promote tone discrimination of Mandarin
Chinese?
4. Which tone pairs are harder to discriminate?
Pre-survey
Participants: 90 first year undergraduates who 1) are native speakers of American English, 2) have never
studied a tonal language, 3) have no musical training background.

native language:
age:
gender:
Have you learned Mandarin Chinese? if yes, when did you start learning and how long have you learned it?
Are you interested in learning Mandarin Chinese?
How you ever learned another foreign language? If yes, what is it and how long have you learned it?
Are you able to identify absolute pitch?
Are you familiar with at least one musical instrument? If yes, when did you start learning and how long have you learned?

Do you listen to Chinese songs or watch Chinese TV shows or movies? How often?
Pre-test
Purpose: the pre-test is designed to precisely measure participants untrained sensitivity to
Chinese tones and paired with simultaneous EEG test to record participants ERPs.

Number of questions: 180 in total, 60 used in pretest, 60 in posttest and 60 in retention test
Treatment
Voice recording
4 Mandarin native speaker: 2 females and 2 males
2 types of questions
Tone identification
Improve categorical perception ?
Tone pairs
correct answers will be shown immediately after the participants
response to a question

Training procedure: 30 participants in each group; 3 groups; one-week

training program, consisting of 7 sessions of 30 min each

Group 1 (control group): only see tone markers

Group 2: Praat graphs + tone markers
Group 3: explicit instruction + Praat graphs + tone markers
Voice recording
Four speakers: 2 males
and 2 females

All come from the the

Mandarin dialect regions
of China (see Figure).

In addition, the four

speakers tone contours
will be analyzed by
PRAAT and proved to fit
the classic description of
Mandarin tones (F0: the
lowest frequency of a
periodic waveform).
(Yang, 2016:4)
Fundamental Frequency (Fx)/F0 Contours:
shows how the pitch of the voice changes
through an utterance which is a key aspect of
its intonation. When we look at an Fx contour
we can see many features: (i) changes in
fundamental frequency that are associated
with pitch accents; (ii) the range of Fx used by
the speaker; (iii) voiced and voiceless
regions; and (iv) regular and irregular
phonation.

(Wang 1999) (Retrieved from http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/courses/spsci/acoustics/week2-2.pdf)

Question type1: tone identification Screen 1 Screen 2

Screen 1 Screen 2

group2
group1 Participants need to judge which tone it is after
hearing the sound.
Screen 1 Screen 2 Group1: instruction on tone markers, no teacher
intervention
Group2: instruction on tone markers and Praat
graph, no teacher intervention
Group3: instruction on tone markers and Praat
graph, explicit instruction/teacher intervention
group3 (metalinguistic instruction, gestures etc. to
manipulate selective attention) throughout the
training session
Question type2: tone pairs
Tone pairs: 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 2/3, 2/4, 3/4 and reversed orders, 1-second break between two tones
Participants would hear a pair of mandarin tones, and then they will be required to respond
according to which two tones they thought they heard.
Immediate and Delayed Posttest
Time: post-test will be conducted immediately after the training program, the
delayed post-test will be conducted a month after the training program
Question type: same with the pretest
Question items: new syllable items, 60 questions, all contrasts between the
four tones covered, randomize the position of the target choice
We perceive speech sounds categoricallythat is to say, we are more
likely to notice the differences between categories than within categories.
Categorical perception (CP) has the following characteristics (Repp,
1984): (1) In the labeling function, there is a sharp boundary between two
categories; (2) in the discrimination function, accuracy peaks at the
category boundary, but is at or near chance level within category; (3) the
discrimination function can be predicted from the identification function.
(Peng et al., 2010) Tone identification
1

Tone pairs
2

Tone
discrimination
3
Data Analysis: analysis of overall results
Analysis of overall results

1. Group Test interaction?

mixed ANOVA of Test (pretest, posttest, retention test) and Group (1, 2 and
3), with Test as the repeated measure

2. Group difference at pretest, posttest, retention test?

one-way ANOVA will be calculated for each Test, with Group as factor/IV

3. Development (pretest posttest retention test) in each group?

one-way repeated measures ANOVA will be calculated for each Group,
with Test as the repeated measure

note: A mixed ANOVA compares the mean differences between groups that
have been split on two "factors" (also known as independent variables),
where one factor is a "within-subjects" factor (test/time) and the other factor is a
"between-subjects" factor (group/treatment).
Data Analysis: tone pair confusions
Which pairs are harder to discriminate?
one-way ANOVA will be calculated for each Test, with tone pair as factor/IV
Data Analysis: performance during training

day1 day7

Question type1

Question type2

Two-way repeated measures ANOVA

References
Burnham, D., Brooker, R., & Reid, A. (2015). The effects of absolute pitch ability and musical training on lexical tone perception.
Psychology of Music, 43(6), 881-897. doi:10.1177/0305735614546359
Chen, F. & Peng, G. (2016). Context Effect in the Categorical Perception of Mandarin Tones, J Sign Process Syst, 82, 25326.
Chun, D. M., Jiang, Y., & vila, N. (2013). Visualization of tone for learning Mandarin Chinese. In J. Levis & K. LeVelle (Eds.).
Proceedings of the 4th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference. Aug. 2012. (pp. 77-89).
Ames, IA: Iowa State University.
Lu, S., Wayland, R. & Kaan, E. (2015). Effects of production training and perception training on lexical tone perception A
behavioral and ERP study. Science Direct, I 624, 28-44
Peng, G., Zheng, H-Y., Gong, T., Yang, R-X., Kong, J-P., and Wang, W. S-Y. (2010). The influence of language experience on
categorical perception of pitch contours. Journal of Phonetics, 38, 616-624.
Wang, Y., Spence, M.M., Jongman, A., & Sereno, J. A. (1999). Training American Listeners to perceive Mandarin tones. Journal
of the Acoustical Society of America, 106, 3649-3658.
Yang, C. (2016). The Acquisition of L2 Mandarin Prosody: From experimental studies to pedagogical practice. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins Publishing Company.