The Development of Categorical Perception of Mandarin Tones in Four- to Seven-Year-Old Children

Autor/inn/en	Chen, Fei; Peng, Gang; Yan, Nan; Wang, Lan
Titel	The Development of Categorical Perception of Mandarin Tones in Four- to Seven-Year-Old Children
Quelle	In: Journal of Child Language, 44 (2017) 6, S.1413-1434 (22 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0305-0009
Schlagwörter	Mandarin Chinese; Young Children; Adults; Age Differences; Language Skills; Tone Languages; Auditory Discrimination; Correlation; Perceptual Development + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Frühe Kindheit; Age; Difference; Age difference; Altersunterschied; Language skill; Sprachkompetenz; Tonsprache; Korrelation; Wahrnehmungsentwicklung
Abstract	To track the course of development in children's fine-grained perception of Mandarin tones, the present study explored how categorical perception (CP) of Mandarin tones emerges along age among 70 four- to seven-year-old children and 16 adults. Prominent discrimination peaks were found for both the child and the adult groups, and they were well aligned with the corresponding identification crossovers. Moreover, six-year-olds showed a much narrower width (i.e. a sharper slope) compared to younger children, and have already acquired adult-like identification competence of Mandarin high-level and mid-rising tones. Although the ability to discriminate within-category tone pairs did not change, the between-category discrimination accuracies were positively correlated with chronological ages among child participants. We assume that the perceptual refinement of Mandarin tones in young children may be driven by an accumulation of perceptual development from the tonal information of the ambient sound input. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01