Browsing by Subject "Stress perception"

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Open Access
English and Mandarin native speakers' cue-weighting of lexical stress: Results from MMN and LDN
(2022-09) Zeng, Z.; Liu, L.; Tuninetti, Alba; Peter, V.; Tsao, F. - M.; Mattock, K.
Past research on how listeners weight stress cues such as pitch, duration and intensity has reported two inconsistent patternss: listeners’ weighting conforms to 1) their native language experience (e.g., language rhythmicity, lexical tone), and 2) a general “iambic-trochaic law” (ITL), favouring innate sound groupings in cue perception. This study aims to tease apart the above effects by investigating the weighting of pitch, duration and intensity cues in stress-timed (Australian English) and non-stress-timed and tonal (Taiwan Mandarin) language speaking adults using a mismatch negativity (MMN) multi-feature paradigm. Results show effects that can be explained by language-specific rhythmic influence, but only partially by the ITL. Moreover, these findings revealed cross-linguistic differences indexed by both MMN and late discriminative negativity (LDN) responses at cue and syllable position levels, and thus call for more sophisticated perspectives for existing cue-weighting models.
Open Access
Mandarin and English adults’ cue-weighting of lexical stress
(International Speech Communication Association, 2020) Zeng, Z.; Mattock, K.; Liu, L.; Peter, V.; Tuninetti, Alba; Tsao, F.-M.
Listeners segment speech based on the rhythm of their native language(s) (e.g., stress- vs. syllable-timed, tone vs. non-tone) [1,2]. In English, the perception of speech rhythm relies on analyzing auditory cues pertinent to lexical stress, including pitch, duration and intensity [3]. Focusing on cross-linguistic impact on English lexical stress cue processing, the present study aims to explore English stress cue-weighting by Mandarin-speaking adults (with English adults as control), using an MMN multi-feature paradigm. Preliminary ERP data revealed cross-linguistic perceptual differences to pitch and duration cues, but not to intensity cues in the bisyllabic non-word /dede/. Specifically, while English adults were similarly sensitive to pitch change at the initial and final syllable of the non-word, they were more sensitive to the duration change at the initial syllable. Comparatively, Mandarin adults were similarly sensitive to duration change at each position, but more sensitive to pitch at the final syllable. Lastly, both the Mandarin group and the English group were more sensitive to the intensity sound change at the second syllable. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed.