Perception of Similar and Dissimilar Lexical Tones by Non-Tone-Learning Infants

This study examined the perception of Mandarin lexical tones by non-tone-learning infants. We tested French-learning 4-, 8-, and 11-month-olds on Tone 2 (rising) versus Tone 3 (dipping), the most acoustically similar contrast in Mandarin, and on Tone 1 (high) versus Tone 4 (falling), acoustically more dissimilar contrast. We hypothesized that sensitivity should decline with age for the similar contrast, and the dissimilar contrast should remain more discriminable. Infants were habituated to one tone and tested with the same tone versus the contrastive tone. Results showed that the dissimilar T1-T4 contrast was consistently discriminated by all three ages, whereas the discrimination of the similar T2-T3 contrast revealed a tendency to decline over the ages. These results suggest that relative to consonants and vowels, perceptual sensitivity to lexical tones remains stronger in non-tone-learning infants. Discrimination of lexical tones is affected by both acoustic salience and perceptual attunement to the native-language phonology.