Götz Antonia, Yeung H Henny, Krasotkina Anna, Schwarzer Gudrun, Höhle Barbara
Linguistics Department, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany.
Department of Linguistics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada.
Front Psychol. 2018 Apr 6;9:477. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00477. eCollection 2018.
Findings on the perceptual reorganization of lexical tones are mixed. Some studies report good tone discrimination abilities for all tested age groups, others report decreased or enhanced discrimination with increasing age, and still others report U-shaped developmental curves. Since prior studies have used a wide range of contrasts and experimental procedures, it is unclear how specific task requirements interact with discrimination abilities at different ages. In the present work, we tested German and Cantonese adults on their discrimination of Cantonese lexical tones, as well as German-learning infants between 6 and 18 months of age on their discrimination of two specific Cantonese tones using two different types of experimental procedures. The adult experiment showed that German native speakers can discriminate between lexical tones, but native Cantonese speakers show significantly better performance. The results from German-learning infants suggest that 6- and 18-month-olds discriminate tones, while 9-month-olds do not, supporting a U-shaped developmental curve. Furthermore, our results revealed an effect of methodology, with good discrimination performance at 6 months after habituation but not after familiarization. These results support three main conclusions. First, habituation can be a more sensitive procedure for measuring infants' discrimination than familiarization. Second, the previous finding of a U-shaped curve in the discrimination of lexical tones is further supported. Third, discrimination abilities at 18 months appear to reflect mature perceptual sensitivity to lexical tones, since German adults also discriminated the lexical tones with high accuracy.
关于词汇声调感知重组的研究结果不一。一些研究报告称，所有接受测试的年龄组都有良好的声调辨别能力，另一些研究则报告随着年龄增长辨别能力下降或增强，还有一些研究报告呈U形发展曲线。由于先前的研究使用了广泛的对比和实验程序，目前尚不清楚特定的任务要求如何与不同年龄的辨别能力相互作用。在本研究中，我们使用两种不同类型的实验程序，测试了德国成年人对粤语词汇声调的辨别能力，以及6至18个月大学习德语的婴儿对两种特定粤语声调的辨别能力。成人实验表明，以德语为母语的人能够辨别词汇声调，但以粤语为母语的人表现明显更好。学习德语的婴儿的测试结果表明，6个月和18个月大的婴儿能够辨别声调，而9个月大的婴儿则不能，这支持了U形发展曲线。此外，我们的结果揭示了方法的影响，即习惯化后6个月时有良好的辨别表现，而熟悉化后则没有。这些结果支持三个主要结论。第一，与熟悉化相比，习惯化可能是测量婴儿辨别的更敏感方法。第二，先前关于词汇声调辨别呈U形曲线的发现得到了进一步支持。第三，18个月大时的辨别能力似乎反映了对词汇声调成熟的感知敏感性，因为德国成年人也能高精度地辨别词汇声调。
