Chan May Pik Yu, Kuang Jianjing
Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6228, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2023 Aug 1;154(2):819-830. doi: 10.1121/10.0020565.
This study explores the effect of native language and musicality on voice quality cue integration in pitch perception. Previous work by Cui and Kang [(2019). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 146(6), 4086-4096] found no differences in pitch perception strategies between English and Mandarin speakers. The present study asks whether Cantonese listeners may perform differently, as Cantonese consists of multiple level tones. Participants completed two experiments: (i) a forced choice pitch classification experiment involving four spectral slope permutations that vary in fo across an 11 step continuum, and (ii) the MBEMA test that quantifies listeners' musicality. Results show that Cantonese speakers do not differ from English and Mandarin speakers in terms of overall categoricity and perceptual shift, that Cantonese speakers do not have advantages in musicality, and that musicality is a significant predictor for participants' pitch perception strategies. Listeners with higher musicality scores tend to rely more on fo cues than voice quality cues compared to listeners with lower musicality. These findings support the notion that voice quality integration in pitch perception is not language specific, and may be a universal psychoacoustic phenomenon at a non-lexical level.
本研究探讨母语和音乐性对音高感知中语音质量线索整合的影响。崔和康此前的研究[（2019年）。《美国声学学会杂志》146(6)，4086 - 4096]发现，说英语者和说普通话者在音高感知策略上没有差异。本研究提出疑问，由于粤语包含多个声调，说粤语的听众表现是否会有所不同。参与者完成了两项实验：（i）一项强制选择音高分类实验，涉及四种频谱斜率排列，其基频（f0）在11步连续统中变化；（ii）MBEMA测试，用于量化听众的音乐性。结果表明，说粤语者在整体范畴性和感知偏移方面与说英语者和说普通话者没有差异，说粤语者在音乐性方面没有优势，并且音乐性是参与者音高感知策略的一个重要预测指标。与音乐性得分较低的听众相比，音乐性得分较高的听众在音高感知时往往更多地依赖基频线索而非语音质量线索。这些发现支持了这样一种观点，即音高感知中的语音质量整合并非特定于某种语言，可能是一种非词汇层面的普遍心理声学现象。
