Separating the Novel Speech Sound Perception of Lexical Tone Chimeras From Their Auditory Signal Manipulations: Behavioral and Electroencephalographic Evidence

Abstract

Previous research has shown the novelty of lexical-tone chimeras (artificially constructed speech sounds created by combining normal speech sounds of a given language) to native speakers of the language from which the chimera components were drawn. However, the source of such novelty remains unclear. Our goal in this study was to separate the effects of chimeric tonal novelty in Mandarin speech from the effects of auditory signal manipulations. We recruited 20 native speakers of Mandarin and constructed two sets of lexical-tone chimeras by interchanging the envelopes and fine structures of both a falling/yi⁴/and a rising/yi²/Mandarin tone through 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 16, 32, and 64 auditory filter banks. We conducted pitch-perception ability tasks via a two-alternative, forced-choice paradigm to produce behavioral (versus physiological) pitch perception data. We also obtained electroencephalographic measurements through the scalp-recorded frequency-following response (FFR). Analyses of variances and post hoc Greenhouse-Geisser procedures revealed that the differences observed in the participants’ reaction times and FFR measurements were attributable primarily to chimeric novelty rather than signal manipulation effects. These findings can be useful in assessing neuroplasticity and developing speech-processing strategies.

Keywords

electroencephalographic choice reaction time auditory perception auditory chimera frequency-following response lexical-tone

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Q. J.

Zeng

F. G.

Shannon

R. V.

Soli

S. D.

(1998). Importance of tonal envelope cues in Chinese speech recognition. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 104(1), 505–510. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.423251

Greenwood

D. D.

(1990). A cochlear frequency-position function for several species—29 years later. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 87(6), 2592–2605. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.399052

Hornickel

Kraus

(2013). Unstable representation of sound: A biological marker of dyslexia. The Journal of Neuroscience : The Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 33(8), 3500–3504. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4205-12.2013

Hou

(2018). Role of short-time acoustic temporal fine structure cues in sentence recognition for normal-hearing listeners. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 143(2), EL127. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5024817

Determan

S. C.

Dong

Beeve

A. T.

Collins

J. E.

Gai

(2020). Spectral and temporal envelope cues for human and automatic speech recognition in noise. Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, 21(1), 73–87. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10162-019-00737-z

Jeng

F.-C.

Dickman

Montgomery-Reagan

Tong

Lin

C.-D.

(2011). Cross-linguistic comparison of frequency-following responses to voice pitch in American and Chinese neonates and adults. Ear and Hearing, 32(6), 699–707. https://doi.org/10.1097/AUD.0b013e31821cc0df

Jeng

F.-C.

Lin

C.-D.

Sabol

J. T.

Hollister

G. R.

Chou

M.-S.

Chen

C.-H.

Kenny

J. E.

Tsou

Y.-A.

(2016). Pitch perception and frequency-following responses elicited by lexical-tone chimeras. International Journal of Audiology, 55(1), 53–63. https://doi.org/10.3109/14992027.2015.1072774

Kraus

Nicol

(2005). Brainstem origins for cortical ‘what’ and ‘where’ pathways in the auditory system. Trends in Neurosciences, 28(4), 176–181. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tins.2005.02.003

Kraus

Lindley

Colegrove

Krizman

Otto-Meyer

Thompson

E. C.

White-Schwoch

(2017). The neural legacy of a single concussion. Neuroscience Letters, 646, 21–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2017.03.008

10.

Krishnan

Gandour

J. T.

Bidelman

G. M.

Swaminathan

(2009). Experience-dependent neural representation of dynamic pitch in the brainstem. Neuroreport, 20(4), 408–413. https://doi.org/10.1097/WNR.0b013e3283263000.

11.

Krishnan

Yisheng

Gandour

Cariani

(2005). Encoding of pitch in the human brainstem is sensitive to language experience. Brain Research. Cognitive Brain Research, 25(1), 161–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogbrainres.2005.05.004

12.

Lomber

S. G.

Malhotra

(2008). Double dissociation of “what” and “where” processing in auditory cortex. Nature Neuroscience, 11(5), 609–616. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2108

13.

Oxenham

A. J.

(2018). How we hear: The perception and neural coding of sound. Annual Review of Psychology, 69, 27–50. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011635

14.

Russo

N. M.

Hornickel

Nicol

Zecker

Kraus

(2010). Biological changes in auditory function following training in children with autism spectrum disorders. Behavioral and Brain Functions, 6(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-9081-6-60.

15.

Shannon

R. V.

Zeng

F. G.

Kamath

Wygonski

Ekelid

(1995). Speech recognition with primarily temporal cues. Science (New York, N.Y.), 270(5234), 303–304. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.270.5234.303

16.

Smith

Z. M.

Delgutte

Oxenham

A. J.

(2002). Chimaeric sounds reveal dichotomies in auditory perception. Nature, 416(6876), 87–90. https://doi.org/10.1038/416087a

17.

Wang

W.-J.

X.-H.

(2008). The dual-pathway model of auditory signal processing. Neuroscience Bulletin, 24(3), 173–182. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12264-008-1226-8

18.

Warnecke

Peng

Z. E.

Litovsky

R. Y.

(2020). The impact of temporal fine structure and signal envelope on auditory motion perception. PloS One, 15(8), e0238125. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238125

19.

Pfingst

B. E.

(2003). Relative importance of temporal envelope and fine structure in lexical-tone perception. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 114(6 Pt 1), 3024–3027. Pt 1), https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1623786