Psychological Development and Education ›› 2023, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (4): 513-521.doi: 10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2023.04.07

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The Mechanism of Vowel Influence on Stops Identification in Chinese Monosyllables

MA Xing1,2, LIU Wenli1   

  1. 1. Department of Social Psychology, Zhou Enlai School of Government, Nankai University, Tianjin 300350;
    2. School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871
  • Published:2023-07-19

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Abstract: Three experiments were administered to explore the effects of vowel context on stop identification in Chinese monosyllables. Experiment 1 found that the identification of stop /p/-/t/ series was influenced by vowel context /a/ and /ai/: listeners produced more /t/ responses in /a/ context and produced more /p/ responses in /ai/ context. Experiment 2 used tone analogues of F2 trajectories (the crucial acoustic cue differences between /a/ and /ai/) of vowels /a/ and /ai/ as context sounds to examine whether the context effects in Experiment 1 originated from the spectral contrast between context sounds and target sounds. The results found that the tones affected the identification of stops, but the effect pattern was contrary to the expectation of auditory contrast theory. Experiment 3 chose four vowel stimuli from /a/-/ai/ continuum as context sounds. The first two stimuli were mainly categorized as /a/, the last two stimuli were mainly categorized as /ai/, the middle two stimuli crossed the category boundaries of /a/ and /ai/. The acoustic distance of stimulus pairs within and between categories was equal. Four vowel stimuli exhibited a categorized context effect pattern: Stimulus pairs within category showed similar context effects, and stimulus pair across category showed a greater difference in context effects. The results were consistent with the expectation of phonological mediation theory. These findings indicate that the stop-vowel context effects are mainly due to listeners' speech experience and the category perception of context sounds, rather than the auditory spectral contrast between context sounds and target sounds. The present results support the phonological mediation explanation for monosyllabic context effects.

Key words: context effect, vowels, stops, auditory contrast, phonological mediation

CLC Number: 

  • G442
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