Vowel development in Mandarin-speaking children

Abstract

To investigate Mandarin vowel development in children, vowel contrastive pairs were created to evaluate vowel discrimination in native Mandarin-speaking children aged 4 to 6. Performance was obtained in quiet and in noise at 5, 0, -5 and -10 dBSNR. Results revealed discrimination of nasalized high front vowels in quiet were significantly worse than other types of vowels, of which discrimination had mostly reached ceiling. In noise (at -10 dBSNR), performance was similar among vowel pairs with similar or distinct vowel heights. However, individual variations were large. Comparisons of performance across noise levels suggested noise level at -10 dBSNR was insufficient to yield PI functions free from ceiling effects for one-third of test items. In summary, the present study suggested Mandarin vowel discrimination had not been fully mastered for the group of children aged 4 to 6. Future studies with larger groups of younger children at more adverse noise levels should be conducted to evaluate the developmental trends of Mandarin vowel development.