Acoustic cues on Cantonese tone perception in quiet and in noise

Abstract

The present study systematically investigate the effect of the three temporal cues, including the amplitude contour cue, the periodicity cue, and the temporal fine structure cue, on Cantonese tone perception with different number of frequency bands in quiet and in different types of noise. Synthesized stimuli with all possible combinations of these three cues were presented for identification to twenty young normal-hearing listeners, all native speakers of Cantonese. Results showed that listeners had more difficulty in identifying tone height than tone shape in the original stimuli, particularly in noise condition. Masking effect in two-talker babble is also found to be greater than that in speech-shaped noise. The results of our study also suggested the strength and weakness of each temporal cue for Cantonese tone perception. Temporal fine structure cue is the best cue among the three but its superiority deteriorated with increasing number of bands. Neither periodicity cue nor amplitude contour cue is an effective cue due to their low accuracy rates and high susceptibility to noise. Yet they are better than TFS for the perception of falling tones in quiet. Hence characteristics of cues should also be taken in consideration when designing cochlear implant processing strategies for Cantonese-speaking users.