The role of linguistic experience in the hemispheric processing of lexical tone

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Issue Date
2004-06-01Author
Wang, Yue
Behne, Dawn M.
Jongman, Allard
Sereno, Joan A.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This study investigated hemispheric lateralization of Mandarin tone. Four groups of listeners were examined:
native Mandarin listeners, English–Mandarin bilinguals, Norwegian listeners with experience
with Norwegian tone, and American listeners with no tone experience. Tone pairs were dichotically
presented and listeners identified which tone they heard in each ear. For the Mandarin listeners, 57% of
the total errors occurred in the left ear, indicating a right-ear (left-hemisphere) advantage. The English–
Mandarin bilinguals exhibited nativelike patterns, with 56% left-ear errors. However, no ear advantage
was found for the Norwegian or American listeners (48 and 47% left-ear errors, respectively). Results
indicate left-hemisphere dominance of Mandarin tone by native and proficient bilingual listeners,
whereas nonnative listeners show no evidence of lateralization, regardless of their familiarity with
lexical tone.
Description
This is the publisher's version, made available with the permission of the publisher.
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Citation
Wang, Y., Behne, D., Jongman, A., and Sereno, J. The role of linguistic experience in the hemispheric processing of lexical tone. Applied Psycholinguistics 25 (2004), 449–466. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0142716404001213
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