Caicai Zhang

TL;DR: The mismatch negativity elicited by lexical pitch contrast was lateralized to the left hemisphere, which is consistent with the pattern of function-dependent brain asymmetry (i.e., left hemisphere lateralization for speech processing) in nontonal language speakers.

TL;DR: The comparison between Cantonese and Mandarin listeners' performances reveals an interaction of intertalker variations and the types of tone contrasts in each language that has relatively limited effect on Mandarin tone perception.

TL;DR: Examination of the effects of four context conditions in the multi-talker condition in Cantonese shows that raising and lowering the F0 of speech contexts change the perception of identical stimuli from mid level tone to low and high level tone, whereas nonspeech contexts only mildly increase the identification preference, supporting the speech-specific mechanism of tone normalization.

TL;DR: This article examined the event-related potentials (ERPs) during the covert production of Mandarin T3 sandhi in real words and pseudowords and found that the second syllable elicited greater P2 amplitude in T3-+-T3 sequences than in T2-plus-t3 sequences.

TL;DR: Speech contexts induce more efficient talker normalization during the activation of potential lexical candidates and lead to more accurate selection of the intended word in spoken word identification.