Normal-hearing listeners perceive Mandarin tones via fine structure, impaired ones via envelope

Evidence

The median tone perception performance was 97.2, 86.5, and 62.8 % correct, respectively for the three groups. The performance slightly reduced for the subjects with SNHL, while the ANSD subjects had dramatic decreases in their tone perception performance with a very large individual variability. The right panel of Fig. 1 plots the mean percentages and standard deviations of tone perception responses to the chimeric tone tokens. The subjects with NH relied on FS nearly entirely to perceive lexical tones regardless of E. In comparison with the NH subjects, the subjects with SNHL depended more on E cues to perceive tones, as they had impaired ability to use FS. In contrast to the finding in the NH and SNHL subjects, only 26.5 % of the tone responses were consistent with the FS of the chimeric tone tokens for the ANSD subjects, indicating that the ANSD subjects had more severely impaired ability to use FS in tone perception. On the other hand, the ANSD subjects relied more heavily on E cues in perceiving lexical tones, indicating that the ability of the ANSD subjects to use E cues for lexical tone perception still remained at a reasonable level. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 3388

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Connects to the psychoacoustics of temporal fine structure (TFS) sensitivity in cochlear-implant research and to tonal language processing studies.
• CANDY: Neat quantitative result: median tone accuracy drops from 97.2% to 62.8% in auditory neuropathy — a compact, striking figure.

Related

• Fine structure dominates lexical tone perception in normal hearing but is lost in ANSD (similarity 0.93)
• Fine-structure cues carry Mandarin tone perception, not envelope cues (similarity 0.92)
• Normal hearing relies on fine structure for tones; neural disease forces reliance on envelope (similarity 0.89)
• Mandarin tone perception accuracy falls from 97 percent to 63 percent in auditory neuropathy (similarity 0.88)
• Increasing sensorineural hearing loss shifts tone perception from fine structure to envelope cues (similarity 0.87)
• SNHL impairs fine-structure use through poor frequency resolution while ANSD impairs temporal resolution (similarity 0.82)
• Valence perception relies solely on pitch, unaffected by hearing loss or aids (similarity 0.82)
• Impaired temporal resolution degrades fine-structure pitch processing more than reduced frequency selectivity does (similarity 0.82)
• Sensorineural and auditory neuropathy hearing losses impair opposite spectral and temporal abilities (similarity 0.81)
• Manipulating envelope and fine structure separately reveals their competing roles in tone perception. (similarity 0.81)
• DLF thresholds reflect temporal fine structure processing, not frequency selectivity (similarity 0.81)
• Temporal envelope suffices for speech while fine structure carries pitch information (similarity 0.80)
• Amplitude-modulated tones gain an extra detection cue that noise and FM tones lack (similarity 0.79)
• Auditory neuropathy presents with milder hearing loss than sensorineural loss yet worse temporal processing (similarity 0.79)