Past research on categorical perception of lexical tone has produced contradictory results. In Experiment 1 tonal (Mandarin, Vietnamese) and non-tonal (Australian) adults were tested for identification and discrimination on speech and non-speech (sine-wave) tone continua. Tonal language speakers’ category boundaries and discrimination peaks were near the middle of the asymmetric continuum, wher...

The performance of video tone-mapping operators is investigated in a rating experiment using two criteria: overall quality and fidelity to real-world experience. The study includes a tone-curve used in commercial cameras, rarely considered in tone-mapping evaluation studies. The quality is measured for a range of parameter settings, revealing the importance of parameter fine-tuning and often un...

Phonological awareness has been shown to play a significant role in language learning. The present study examined the effect of improving pitch identification ability and tonal awareness on Cantonese tone word learning. A group of native English listeners received three days of Cantonese tone training to first improve their tone perception. They then learned the meanings of 15 vocabulary items ...

This study investigated the auditory-visual integration of talker gender in the perception of tone variances. Two experiments were conducted to evaluate how listeners use the information of talker gender to adjust their expectation towards speakers’ pitch range and uncover intended tonal targets in Cantonese tone perception. Results from an audio-only tone identification task showed that tone c...