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Intonation has many perceptually significant functions in language that contribute to speech recognition. This study aims to investigate whether intonation cues affect the unmasking of Mandarin Chinese speech in the presence of interfering sounds. Specifically, intelligibility of multi-tone Mandarin Chinese sentences with maskers consisting of either two-talker speech or steady-state noise was measured in three (flattened, typical, and exaggerated) intonation conditions. Different from most of the previous studies, the present study only manipulate and modify the intonation information but preserve tone information. The results showed that recognition of the final keywords in multi-tone Mandarin Chinese sentences was much better under the original F0 contour condition than the decreased F0 contour or exaggerated F0 contour conditions whenever there was a noise or speech masker, and an exaggerated F0 contour reduced the intelligibility of Mandarin Chinese more under the speech masker condition than that under the noise masker condition. These results suggested that speech in a tone language (Mandarin Chinese) is harder to understand when the intonation is unnatural, even if the tone information is preserved, and an unnatural intonation contour decreases releasing Mandarin Chinese speech from masking, especially in a multi-person talking environment., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Objective: To evaluate the effects of implant age and duration of implantation on development of Mandarin tone perception in paediatric cochlear implant recipients., Design: Retrospective cross-sectional evaluation of tone perception, as assessed with the Mandarin Early Speech Perception test at 3, 6, 12, 24, 36 and 48 months after activation., Study Sample: A total of 143 subjects, 60 girls and 83 boys unilaterally implanted at 1-4 years of age comprised the sample. All the subjects were implanted with devices from one of three manufacturers., Results: Regardless of implant age, approximately 80% of the subjects obtained overall tone discrimination scores significantly above chance by 4 years after implantation, and average discrimination accuracy increased from approximately 68% to 79%. Acoustically distinct tones 1 and 4 were discriminated and recognised more accurately, while less distinct tones 2 and 3 were discriminated and recognised less accurately. Large individual differences in performance were evident., Conclusions: Most Mandarin-speaking paediatric CI recipients discriminate tones above chance at 5 years of age with accuracy comparable to that of children with normal hearing at 2 years of age. Modest benefits of early implantation are evident.

Objective: The present study aimed to measure bimodal benefits and probe their underlying mechanisms in Mandarin-speaking cochlear implant (CI) subjects who had contralateral residual acoustic hearing., Design: The subjects recognised words or phonemes from the Mandarin Lexical Neighborhood Test in noise at a 10-dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with acoustic stimulation, electric stimulation or the combined bimodal stimulation., Study Sample: Thirteen Mandarin-speaking subjects wore a CI in one ear and had residual acoustic hearing in the contralateral ear. Six of the subjects (5.2-13.0 years) had pre-lingual onset of severe hearing loss, and seven of them (8.6-45.8 years) had post-lingual onset of severe hearing loss., Results: Both groups of subjects produced a significant bimodal benefit in word recognition in noise. Consonants and tones accounted for the bimodal benefit. The bimodal integration efficiency was negatively correlated with the duration of deafness in the implanted ear for vowel recognition but positively correlated with CI or bimodal experience for consonant recognition., Conclusions: The present results support preservation of residual acoustic hearing, early cochlear implantation and continuous use of bimodal hearing for subjects who have significant residual hearing in the non-implanted ear.

The present study focused on the identification of emotions in cross-cultural conditions on different continents and among subjects with divergent language backgrounds. The aim was to investigate whether the perception of the basic emotions from nonsense vocal samples was universal, dependent on voice quality, musicality, and/or gender. Listening tests for 350 participants were conducted on location in a variety of cultures: China, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, Russia, Sweden, and the USA. The results suggested that the voice quality parameters played a role in the identification of emotions without the linguistic content. Cultural background may affect the interpretation of the emotions more than the presumed universality. Musical interest tended to facilitate emotion identification. No gender differences were found.

Although the cochlear implant has been widely acknowledged as the most successful neural prosthesis, only a fraction of hearing-impaired people who can potentially benefit from a cochlear implant have actually received one due to its limited awareness, accessibility, and affordability. To help overcome these limitations, a 26-electrode cochlear implant has been developed to receive China's Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) approval in 2011 and Conformité Européenne (CE) Marking in 2012. The present article describes design philosophy, system specification, and technical verification of the Nurotron device, which includes advanced digital signal processing and 4 current sources with multiple amplitude resolutions that not only are compatible with perceptual capability but also allow interleaved or simultaneous stimulation. The article also presents 3-year longitudinal evaluation data from 60 human subjects who have received the Nurotron device. The objective measures show that electrode impedance decreased within the first month of device use, but was stable until a slight increase at the end of two years. The subjective loudness measures show that electric stimulation threshold was stable while the maximal comfort level increased over the 3 years. Mandarin sentence recognition increased from the pre-surgical 0%-correct score to a plateau of about 80% correct with 6-month use of the device. Both indirect and direct comparisons indicate indistinguishable performance differences between the Nurotron system and other commercially available devices. The present 26-electrode cochlear implant has already helped to lower the price of cochlear implantation in China and will likely contribute to increased cochlear implant access and success in the rest of the world. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled ., (Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Conclusion: The psychometric characteristics of Standard-Chinese lexical neighborhood test (LNT) confirmed the lexical effects of the four word categories. The established normative baseline can be used in evaluating the word-recognition performance of the hearing-impaired listeners., Objectives: The purpose of the present study was to examine the psychometric characteristics and evaluate the reliability of Standard-Chinese LNT in children and adults., Methods: Twenty-six normal-hearing adults and 13 normal-hearing children were recruited. Word recognition was tested with the Standard-Chinese LNT materials that consisted of four types of word list: monosyllable easy words, monosyllable hard words, disyllable easy words, and disyllable hard words., Results: The thresholds at 50% correct performance for the easy word lists and disyllable word lists were lower than those for the hard word lists and monosyllable word lists, respectively (all p < 0.001). The slopes for disyllable words were steeper than the monosyllable words (p < 0.05). In addition, the recognition threshold of the four categories for children was higher than that for adults (all p < 0.05). The critical difference was on average 26.6% for adults and 30.0% for children.

Purpose: In this study, the authors examined the validity of using materials from 2 nonregional yet mutually intelligible dialects to evaluate an individual's speech recognition threshold (SRT) and word recognition (WR) abilities and whether a speaker of 1 dialect could accurately administer and score materials in the other dialect., Method: Previously created SRT and WR materials were presented to 32 Mandarin listeners with normal hearing: 16 speakers of Mainland Mandarin and 16 speakers of Taiwan Mandarin. Hearing abilities were examined using SRT and WR materials created for speakers from 2 different regional dialects. Presentation of the materials occurred during 2 test sessions, counterbalanced across material and listener dialect. Listener responses were evaluated by 2 judges; 1 spoke Mainland Mandarin, and the other spoke Taiwan Mandarin., Results: For the SRT and WR results, differences in listener performance were statistically significant across material and listener dialect, with threshold differences of less than 2 dB HL when collapsed across session. The interscorer percentage of agreement was 99.5% for SRT and 99.1% for WR testing., Conclusion: Testing with materials in a different regional dialect does have a measurable impact on SRT and WR performance. However, this difference, though reliable, is small enough to have a negligible impact on clinical findings.

The study investigated the phonological awareness abilities of Cantonese-speaking pre-schoolers with cochlear implants. Participants were 15 Cantonese-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) aged 3.08-6.10, chronological-age-matched with 15 children with normal hearing. Each participant performed 10 tasks evaluating different levels of phonological awareness abilities and phonological knowledge. The results showed that pre-schoolers with cochlear implants and their normal hearing peers had similar levels of syllable awareness, phoneme awareness and rhyme awareness. However, cochlear implant users showed significantly poorer performance on tone awareness and phonological knowledge tasks than their normal hearing peers. Cantonese-speaking pre-schoolers with cochlear implants were able to develop phonological awareness. However, the cochlear implants might not provide enough tonal information for children with hearing impairment for tonal lexical comprehension. Incomplete speech and language stimulation may affect phonological knowledge development in Cantonese-speaking pre-schoolers with cochlear implants.

Conclusions: A set of Chinese Mandarin monosyllable test lists with good reliability and sensitivity was established., Objectives: The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate the equivalence of a group of monosyllable lists., Methods: A genetic algorithm was adopted to reorganize the material based on the Phoneme Allocation Table; 10 lists with 25 monosyllabic test items in each were generated. A two-factor design was used for the equivalence evaluation test. A total of 80 normal-hearing and native Mandarin-speaking university students (40 males and 40 females) participated in the trial. Every subject was tested with all 10 lists in sequence at 5 presentation levels (-5, 0, 5, 10, and 15 dB HL). Performance-intensity (P-I) function of each list was fit before P-I curve slope and recognition threshold were calculated., Results: Equivalence evaluation results indicated good psychophysical equivalence between the 10 lists except for list 2. List 9 has a reused item. After the elimination of lists 2 and 9, multivariate ANOVA revealed a good equivalence between the remaining eight lists (p = 0.136). The mean threshold of eight equivalent lists was 10.32 ± 0.38 dB HL, while the mean slope was 5.00 ± 0.29%/dB.

Objective: To develop and evaluate the Mandarin speech signal content on the acceptable noise level (ANL) test in listeners with normal hearing in mainland China., Design: The Mandarin ANL tests were conducted using three different sets of Mandarin running speech materials which were chosen from textbooks for primary school, secondary school, and high school, respectively. For each discourse, two ANL measurements were obtained and averaged for each experimental condition using ANL test procedures., Study Sample: Thirty-one normal-hearing listeners participated in this study., Results: There were significant differences for ANLs among the normal-hearing listeners, but no differences were found for MCLs and ANLs for the three sets of test materials. The Pearson correlations suggested significant correlations between MCL and ANL among the three test materials; also the results showed that the correlation coefficient between MCL-ANL of the primary material was much better than other two materials., Conclusions: (1) The contents of different Mandarin running speeches may not affect the acceptable noise level in Mandarin normal-hearing listeners; (2) The running speech selected from the primary school ought to be used as the Mandarin acceptable noise level test material to evaluate the outcomes of hearing aid fitting.

Objectives: Because of difficulties associated with pediatric speech testing, most pediatric cochlear implant (CI) speech studies necessarily involve basic and simple perceptual tasks. There are relatively few studies regarding Mandarin-speaking pediatric CI users' perception of more difficult speech materials (e.g., words and sentences produced by multiple talkers). Difficult speech materials and tests necessarily require older pediatric CI users, who may have different etiologies of hearing loss, duration of deafness, CI experience. The present study investigated how pediatric CI patient demographics influence speech recognition performance with relatively difficult test materials and methods., Methods: In this study, open-set recognition of multi-talker (two males and two females) Mandarin Chinese disyllables and sentences were measured in 37 Mandarin-speaking pediatric CI users. Subjects were grouped according to etiology of deafness and previous acoustic hearing experience. Group 1 subjects were all congenitally deafened with little-to-no acoustic hearing experience. Group 2 subjects were not congenitally deafened and had substantial acoustic hearing experience prior to implantation. Multiple linear regression analyses were performed within each group using subject demographics such as age at implantation and age at testing., Results: Pediatric CI performance was generally quite good. For Group 1, mean performance was 82.3% correct for disyllables and 82.8% correct for sentences. For Group 2, mean performance was 76.6% correct for disyllables and 84.4% correct for sentences. For Group 1, multiple linear regression analyses showed that age at implantation predicted disyllable recognition, and that age at implantation and age at testing predicted sentence recognition. For Group 2, neither age at implantation nor age at testing predicted disyllable or sentence recognition. Performance was significantly better with the female than with the male talkers., Conclusions: Consistent with previous studies' findings, early implantation provided a significant advantage for profoundly deaf children. Performance for both groups was generally quite good for the relatively difficult materials and tasks, suggesting that open-set word and sentence recognition may be useful in evaluating speech performance with older pediatric CI users. Differences in disyllable recognition between Groups 1 and 2 may reflect differences in adaptation to electric stimulation. The Group 1 subjects developed speech patterns exclusively via electric stimulation, while the Group 2 subjects adapted to electric stimulation relative to previous acoustic patterns., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Objective: The purposes of the present study were to establish the Standard-Chinese version of Lexical Neighborhood Test (LNT) and to examine the lexical and age effects on spoken-word recognition in normal-hearing children., Methods: Six lists of monosyllabic and six lists of disyllabic words (20 words/list) were selected from the database of daily speech materials for normal-hearing (NH) children of ages 3-5 years. The lists were further divided into "easy" and "hard" halves according to the word frequency and neighborhood density in the database based on the theory of Neighborhood Activation Model (NAM). Ninety-six NH children (age ranged between 4.0 and 7.0 years) were divided into three different age groups of 1-year intervals. Speech-perception tests were conducted using the Standard-Chinese monosyllabic and disyllabic LNT., Results: The inter-list performance was found to be equivalent and inter-rater reliability was high with 92.5-95% consistency. Results of word-recognition scores showed that the lexical effects were all significant. Children scored higher with disyllabic words than with monosyllabic words. "Easy" words scored higher than "hard" words. The word-recognition performance also increased with age in each lexical category. A multiple linear regression analysis showed that neighborhood density, age, and word frequency appeared to have increasingly more contributions to Chinese word recognition., Conclusion: The results of the present study indicated that performances of Chinese word recognition were influenced by word frequency, age, and neighborhood density, with word frequency playing a major role. These results were consistent with those in other languages, supporting the application of NAM in the Chinese language. The development of Standard-Chinese version of LNT and the establishment of a database of children of 4-6 years old can provide a reliable means for spoken-word recognition test in children with hearing impairment., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence and etiology of hearing loss in primary and middle school students in the Hubei province of China. During a 2-year period, 504348 students were examined by a speech audiometry test, and 813 deaf students were detected. Among the 813 deaf students, 232 cases were diagnosed with congenital deafness and 560 cases had acquired deafness, among which 276 cases had aminoglycoside-antibiotic-induced deafness. The severity of deafness could be further ascertained in 804 other students, with 402 profound, 363 severe, 21 moderate and 18 mild deafness cases. The age at deafness onset of most students was under 3 years. The prevalence of congenital and acquired deafness was 0.046% (232/504348) and 0.111% (560/504348), respectively, much lower than previously reported in other regions of China. Furthermore, the genetic factor was identified as one of the principal causes of deafness by pedigree analysis., (Copyright © 2010 S. Karger AG, Basel.)

This study examined the effects of linguistic experience on audio-visual (AV) perception of non-native (L2) speech. Canadian English natives and Mandarin Chinese natives differing in degree of English exposure [long and short length of residence (LOR) in Canada] were presented with English fricatives of three visually distinct places of articulation: interdentals nonexistent in Mandarin and labiodentals and alveolars common in both languages. Stimuli were presented in quiet and in a cafe-noise background in four ways: audio only (A), visual only (V), congruent AV (AVc), and incongruent AV (AVi). Identification results showed that overall performance was better in the AVc than in the A or V condition and better in quiet than in cafe noise. While the Mandarin long LOR group approximated the native English patterns, the short LOR group showed poorer interdental identification, more reliance on visual information, and greater AV-fusion with the AVi materials, indicating the failure of L2 visual speech category formation with the short LOR non-natives and the positive effects of linguistic experience with the long LOR non-natives. These results point to an integrated network in AV speech processing as a function of linguistic background and provide evidence to extend auditory-based L2 speech learning theories to the visual domain.

This study examined the language development of 55 preschool-age children adopted from China who had resided in their permanent homes for approximately 2 years or longer. Slightly over 5% of the children scored below average on 2 or more measures from a battery of standardized speech-language tests normed on monolingual English speakers. However, the vast majority scored within or well above the average range on 2 or more measures. Contrary to other reports on the language development of internationally adopted children, the results suggest that "second first language" acquisition proceeds rapidly in the majority of preschool-age children adopted as infants and toddlers. For the children in the sample who scored below average, results indicated that they were among the children who had been exposed to English for the least amount of time. The results of this study demonstrate both the robustness of the language system in the majority of adopted children from China as well as slower growth in a small subset of lower performers in the 1st years after adoption.