Effects of the temporal fine structure in different frequency bands on Mandarin tone perception

Abstract

This letter evaluates the relative contributions of temporal fine structure cues in various frequency bands to Mandarin tone perception using novel "auditory chimaeras". Our results confirm the importance of temporal fine structure cues to lexical tone perception and the dominant region of lexical tone perception is found, namely the second to fifth harmonics can contribute no less than the fundamental frequency itself. Copyright © 2008 The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers.