Clear speech effects on Mandarin fricative perception

2026/02/01 by Yung-hsiang Shawn Chang, Yu-Wen Chen · 1 voice
Psychology · Neuroscience · #Phonetics and Phonology Research #Neuroscience and Music Perception #Hearing Loss and Rehabilitation

paper · doi:10.1121/10.0042407

openalex publication_date 2026/02/01 · openalex created_date 2026/02/11 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/08

Abstract

This study investigated, with 40 young-adult Taiwan Mandarin listeners, the perception of clearly vs conversationally produced Mandarin fricatives in quiet and noisy conditions. Clear speech did not improve identification accuracy but consistently facilitated processing, as shown by shorter reaction times. Correlations with acoustic measures suggest that modifications in spectral variance, skewness, and relative amplitude are associated with this clear speech advantage. These findings underscore processing speed as a dimension of clear speech benefit and extend our understanding of clear speech effects to the full Mandarin fricative inventory.

Citations

• Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models using lme4

Discussions

• JASA EXPRESS LETTERS Clear speech led to shorter reaction times—but not improved intelligibility—in Mandarin fricative perception, highlighting processing speed as an important yet underrecognized di [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]

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