Mandarin-speaking Preschoolers' Pitch Discrimination, Prosodic and Phonological Awareness, and Their Relation to Receptive Vocabulary and Reading Abilities

Overview

Journal Read Writ

Date 2021 Jul 30

PMID 34326571

Citations 3

Authors

Wei-Lun Chung

Gavin M Bidelman

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Cross-linguistic studies have reported that prosodic pattern awareness (e.g., lexical stress and lexical tone) is more important to reading acquisition than phonological awareness. However, few longitudinal studies have been conducted to explore the relations between these variables. This study examined preschoolers' pitch discrimination, prosodic and phonological awareness, and their connection to receptive vocabulary in preschool and reading abilities in first grade. Findings reveal (1) children improve their pitch discrimination and prosodic awareness from preschool to fourth grade; (2) pitch interval discrimination (frequency separation between tones) contributes to receptive vocabulary whereas pitch contour discrimination (patterns of rising and falling pitch) predicts word reading; (3) phonological awareness accounts for more variability in receptive vocabulary than prosodic awareness; whereas the reverse was found for word reading and reading comprehension. Together, prosody and its acoustic cue (i.e., pitch) play a vital role in learning to read Mandarin.

Citing Articles

Reduced Context Effect on Lexical Tone Normalization in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Speech-Specific Mechanism.

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Cross-linguistic and acoustic-driven effects on multiscale neural synchrony to stress rhythms.

He D, Buder E, Bidelman G Brain Lang. 2024; 256:105463.

PMID: 39243486 PMC: 11422791. DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2024.105463.

Cross-linguistic contributions of acoustic cues and prosodic awareness to first and second language vocabulary knowledge.

Chung W, Jarmulowicz L, Bidelman G J Res Read. 2022; 44(2):434-452.

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Acoustic Features of Oral Reading Prosody and the Relation With Reading Fluency and Reading Comprehension in Taiwanese Children.

Chung W, Bidelman G J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2021; 65(1):334-343.

PMID: 34890261 PMC: 9150736. DOI: 10.1044/2021_JSLHR-21-00252.

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