The Perceptual Study Of /i/ And /u/ In Mandarin Chinese Of Children Aged 4 To 6 Years

The categorical perception was adopted in this study,identification and discrimination tasks were conducted to explore the perceptual features of Mandarin vowels /i/、/u/ in children aged four to six years.In order to investigate the development of children’s vowel perception,we compare the children’s perceptual models of with adults’ results.A total of 35 participants were recruited in present study,including 14 children aged four to five years and 21 children aged five to six years.After removing the abnormal values,the data of 12 children aged four to five and 20 children aged five to six was retained.The experimental result showed the perception of Mandarin vowels /i/、/u/ of children aged four to six is categorical,the identification curves have a specific categorical boundary,but the identification curves were not as sharply as that of /b d g/ in English.The discrimination curve appears a wave peak before and after the boundary,the discrimination peak is not much remarkable and moves back,so it is not correspond with the identification boundary,all in all,the degree of categorization is not that high.Futhermore,this study investigated various factors effecting the perception of Mandarin vowels,including tones、gender、defective interface as well as the order of stimuli presentation.Children aged six years have achieved mature capability of categorical perception.However in discrimination tasks,both the peak and the average values differ significantly from those of adults.There are 48 pictures,16 tables and 26 references.