Optimizing Utilization: Language Experience and F0 Dimension-weighting in Thai Tone Perception

This study investigated how Cantonese and English speakers perceived Thai tones, focusing on (i) whether they attended to different F0 dimensions, and (ii) whether Cantonese speakers outperformed English speakers.Results showed that Cantonese speakers achieved a higher accuracy in discriminating the Thai tones.Both groups relied on F0 contour, the most effective cue for Thai tone discrimination.However, while English speakers also attended to onset F0 despite its lack of acoustical salience, Cantonese speakers disregarded this dimension.These findings highlight the interaction between experience-driven mechanism and bottom-up, psychoacoustic mechanism in non-native tone perception.When F0 dimensions were acoustically salient, both tonal and non-tonal language speakers used the more effective dimension, but when dimensions lacked salience, non-tonal speakers' reliance reflected their first language (L1) bias.In contrast, tonal language speakers demonstrated more effective F0 dimension selection in tonal contexts, likely due to their extensive L1 experience with lexical tones.