A meta-analytic review of Mandarin tone perception: tone height and tone contour, prosodic background, and L2 experience

This meta-analysis synthesizes data from 18 empirical studies to examine how tonal features of height and contour, native prosodic background, and second language (L2) experience affect the perception of Mandarin lexical tones. Results revealed overall large effect sizes, indicating that variability in tone perception is statistically robust and theoretically significant. Importantly, substantial heterogeneity across studies was explained by key methodological moderators, including task type, stimulus type, outcome measure, sample size, and gender composition. Studies using passive hearing tasks, synthesized stimuli, accuracy-based outcome measures and more female participants consistently produced larger effect sizes, suggesting enhanced perceptual salience and reduced processing demands. Moreover, moderate sample sizes were sufficient to detect meaningful effects, particularly in cross-linguistic comparisons. Analyses confirmed three major findings: (1) Tone height and pitch span critically shaped perceptual accuracy, with high-pitched tones and those with greater pitch span perceived more accurately; (2) Native prosodic background significantly modulated tone perception, with pitch-accent and tone language speakers generally outperforming non-tonal listeners. However, perceptual assimilation could either facilitate or interfere with tone perception in tone language listeners when similar categories existed in their L1 and the target language; (3) L2 experience was a positive predictor of tone perception accuracy; however, improvements followed a nonlinear, tone-specific trajectory. Tone 2 and Tone 3 remained persistently challenging to differentiate, with substantial progress typically observed only at advanced proficiency levels. Together, these results underscore the complex interplay between acoustic properties, language background, and learning experience in Mandarin tone perception, offering valuable insights for both theoretical modeling and pedagogical practice in second language acquisition of tones.