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April 5, 2026Frontiers in Psychology0 citationsOpen Access

Non-Tonal L2 Proficiency Enhances Tone Perception in Mandarin–English Bilinguals

Non-tonal L2 proficiency facilitates the perception of tone and pitch contrasts in a tonal L1: evidence from Mandarin–English bilinguals

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Authors

RZRong ZhaoMLMengjiao LiHRHonghao Ren

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Overview

Finds that non-tonal L2 proficiency improves tone perception in bilinguals, suggesting cognitive benefits of language learning.

Key Points

  • To explore how proficiency in a non-tonal second language affects tone perception in a tonal first language among Mandarin–English bilinguals.
  • Participants dominated in Mandarin but varied in English proficiency.
  • Experiment 1 involved a tone perception task with T2-T3, T1-T3, and T2-T4 contrasts.
  • Experiment 2 involved judging pitch height changes across multiple tones.
  • Bilinguals with higher L2 proficiency showed increased sensitivity to the T2-T4 contrast.
  • Higher proficiency also correlated with better perception of pitch height variations in T1, T2, and T3.

Cite This Study

Zhao et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/69d1fb20a79560c99a0a191bhttps://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1746921
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