Optimal Syllabic Rates and Processing Units in Perceiving Mandarin Spoken Sentences

This paper presents our investigations on the syllable-related processing during human perception of Mandarin spoken sentences. Two behavioral perception experiments were conducted employing a signal synthesis method in a previous study [1]. We found (1) a clear relationship between speech intelligibility and syllabic rates of spoken sentences and (2) significantly higher speech intelligibility of sentences acoustically segmented at sub-syllable and syllable levels than at the level beyond one syllable. We therefore revealed the optimal syllabic rates and processing units in perceiving Mandarin continuous speech and further discussed the association between our results and the possible underlying neural mechanisms in the human brain.