PURPOSE: Previous research has indicated the beneficial effects of musical training on speech perception in children. However, little has been known about whether musical training exerts transfer effects on fine-grained perception of linguistic pitch and time information. This study aimed to investigate the effects of different musical training programs and training duration on preschoolers' categorical perception (CP) of lexical tones and voice onset time (VOT) in Mandarin Chinese, which utilize pitch and time changes, respectively, to convey phonemic contrasts. METHOD: Sixty-one Mandarin-spe...
