Speaker: Zhao Xinxian

Lecture Abstract

Focus prosody, as a "spotlight" in sentences, highlights key contextual information and conveys speakers’ intentions. Based on four experimental studies, this talk explores the impact of aging on focus prosody perception mechanisms. Results show that the elderly group presents distinct processing patterns: unlike young adults (negatively affected by noise ), the elderly show stable differences across focus types but are noise-insensitive. Frequency modulation recognition significantly modulates their focus recognition; attentional shifting and working memory predict their comprehension performance. Acoustic degradation and word order variation mainly affect the elderly. These findings reveal a bottom-up to top-down shift in focus prosody processing during aging, providing a mechanistic explanation for speech processing aging in tonal language speakers.

Speaker Biography

Zhao Xinxian, Postdoctoral Researcher at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, member of the National Research Center for Language and Health. Her research focuses on psycholinguistics and experimental phonetics. She received the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award from Tongji University, led a project under the Shanghai Philosophy and Social Science Planning Program and the General Program of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, and was selected for the Shanghai Super Postdoctoral Incentive Program.