Age effects on prosodic boundary perception.

The redundancy hypothesis proposes that older listeners need a larger array of acoustic cues than younger listeners for effective speech perception. This research investigated this hypothesis by examining the aging effects on the use of prosodic cues in speech segmentation in Mandarin Chinese. We examined how younger and older listeners perceived prosodic boundaries using three main prosodic cues (pause, final lengthening, and pitch change) across eight conditions involving different cue combinations. The stimuli consisted of syntactically ambiguous phrase pairs, each containing two or three objects. Participants (22 younger listeners and 22 older listeners) performed a speech recognition task to judge the number of objects they heard. Both groups primarily relied on the pause cue for identifying prosodic boundaries, using final lengthening and pitch change as secondary cues. However, older listeners showed reduced sensitivity to these cues, compensating by integrating the primary cue pause with the secondary cue pitch change for more precise segmentation. The present study reveals older listeners' integration strategy in using prosodic cues for speech segmentation, supporting the redundancy hypothesis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

[Non-Destructive Identification of Pigments Printed on the Bank Bill Issued in 1945].

Three-dimensional video microscopy, Raman spectrometer and scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) were employed to analyze the pigments of various colors on a sample of bank bill issued in 1945. The results indicated that organic pigments including C. I. Pigment Red 146 and C. I. Pigment Red 53∶1, and inorganic pigments such as cinnabar, parareaglar, χ-phase of realgar, carbon black and Prussian blue were used in printing; the brown-black handwriting letters were speculated to be formed from the fading black-blue ink. Most areas of the bank bill were in one single color with one pigment, but two areas of orange-red seals were checked to be colored with cinnabar and two different phases of realgar, and the parareaglar, and χ-phase of realgar were found to be used as printing pigments firstly. This study shows that combining with three technologies above-mentioned is viable and it has great application potential in non-destructive identification of organic and inorganic pigments on paper-based cultural heritage.

[A Non-Destructive Study of Printing Materials of an Imperial China Green Engraved Coiling Dragon Stamp].

Non-destructive measurement methods including video microscopy (VM), Raman spectrometer (RS), and scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) were employed to analyze the printing materials of a green curled-up dragon stamp sample from the late Qing Dynasty in terms of the paper and ink. The results indicated that the plate-making process of the sample belonged to handcrafted gravure while the slender and dense paper fiber with no coating, watermark, or gumming. Elements of Al and Si were inspected in fillers of paper, therefore, it could be inferred that kaolin (Al2O3·2SiO2·2H2O) was the filler of paper. Green ink was made up of blue pigment Prussian Blue (Fe4[Fe(CN)6]3·14-16H2O) and yellow pigment Lead(II) chromate(PbCrO4). According to theories of additive color and subtractive color, ink presented green color due to the effect of Prussian blue and Lead chromate mixed together. Elements of Na, Mg, S, Cl, K, Ca, V, Zn and Ba were measured from fillers of the ink and it could be inferred that MgCO3, BaSO4, CaCO3 and other substances might be contained in ink fillers. This study with three techniques mentioned above is viable and it has a broad application in non-destructive analysis of printing and paper-based artwork.