1. Introduction -- Part 1: Acoustics, Perception, and Production of Lexical tones (in Adults) -- 2. The Phonetic Realization of Mandarin Phoneme Inventory: The Canonical and the Variants -- 3. Acoustic-based and Knowledge-based Processing of Mandarin Tones by Native and Non-native Speakers -- 4. Individual Differences in Lexical Tone Learning -- Part II: Neural Representations -- 5. Native and Nonnative Processing of Acoustic and Phonological Information of Lexical Tones in Chinese: Behavioral and Neural Correlates -- 6. Neurophysiological Studies of Mandarin Lexical Tone Acquisition in the Early Childhood -- 7. Neural Processing of Tone Sandhi in Production and Perception: The Case of Mandarin Tone 3 Sandhi -- Part III: Domain-General Transfer and Cross-Modal Integration -- 8. The Effect of Musical Experience and Congenital Amusia on Lexical Tone Perception, Production, and Learning: A review -- 9. Multi-modal Perception of Tone -- Part IV: Development from Infancy through Childhood -- 10. Lexical Tone Perception Development in Infancy -- 11. Early Word Recognition and Word Learning in Mandarin Learning Children -- 12. Speech Development in Mandarin-Speaking Children -- 13. Behavioral and Neurophysiological Evidence of Speech Processing in Chinese-Speaking Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Review and Future Directions.

This book addresses important issues of speech processing and language learning in Chinese. It highlights perception and production of speech in healthy and clinical populations and in children and adults. This book provides diverse perspectives and reviews of cutting-edge research in past decades on how Chinese speech is processed and learned. Along with each chapter, future research directions have been discussed. With these unique features and the broad coverage of topics, this book appeals to not only scholars and students who study speech perception in preverbal infants and in children and adults learning Chinese, but also to teachers with interests in pedagogical applications in teaching Chinese as Second Language.