Vowel, consonant, and tone variation exert asymmetrical effects on spoken word recognition: Evidence from 6-year-old monolingual and bilingual learners of Mandarin.

•This study measured vowel, consonant, and tone sensitivity in word recognition.•Both preferential looking and explicit judgment tasks were used.•Participants were English monolingual and English-Mandarin bilingual children.•Participants demonstrated differential sensitivity to vowels, consonants and tones.•Children were less sensitive to tones than vowels and consonants in both tasks.