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Updated: Jul 13, 2026
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Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations
Published on: July 1, 2015
Children's perception of speech in multitalker babble.
M Fallon1, S E Trehub, B A Schneider
1Department of Psychology, University of Toronto at Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
|January 6, 2001
Summary
Children and young adults identified sentence final words in noise. While children needed better signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) in quiet, noise affected all age groups similarly, suggesting sensory factors drive age differences in auditory word recognition.
Area of Science:
- Auditory perception
- Developmental psychology
- Speech processing
Background:
- Auditory word recognition abilities develop throughout childhood.
- Understanding age-related differences in speech perception in noise is crucial for educational and clinical settings.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate age-related differences in auditory word recognition in multitalker babble.
- To determine if sensory factors primarily explain performance disparities between children and adults.
Main Methods:
- Participants aged 5, 9, 11, and young adults identified sentence-final words.
- Speech stimuli were presented in two multitalker babble noise conditions (low and high).
- Signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) were adjusted to achieve 85% correct performance in low noise, with a 7 dB reduction in high noise.
Main Results:
- Children required more favorable SNRs than adults for equivalent performance in low-noise conditions.
- A comparable decrease in SNR had similar effects on performance across all age groups.
- Age-related differences in this task are largely attributable to sensory processing capabilities.
Conclusions:
- Sensory factors, rather than cognitive ones, are the primary drivers of age-related differences in speech-in-noise perception.
- These findings highlight the importance of auditory sensitivity in the development of language comprehension.
- Implications for understanding listening challenges in noisy environments for children and adults.
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