Auditory stream segregation processes operate similarly in school-aged children and adults

Our previous research with adults suggests that pre-attentive (bottom-up) brain processes govern auditory stream segregation [Sussman et al., 1998. Brain Res. 789, 130--138; Sussman et al., 1999. Psychophysiology 36, 22--34; Winkler et al., submitted for publication]. We investigated whether the pre-attentive mechanisms underlying auditory stream segregation operate similarly in school-aged (7--10 years of age) children and adults. We used an electrophysiological index of auditory change detection that does not require the experimental participant to focus on the sounds to be evoked. In Experiment 1, children were presented with mixtures of high and low frequency tones in different conditions and were instructed to watch a silent video and ignore the sounds. In Experiment 2, children were asked to listen to the same sets of sounds as presented in Experiment 1 and tell whether they heard one or two auditory streams. The pre-attentive processing of the mixture of sounds as one or two auditory streams (Experiment 1), matched with the perception of the sounds as one or two distinct streams (Experiment 2). Our results demonstrate that the mechanisms for auditory stream segregation operate similarly in school-aged children and adults when frequency proximity is the cue for segregation.