Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 24, 2026
Behavioral Assessment of Hearing in 2 to 4 Year-old Children: A Two-interval, Observer-based Procedure Using Conditioned Play-based Responses
Published on: January 23, 2017
Serial position effects for acoustic stimuli among children with and without hearing loss
1Université de Montréal, Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Centre, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. benoit.jutras@umontreal.ca
Purpose:
This study investigated serial position effects on auditory sequential organization among children with hearing loss and with normal hearing.
Method:
Forty-eight children were divided into 4 equally sized groups: 2 groups of 6-7-year-olds and 2 groups of 9-10-year-olds. Each age group had 12 children with normal hearing and 12 children with sensorineural hearing loss. Participants were asked to reproduce auditory sequences of verbal (syllables /ba/ and /da/) and nonverbal (1-kHz pure tone and a wideband noise) elements by pressing associated buttons.
Results:
No evidence of a recency effect was found, but a primacy effect was observed in the participants' performance under most experimental conditions. Normal hearing participants in the 6-7-year-old group were better at reproducing 3 to 5 verbal items than their counterparts with hearing loss, independent of item sequence position.
Conclusion:
Results suggest that, regardless of hearing status, all children use similar mnemonic strategies.
