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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
Development of auditory processing in 6- to 11-yr-old children
David R Moore1, Justin A Cowan, Alison Riley
1MRC Institute of Hearing Research, University Park, Nottingham, United Kingdom. davem@ihr.mrc.ac.uk
Ear and Hearing
|January 15, 2011
Summary
Auditory processing (AP) skills develop unevenly in children aged 6-11, with significant individual variation. Some children show adult-level performance early, indicating individual differences rather than universal age-related deficits in auditory perception.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Audiology
- Developmental Psychology
Background:
- Auditory processing (AP) is crucial for language and communication development.
- Establishing normative data for AP tests in children is essential for identifying auditory processing disorder (APD).
- Understanding developmental trajectories and test-retest reliability is key for clinical applications.
Purpose of the Study:
- To establish developmental standards for various psychoacoustic tests in typically developing children.
- To assess the immediate and delayed retest reliability of these AP tests.
- To compare single listener performance across different auditory tasks and inform clinical test selection.
Main Methods:
- A laboratory-based study involving 75 children (6-11 years) and 21 young adults with normal audiometry.
- Eleven individual and three derived AP tests administered across two sessions using a computer game interface and adaptive staircase method.
- Tests included masking, modulation detection, and temporal/spectral resolution measures.
Main Results:
- Auditory processing thresholds generally improved with age, with significant variability between individuals.
- Performance was markedly poorer in younger children (6-7 years), with some unable to complete frequency discrimination tests.
- Retest reliability varied by test and age, being generally higher for simpler tasks and older children.
Conclusions:
- Auditory perception development involves largely independent mechanisms, even for similar tasks.
- Wide individual differences in performance exist, suggesting that immaturity in some children, not universal deficits, explains group-level age effects.
- Several tests show clinical potential due to reliability and discriminative ability, but their relation to everyday listening skills requires further investigation.
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