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Factors affecting the processing of intensity in school-aged children
Emily Buss1, Joseph W Hall, John H Grose
1University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, USA. ebuss@med.unc.edu
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research : JSLHR
|August 17, 2012
Summary
Children show poorer sound processing than adults, but this is not due to memory. Dynamic cues in sound may help children
Area of Science:
- Auditory perception development
- Psychoacoustics
- Speech and hearing science
Background:
- Children have higher thresholds for intensity discrimination and amplitude modulation (AM) detection compared to adults.
- The underlying reasons for these differences and the role of stimulus gating and dynamic cues remain unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the development of sensitivity to intensity increments in school-aged children (5-10 years) and adults.
- To examine the influence of stimulus presentation (gated vs. continuous) and standard sound level on intensity discrimination.
- To compare intensity increment detection and AM detection in children and adults.
Main Methods:
- Intensity discrimination thresholds were measured for children and adults using gated and continuous 1-kHz tones at 65 dB SPL.
- Intensity increment detection and 16-Hz AM detection were assessed for both groups using continuous 1-kHz tones at 35 and 75 dB SPL.
Main Results:
- Overall, children exhibited higher detection thresholds than adults.
- Both children and adults demonstrated better performance with continuous stimuli compared to gated stimuli and at higher standard levels (75 dB SPL vs. 35 dB SPL).
- Children's performance on AM detection appeared more similar to adults' performance than their intensity increment detection.
Conclusions:
- Children's difficulties in intensity discrimination are not attributable to memory limitations across gated intervals.
- The findings suggest that children may benefit more than adults from multiple dynamic envelope cues in auditory processing.
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