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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 14, 2025

Behavioral Assessment of Hearing in 2 to 4 Year-old Children: A Two-interval, Observer-based Procedure Using Conditioned Play-based Responses

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

2-Year-Olds' Speech Understanding in Multitalker Environments.

Rochelle S Newman¹

¹Department of Hearing & Speech Sciences University of Maryland.

Infancy : the Official Journal of the International Society on Infant Studies

|July 23, 2020

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Twenty-four-month-olds can understand speech in noisy environments, even with competing sounds. This shows improved selective listening skills compared to younger infants, though vocabulary size may also play a role.

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Last Updated: Dec 14, 2025

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Published on: October 4, 2015

Area of Science:

Developmental psychology
Auditory perception
Speech processing

Background:

Infants often hear speech amidst background noise.
Younger infants struggle to recognize speech when distracters are present.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate 24-month-olds' ability to understand speech in multitalker environments.
To assess selective auditory attention in toddlers.

Main Methods:

A preferential-looking task was used.
Children identified objects based on a target voice amidst multitalker babble.
Four signal-to-noise ratios were tested.

Main Results:

Twenty-four-month-olds demonstrated speech understanding at signal-to-noise ratios as low as -5 dB.
Children showed improved selective attention to speech in noise compared to younger infants.

Conclusions:

Toddlers at 24 months possess enhanced abilities to focus on speech in complex auditory settings.
Vocabulary size may influence performance in noisy conditions but is not the primary driver of improvement.