A Normative Study of Early Prelingual Auditory Development

Abstract

The normal trajectory of early prelingual auditory development from birth to 24 months of age was characterized in a sample of 120 normal-hearing infants and toddlers of Mandarin-Chinese-speaking parents. The Infant-Toddler Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale (IT-MAIS) was administered to parents as a structured interview during routine pediatric health examinations. Developmental trajectories for the overall IT-MAIS score, as well as for scores on the subscales that assess behavioral evidence of spontaneous detection of and responsiveness to sound and of spontaneous recognition and discrimination of sound, were represented by logarithmic regression functions. On average, these regression functions characterized over 80% of the age-related variance in each scale. The developmental trajectories revealed that by 16 months the average infant exhibited spontaneous detection of and responsiveness to sound at all times, while spontaneous recognition and discrimination of sound was seen at all times after 26 months. The trajectory for the overall IT-MAIS scale, which combines the two subscales, reached ceiling at 22 months. The overall trajectory for Chinese infants closely matches the trajectory for normal-hearing infants of Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking parents in Israel. The Chinese IT-MAIS also exhibits similar internal consistency and item reliability to the German, Polish, and British English IT-MAIS scales. These similarities seen across culturally and linguistically diverse populations suggest the early prelingual auditory development follows the same, or a very similar course, in all infants.

Assessment of Mandarin-speaking pediatric cochlear implant recipients with the Mandarin Early Speech Perception (MESP) test

“…Spondee Perception for MESP Category 3. Mean scores for developmentally normal hearing subjects [10][11][12] are displayed as gray diamonds, and individual scores for CI subjects are displayed as black squares. Scores for normal subjects are plotted as a function of age, and scores for CI subjects are plotted as a function of time after implantation.…”

“…As part of these analyses, results for the CI children in the current study were compared with those of normally hearing children, as reported by Zheng et al [10][11][12]. Finally, the results from the current study were compared with the results for English-speaking children from the study by Eisenberg et al [1].…”

“…The performance of developmentally normal hearing subjects on the MESP test as a function of chronological age has been reported by Zheng et al [10][11][12]. Briefly, these investigators obtained cross-sectional measures of performance for all six of the MESP categories in 92 children falling into three age groups, 2-3 years, 3-4 years, and 4-5 years.…”

“…This battery has been created in anticipation of large-scale multicenter outcome studies in China. Briefly, the Mandarin IT-MAIS [10] parallels the English version and shows that early prelingual auditory development, as measured with the IT-MAIS, is similar for children of English-and Mandarin-speaking families. The Mandarin ESP (MESP) test [11] also parallels the English version, but includes two additional subtests, as described below.…”

“…Subjects were then tested with the standard MESP test. The MESP software, picture plates and other test materials are described in Zheng et al [10][11][12]. The test items were administered at 65 dB(A) using a laptop computer and powered loudspeaker.…”