Frequency discrimination in children: Perception, learning and attention

Moore, David R.; Ferguson, Melanie A.; Halliday, Lorna F.; Riley, Alison

doi:10.1016/j.heares.2007.11.013

Cited by 110 publications

(152 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Using those stimuli, evidence was found that formants need to share a common harmonic structure in order for adults to demonstrate CMP; for children, no evidence was found to support the hypothesis that this principle explains their CMP. That finding is consistent with results of others demonstrating that children require greater frequency differences than adults to discriminate pitch (e.g., Jensen and Neff, 1993), or at least are less attentive to pitch changes (Moore et al, 2008). In the study of Nittrouer and Tarr, however, all formants consisted of harmonics (i.e., had periodic fine structure), regardless of whether those harmonics were similarly spaced or not.…”

Section: Hypothesis 2: Periodicitysupporting

confidence: 90%

Explaining coherence in coherence masking protection for adults and children

Tarr

Nittrouer

2013

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Coherence masking protection (CMP) is the phenomenon in which a low-frequency target (typically a first formant) is labeled accurately in poorer signal-to-noise levels when combined with a high-frequency cosignal, rather than presented alone. An earlier study by the authors revealed greater CMP for children than adults, with more resistance to disruptions in harmonicity across spectral components [Nittrouer and Tarr (2011). Atten. Percept. Psychophys. 73, 2606Psychophys. 73, -2623. That finding was interpreted as demonstrating that children are obliged to process speech signals as broad spectral patterns, regardless of the harmonic structure of the spectral components. The current study tested three alternative, auditory explanations for the observed coherence of target þ cosignal: (1) unique spectral shapes of target þ cosignal support labeling, (2) periodicity of target þ cosignal promotes coherence, and (3) temporal synchrony across target þ cosignal reinforces temporal expectancies. Adults, eight-year-olds, and five-year-olds labeled stimuli in five conditions: F1 only and F1 þ a constant cosignal (both used previously) were benchmarks for comparing thresholds for F1 þ 3 new cosignals. Children again showed greater CMP than adults, but none of the three hypotheses could explain their CMP. It was again concluded that children are obliged to recognize speech signals as broad spectral patterns.

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Section: Hypothesis 2: Periodicitysupporting

confidence: 90%

Explaining coherence in coherence masking protection for adults and children

Tarr

Nittrouer

2013

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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“…The present overall findings that attentional switching/ shifting mediates speech processing in a domain-general nature are congruent with some previous studies where the relationship is modality-independent (e.g., George & Coch, 2011;Janse, 2012;Ou et al, 2015), yet inconsistent with others that found a modality-specific relationship (e.g., Moore, Ferguson, Halliday, & Riley, 2008;Kraus, Strait, & Parbery-Clark, 2012). Nonetheless, a growing number of neuroimaging studies has evidenced that the cortical circuitry engaged in the auditory switching of attention is similar to that engaged during visual attention orientation (Diaconescu, Alain, & McIntosh, 2011;Larson & Lee, 2013;Smith et al, 2010).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 61%

Cognitive basis of individual differences in speech perception, production and representations: The role of domain general attentional switching

Law

2017

Atten Percept Psychophys

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This study investigated whether individual differences in cognitive functions, attentional abilities in particular, were associated with individual differences in the quality of phonological representations, resulting in variability in speech perception and production. To do so, we took advantage of a tone merging phenomenon in Cantonese, and identified three groups of typically developed speakers who could differentiate the two rising tones (high and low rising) in both perception and production [+Per+Pro], only in perception [+Per-Pro], or in neither modalities [-Per-Pro]. Perception and production were reflected, respectively, by discrimination sensitivity d′ and acoustic measures of pitch offset and rise time differences. Components of event-related potential (ERP)-the mismatch negativity (MMN) and the ERPs to amplitude rise time-were taken to reflect the representations of the acoustic cues of tones. Components of attention and working memory in the auditory and visual modalities were assessed with published test batteries. The results show that individual differences in both perception and production are linked to how listeners encode and represent the acoustic cues (pitch contour and rise time) as reflected by ERPs. The present study has advanced our knowledge from previous work by integrating measures of perception, production, attention, and those reflecting quality of representation, to offer a comprehensive account for the underlying cognitive factors of individual differences in speech processing. Particularly, it is proposed that domain-general attentional switching affects the quality of perceptual representations of the acoustic cues, giving rise to individual differences in perception and production.

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“…Developmental dyslexia is a deficit that continues to affect individuals in adulthood, and investigating the speech and language processing abilities of adults with dyslexia can be particularly informative as lapses in attention, which can affect performance on repetitive perceptual tasks in children (Davis, Castles, McAnally, & Gray, 2001;Moore, Ferguson, Halliday and Riley, 2008), are likely to be less prevalent in adults. In both adults and children, evidence of poor performance on phonological awareness tasks is rather pervasive (e.g., Elbro, Nielsen & Petersen, 1994, Snowling, Nation, Moxham, Gallagher & Frith, 1997Ramus et al, 2003;Ziegler and Goswami, 2005;Snowling, 2000, although see also Reid, Szczerbinski, Iskierka-Kasperek & Hansen, 2007 for cases of individuals with dyslexia who have unimpaired phonological awareness).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speech Perception Abilities of Adults With Dyslexia: Is There Any Evidence for a True Deficit?

Hazan

Messaoud‐Galusi

Rosen

et al. 2009

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose: This study investigated whether adults with dyslexia show evidence of a consistent speech perception deficit by testing phoneme categorization and word perception in noise.Method: Seventeen adults with dyslexia and 20 average readers underwent a test battery including standardized reading, language and phonological awareness tests, and tests of speech perception. Categorization of a 'pea'/'bee' voicing contrast was evaluated using adaptive identification and discrimination tasks, presented in quiet and in noise, and a fixed-step discrimination task. Two further tests of word perception in noise were presented.Results: There were no significant group differences for categorization in quiet or noise, for across-and within-category discrimination as measured adaptively, or word perception, but average-readers showed better across-and within-category discrimination in the fixed-step discrimination. Individuals did not show consistent poor performance across related tasks. Conclusions:The small number of group differences, and lack of consistent poor individual performance, suggests weak support for a speech perception deficit in dyslexia. It seems likely that at least some poor performances are attributable to non-sensory factors like attention. It may also be that some individuals with dyslexia have speech perceptual acuity that is at the lower end of the normal range and exacerbated by non-sensory factors.

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Frequency discrimination in children: Perception, learning and attention

Cited by 110 publications

References 16 publications

Explaining coherence in coherence masking protection for adults and children

Explaining coherence in coherence masking protection for adults and children

Cognitive basis of individual differences in speech perception, production and representations: The role of domain general attentional switching

Speech Perception Abilities of Adults With Dyslexia: Is There Any Evidence for a True Deficit?

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