Is auditory discrimination mature by middle childhood? A study using time‐frequency analysis of mismatch responses from 7 years to adulthood

Abstract

Behavioural and electrophysiological studies give differing impressions of when auditory discrimination is mature. Ability to discriminate frequency and speech contrasts reaches adult levels only around 12 years of age, yet an electrophysiological index of auditory discrimination, the mismatch negativity (MMN), is reported to be as large in children as in adults. Auditory ERPs were measured in 30 children (7 to 12 years), 23 teenagers (13 to 16 years) and 32 adults (35 to 56 years) in an oddball paradigm with tone or syllable stimuli. For each stimulus type, a standard stimulus (1000 Hz tone or syllable [ba]) occurred on 70% of trials, and one of two deviants (1030 or 1200 Hz tone, or syllables [da] or [bi]) equiprobably on the remaining trials. For the traditional MMN interval of 100–250 ms post-onset, size of mismatch responses increased with age, whereas the opposite trend was seen for an interval from 300 to 550 ms post-onset, corresponding to the late discriminative negativity (LDN). Time-frequency analysis of single trials revealed that the MMN resulted from phase-synchronization of oscillations in the theta (4–7 Hz) range, with greater synchronization in adults than children. Furthermore, the amount of synchronization was significantly correlated with frequency discrimination threshold. These results show that neurophysiological processes underlying auditory discrimination continue to develop through childhood and adolescence. Previous reports of adult-like MMN amplitudes in children may be artefactual results of using peak measurements when comparing groups that differ in variance.

114. Electrophysiological, Cognitive and Clinical Profiles of At-Risk Mental State: The Longitudinal Minds in Transition (MinT) Study

“…MMN and P3a amplitude increased and latency decreased with age most likely due to maturational changes during the teenage years. Other studies in healthy adolescents have found similar age effects for frequency MMN [110,111], but in older age groups there are consistent reports of MMN amplitude reductions with age [29,59] with maximal amplitudes seen in 20-30 year old adults. Within the UHR literature, age effects have been poorly reported, but some studies have reported adjusted MMN effects assuming a linear relationship between age and MMN amplitude [33, 41,43].…”

Development and validation of a new Mandarin tone identification test

“…Jensen and Neff [58] showed that frequency (pitch) discrimination capability in children is poorer than adults. Bishop et al [59] also showed clear developmental trends of auditory discrimination in children aged 7 years to adults. In addition, children with NH require better S/Ns for speech perception task than adults [60][61][62]; their performance does not reach adult-like until they are older [62].…”

Language mapping in children using resting-state functional connectivity: comparison with a task-based approach

“…In addition, a group of eight young adults (ages 18 to 30) was included to measure mature language networks. Groups were defined based on previous studies, 45,46 allowing for the investigation of fcNIRS applicability at various developmental stages: early childhood (ages 3 to 6; n ¼ 6), late childhood (ages 7 to 10; n ¼ 8), adolescence (ages 11 to 16; n ¼ 11), and early adulthood (ages 18 to 30; n ¼ 8). Exclusion criteria were preterm birth (gestational age <37 weeks) or history of known congenital, neurologic, developmental, psychiatric, or metabolic disorders.…”