The monaural temporal window based on masking period pattern data in school-aged children and adults

Abstract

Several lines of evidence indicate that auditory temporal resolution improves over childhood, whereas other data implicate the development of processing efficiency. The present study used the masking period pattern paradigm to examine the maturation of temporal processing in normalhearing children (4.8 to 10.7 yrs) compared to adults. Thresholds for a brief tone were measured at 6 temporal positions relative to the period of a 5-Hz quasi-square-wave masker envelope, with a 20-dB modulation depth, as well as in 2 steady maskers. The signal was a pure tone at either 1000 or 6500 Hz, and the masker was a band of noise, either spectrally wide or narrow (21.3 and 1.4 equivalent rectangular bandwidths, respectively). Masker modulation improved thresholds more for wide than narrow bandwidths, and adults tended to receive more benefit from modulation than young children. Fits to data for the wide maskers indicated a change in window symmetry with development, reflecting relatively greater backward masking for the youngest listeners. Data for children >6.5 yrs of age appeared more adult-like for the 6500-than the 1000-Hz signal. Differences in temporal window asymmetry with listener age cannot be entirely explained as a consequence of a higher criterion for detection in children, a form of inefficiency.

Gap Detection in School-Age Children and Adults: Effects of Inherent Envelope Modulation and the Availability of Cues Across Frequency

“…Adult-like gap detection for the wide stimulus at an early age could therefore reflect the relatively early emergence of an ability to benefit from across-channel cues. This is consistent with data showing that even young school-age children benefit from across-channel masker coherence in the detection of a long-duration tone in a square-wave amplitude modulated noise masker (Grose, et al, 1993), although it is less consistent with the finding that even 6.5- to 10-year-olds appeared to be less able to benefit from across-channel cues than adults when the signal is a brief tone (Buss, He, et al, 2013). …”

“…This result suggests that young children are relatively adept at making use of temporal cues distributed across auditory channels. This is not entirely consistent, however, with recent data obtained for a brief tonal signal presented at different temporal positions relative to the square-wave masker modulation (Buss, He, et al, 2013). For brief tone detection, 5- to 10-year-olds appeared to be less able to benefit from an increased masking bandwidth than adults.…”

“…Despite its importance, there is relatively little consensus on the question of when in development temporal processing begins to resemble that of adults. While there are a number of paradigms used to characterize temporal resolution (reviewed by Buss, He, Grose, & Hall, 2013), one of the most widely adopted methods is gap detection. Using the gap detection paradigm, some studies have found adult-like performance by 5 to 6 years of age (Trehub, Schneider, & Henderson, 1995; Wightman, Allen, Dolan, Kistler, & Jamieson, 1989), whereas others indicate that maturation extends into later childhood (Davis & McCroskey, 1980; Irwin, Ball, Kay, Stillman, & Rosser, 1985) or early adolescence (Fischer & Hartnegg, 2004).…”

Masking Period Patterns and Forward Masking for Speech-Shaped Noise

“…In the second phase, a forward masking function was measured across a longer time interval, and the accuracy with which the MPP-derived temporal window accounted for the forward masking data was assessed. Whereas most MPP studies use a brief tonal pip as a signal (e.g., Buss et al 2013; Wojtczak et al 2003), in this study both the masker and the brief signal were speech-shaped noises (SSN). The rationale for using a SSN as the signal was to employ a target sound that had a similar spectral complexity to speech in order to enhance the ecological relevance of the task in the context of ‘glimpsing’ a brief complex signal in a fluctuating masker.…”

Effects of Self-Generated Noise on Estimates of Detection Threshold in Quiet for School-Age Children and Adults

“…It remains to be seen whether higher levels of self-generated noise could play a role in other psychoacoustic phenomena associated with prolonged development at low frequencies, such as temporal integration (He et al 2010), backward masking (Buss et al 2013), and identification of vowels characterized by low-frequency formants (Sussman 2001). …”