TY - JOUR
T1 - Effect of signal-temporal uncertainty in children and adults
T2 - Tone detection in noise or a random-frequency masker
AU - Bonino, Angela Yarnell
AU - Leibold, Lori J.
AU - Buss, Emily
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported from the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (F31DC010308 and R01DC011038). This article is based on work appearing in a doctoral thesis by A.Y.B. Portions of these results were also presented to the Acoustical Society of America Meeting in Seattle, WA in May 2011. 1
PY - 2013/12
Y1 - 2013/12
N2 - A cue indicating when in time to listen can improve adults' tone detection thresholds, particularly for conditions that produce substantial informational masking. The purpose of this study was to determine if 5- to 13-yr-old children likewise benefit from a light cue indicating when in time to listen for a masked pure-tone signal. Each listener was tested in one of two continuous maskers: Broadband noise (low informational masking) or a random-frequency, two-tone masker (high informational masking). Using a single-interval method of constant stimuli, detection thresholds were measured for two temporal conditions: (1) Temporally-defined, with the listening interval defined by a light cue, and (2) temporally-uncertain, with no light cue. Thresholds estimated from psychometric functions fitted to the data indicated that children and adults benefited to the same degree from the visual cue. Across listeners, the average benefit of a defined listening interval was 1.8 dB in the broadband noise and 8.6 dB in the random-frequency, two-tone masker. Thus, the benefit of knowing when in time to listen was more robust for conditions believed to be dominated by informational masking. An unexpected finding of this study was that children's thresholds were comparable to adults' in the random-frequency, two-tone masker.
AB - A cue indicating when in time to listen can improve adults' tone detection thresholds, particularly for conditions that produce substantial informational masking. The purpose of this study was to determine if 5- to 13-yr-old children likewise benefit from a light cue indicating when in time to listen for a masked pure-tone signal. Each listener was tested in one of two continuous maskers: Broadband noise (low informational masking) or a random-frequency, two-tone masker (high informational masking). Using a single-interval method of constant stimuli, detection thresholds were measured for two temporal conditions: (1) Temporally-defined, with the listening interval defined by a light cue, and (2) temporally-uncertain, with no light cue. Thresholds estimated from psychometric functions fitted to the data indicated that children and adults benefited to the same degree from the visual cue. Across listeners, the average benefit of a defined listening interval was 1.8 dB in the broadband noise and 8.6 dB in the random-frequency, two-tone masker. Thus, the benefit of knowing when in time to listen was more robust for conditions believed to be dominated by informational masking. An unexpected finding of this study was that children's thresholds were comparable to adults' in the random-frequency, two-tone masker.
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U2 - 10.1121/1.4828828
DO - 10.1121/1.4828828
M3 - Article
C2 - 25669256
AN - SCOPUS:84890228992
SN - 0001-4966
VL - 134
SP - 4446
EP - 4457
JO - Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
JF - Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
IS - 6
ER -