TY - JOUR
T1 - Factors affecting frequency discrimination in school-aged children and adults
AU - Taylor, Crystal N.
AU - Buss, Emily
AU - Leibold, Lori J.
N1 - Copyright:
Copyright 2013 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Auditory frequency discrimination is a basic ability that may limit the maturation of speech and language skills in some listeners. Despite its importance, the factors affecting frequency discrimination in school-aged children are poorly understood. The goal of the present study was to evaluate effects related to memory for pitch, musical training, and the utilization of temporal fine-structure cues. Listeners were normal-hearing children, 5.1 to 13.6 years old, and adults. One subgroup of children had musical training (>150 hours) and the other did not. The standard stimulus was either a 500- or a 5000-Hz pure tone, and the target stimulus was either a tone of higher frequency or a frequency-modulated tone (2- or 20-Hz rate) centered on the standard frequency. As commonly observed, mean frequency discrimination thresholds tended to be elevated in younger listeners. This developmental effect was smaller for FM detection than for pure-tone frequency discrimination, consistent with an effect of memory for pitch. The child/adult difference tended to be smaller for musically trained than untrained children. Children were not particularly poor at 2-Hz FM detection for the 500-Hz standard, a condition thought to rely on temporal fine-structure cues.
AB - Auditory frequency discrimination is a basic ability that may limit the maturation of speech and language skills in some listeners. Despite its importance, the factors affecting frequency discrimination in school-aged children are poorly understood. The goal of the present study was to evaluate effects related to memory for pitch, musical training, and the utilization of temporal fine-structure cues. Listeners were normal-hearing children, 5.1 to 13.6 years old, and adults. One subgroup of children had musical training (>150 hours) and the other did not. The standard stimulus was either a 500- or a 5000-Hz pure tone, and the target stimulus was either a tone of higher frequency or a frequency-modulated tone (2- or 20-Hz rate) centered on the standard frequency. As commonly observed, mean frequency discrimination thresholds tended to be elevated in younger listeners. This developmental effect was smaller for FM detection than for pure-tone frequency discrimination, consistent with an effect of memory for pitch. The child/adult difference tended to be smaller for musically trained than untrained children. Children were not particularly poor at 2-Hz FM detection for the 500-Hz standard, a condition thought to rely on temporal fine-structure cues.
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U2 - 10.1121/1.4798810
DO - 10.1121/1.4798810
M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:84878995245
VL - 19
JO - Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics
JF - Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics
SN - 1939-800X
M1 - 050059
T2 - 21st International Congress on Acoustics, ICA 2013 - 165th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America
Y2 - 2 June 2013 through 7 June 2013
ER -