title: Developmental effects in the masking-level difference.
abstract: Adults and children (aged 5 years 1 month to 10 years 8 months) were tested in a masking-level difference (MLD) paradigm in which detection of brief signals was contrasted for signal placement in masker envelope maxima versus masker envelope minima. Maskers were 50-Hz-wide noise bands centered on 500 Hz, and the signals were So or Sp 30-ms, 500-Hz tones. In agreement with previous studies, it was found that MLDs were greater for masker envelope minima placement than for masker envelope maxima placement. Across the age range of the children tested here, the binaural advantage associated with the masker envelope minima increased with the age of the child. One interpretation of the present results is that there is a developmental improvement in binaural temporal resolution over the age range tested here.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599 USA. jwh@med.unc.edu
authors.forename: Joseph W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Hall
authors.forename: Emily
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Buss
authors.forename: John H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Grose
authors.forename: Madhu B
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Dev
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004007:Dichotic Listening Tests; D006801:Humans; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D013018:Sound Spectrography