Serial position effects for acoustic stimuli among children with and without hearing loss.
OBJECTIVE
This study investigated serial position effects on auditory sequential organization among children with hearing loss and with normal hearing.


METHODS
Forty-eight children were divided into 4 equally sized groups: 2 groups of 6-7-year-olds and 2 groups of 9-10-year-olds. Each age group had 12 children with normal hearing and 12 children with sensorineural hearing loss. Participants were asked to reproduce auditory sequences of verbal (syllables /ba/ and /da/) and nonverbal (1-kHz pure tone and a wideband noise) elements by pressing associated buttons.


RESULTS
No evidence of a recency effect was found, but a primacy effect was observed in the participants' performance under most experimental conditions. Normal hearing participants in the 6-7-year-old group were better at reproducing 3 to 5 verbal items than their counterparts with hearing loss, independent of item sequence position.


CONCLUSIONS
Results suggest that, regardless of hearing status, all children use similar mnemonic strategies.
Jutras
Benoît
B
Université de Montréal, Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Centre, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. benoit.jutras@umontreal.ca
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D000367:Age Factors; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D012691:Serial Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis