title: The developmental trajectory of spatial listening skills in normal-hearing children.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To establish the age at which children can complete tests of spatial listening and to measure the normative relationship between age and performance.
  
  
  METHODS
  Fifty-six normal-hearing children, ages 1.5-7.9 years, attempted tests of the ability to discriminate a sound source on the left from one on the right, to localize a source, to track moving sources, and to perceive speech in noise.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Tests of left-right discrimination, movement tracking, and speech perception were completed by ≥ 75% of children older than 3 years. Children showed adult levels of performance from age 1.5 years (movement tracking), 3 years (left-right discrimination), and 6 years (localization and speech in noise). Spatial release from masking-calculated as the difference in speech reception thresholds between conditions with spatially coincident and spatially separate sp-eech and noise--remained constant at 5 dB from age 3 years. Data from a separate study demonstrate the age at which children with cochlear implants can complete the same tests. Assessments of left-right discrimination, movement tracking, and speech perception were completed by ≥ 75% of children who are older than 5 years and who wear cochlear implants.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These data can guide the selection of tests for future studies and inform the interpretation of results from clinical populations.
authors.affiliation: University of York, Heslington, York, United Kingdom. r.lovett@ucl.ac.uk
authors.forename: Rosemary Elizabeth Susan
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Lovett
authors.forename: Pádraig Thomas
authors.initials: PT
authors.lastname: Kitterick
authors.forename: Shan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Arthur Quentin
authors.initials: AQ
authors.lastname: Summerfield
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D019929:Cochlear Implantation / Q000534:rehabilitation; D006309:Hearing / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007807:Language Tests / Q000592:standards; D008297:Male; D009622:Noise; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology; D012016:Reference Values; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013017:Sound Localization / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013069:Speech Reception Threshold Test / Q000592:standards