Factors affecting the processing of intensity in school-aged children.
OBJECTIVE
Thresholds of school-aged children are elevated relative to those of adults for intensity discrimination and amplitude modulation (AM) detection. It is unclear how these findings are related or what role stimulus gating and dynamic envelope cues play in these results. Two experiments assessed the development of sensitivity to intensity increments in different stimulus contexts.


METHODS
Thresholds for detecting an increment in level were estimated for normal-hearing children (5- to 10-year-olds) and adults. Experiment 1 compared intensity discrimination for gated and continuous presentation of a 1-kHz tone, with a 65-dB-SPL standard level. Experiment 2 compared increment detection and 16-Hz AM detection introduced into a continuous 1-kHz tone, with either 35- or 75-dB-SPL standard levels.


RESULTS
Children had higher thresholds than adults overall. All listeners were more sensitive to increments in the continuous than the gated stimulus and performed better at the 75- than at the 35-dB-SPL standard level. Both effects were comparable for children and adults. There was some evidence that children's AM detection was more adultlike than increment detection.


CONCLUSIONS
These results imply that memory for loudness across gated intervals is not responsible for children's poor performance but that multiple dynamic envelope cues may benefit children more than adults.
University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, USA. ebuss@med.unc.edu
Emily
E
Buss
Joseph W
JW
Hall
John H
JH
Grose
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000375:Aging; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001306:Auditory Pathways / Q000254:growth & development*; D001307:Auditory Perception; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003463:Cues; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008144:Loudness Perception; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D055139:Sensory Gating; D055815:Young Adult