title: Adults, but not children, benefit from a pretrial signal cue in a random-frequency, two-tone masker.
abstract: This study examined the benefit of a pretrial cue, a preview of the signal, on children's (5-10 years) and adults' detection of a 1000-Hz pure-tone signal in a broadband noise or a random-frequency, two-tone masker. No cuing effect was observed with the noise masker, regardless of listener age. In contrast, all but one adult benefited from the cue with the two-tone masker (average = 9.4 dB). Most children showed no cuing effect (average = 0.1 dB) with the two-tone masker. These results suggest that, unlike adults, the provision of a pretrial cue does not promote frequency-selective listening during detection for 5- to 10-year-olds.
authors.affiliation: Department of Allied Health Sciences, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, CB 7190, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA abonino@med.unc.edu, leibold@med.unc.edu.
authors.forename: Angela Yarnell
authors.initials: AY
authors.lastname: Bonino
authors.affiliation: Department of Allied Health Sciences, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, CB 7190, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA abonino@med.unc.edu, leibold@med.unc.edu.
authors.forename: Lori J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Leibold
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000328:Adult; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D009622:Noise; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*; D010898:Pitch Perception / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult