Auditory streaming and children (Piers Dawes )


Subject: Auditory streaming and children
From:    Piers Dawes  <piers.dawes(at)ST-JOHNS.OXFORD.AC.UK>
Date:    Tue, 5 Jul 2005 17:24:11 +0100

Dear List Is anyone aware of an auditory streaming task that can be sucessfully completed by school-aged (5-12 year-old) children? I recently tried a computerised ABA triplet streaming task with (typically developing) 9 year-olds. The aim was to find the coherence boundary. I gave the children examples of both the segregated and connected percept with stimuli from extreme ends of the range (in this case, pitch difference), followed by practice identifying clear examples of the two percepts. To make the concept of alternative percepts more accessable to children, percepts were explained to children in terms of the sounds of animals having a race, or of alien messages. In the main test, children had to indicate whether they heard the tones as connected or segreated. I then used a simple adaptive one-up one-down method for estimating the 50% level of the 2 FC responses. Except for one child (out of 12), no child was able to do the task. I'm sure its not becuase 9-year-old auditory systems don't do streaming, but becuase the task was too hard. The children did OK on the practice and on catch trials I had inserted in the main test, but I think they were probably identifying these stimuli on the basis of other acoustic features rather than in terms of percept. Does anyone know of a streaming task to which children can respond reliably? Thank you for your comments piers -- Piers Dawes, Doctoral Student Department of Experimental Psychology University of Oxford Tel: 01865 271374


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