Hearing in Childhood TLA SIN Due today Paperette due FRIDAY 9:15 AM in class (hard copy) Electronic copy must be emailed to Mike by 5 pm Friday

Fetal Audition Deafness screening Early recognition Ultrasound probing Test at-risk vs. healthy Light/sound responsiveness Early warning (33 weeks of gestation) Early recognition Story reading in womb Infant prefers exposed story to novel Infant prefers mother’s voice

Baby Hearing Auditory system Low frequency hearing (< 10 kHz) Outer/middle/inner ear, brain stem, midbrain Small, but fully developed at birth Cortical development continues through first year Low frequency hearing (< 10 kHz) Poor at birth Thresholds 2x adults Slow development (2-10 years) High frequency hearing (> 10 kHz) Near adult levels at birth Improves to peak performance at 6 mos

Testing Babies Challenge of Baby research Sample challenges What is a response? Sucking rate Habituation paradigm Ad naseum exposure to a stimulus Change stimulus Dishabituation vs. habituation Bored baby wakes up? Sample challenges Loss of subjects

Localization in infants Can infants detect interaural differences? (loudness differences between the ears); (time difference between the ears) Recently born 10 minutes (Green, 1976) Orienting response to rattle Loudness, timing or both? Exp. 9 week old infants (Clifton et al., 1984) Loudness, timing combo of cues Predict: which is better for infants? Both cues effective at 5 mos

Baby Cries (Dondi et al., 1999; Martin & Clark, 1982) Newborn: Exp: presentation of own crying vs. other infant vs. similar noise event Predictions? Which causes the baby to cry the most? Noise event not as strong a reaction as baby crying Self-cry discrimination Sucking response greater to novel cry

The Mozart Effect (Rauscher et al., 1993; Thompson et al., 2001) Short-term improvement of spatial ability Children perform task with/without Mozart 10 – 15 minute improvement in performance EXP. Albinoni music vs. Silence vs. Mozart Predictions? Performance correlates with arousal Debunking Mozart’s effect? Music training correlates with improved IQ Small, consistent effect Attendance and Small classes