Auditory Frequency Discrimination Development Depends on the Assessment Procedure

Abstract

Developmental gains in performance on auditory discrimination tasks are often attributed to either sensory or attentional factors. Here we show that depending on the assessment procedure, auditory frequency discrimination thresholds are either adult-like by 8 years of age (when measured with an oddball procedure) or still not adult-like by 14 years of age (when measured with a 2-interval-2-alternative-forced-choice high/low identification procedure). Because the stimuli used in the two assessment procedures were similar, sensory maturation seems unlikely to account for the discrepancy between the two procedures. To determine whether inattention could account for the prolonged development of performance in the identification procedure, within-listener performance variability was analyzed. Among the 14 year-old participants, we found no evidence for an association between increased performance variability and elevated discrimination thresholds. These findings suggest that attentional factors alone were also not likely to contribute to the group differences. It therefore seems likely that cognitive functions other than sensation and attention are responsible for the development of auditory discrimination, and furthermore that these functions continue to develop during adolescence.