Susceptibility to and Release from Masking in Children and Adults

描述（由申请人提供）：该项目的长期目标是确定在复杂声环境中影响听力发展的因素。拟议的实验将描述儿童-成人对竞争背景声音干扰的易感性差异，并将确定利用频谱和时间线索改善噪音听力能力的发育影响。最近的研究表明，儿童比成年人更容易受到竞争声音的干扰。尽管这种增加的易感性背后的机制尚不清楚，但中央听觉过程（如声源确定和选择性注意）似乎起着主要作用。然而，目前对这些过程如何以及何时发生知之甚少。拟议的工作有两个具体目标。目标1将提供可用于确定易受远距离频率背景声音干扰的发展过程的信息。目标2将侧重于识别声音线索，儿童依赖于在存在噪音的情况下检测目标信号。拟议研究的结果将增强我们对在嘈杂环境中限制儿童听力能力的因素的理解。这些研究可能会为听力损失的儿童带来更成功的言语和语言结果，并可能导致改善课堂声信号质量的策略的发展。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long-term goal of this project is to identify the factors that contribute to the development of hearing in complex acoustic environments. The proposed experiments will characterize child-adult differences in susceptibility to interference from competing background sounds and will identify developmental effects in the ability to use spectral and temporal cues to improve hearing in noise. Recent studies have shown that children are more susceptible than adults to interference from competing sounds. Although the mechanisms that underlie this increased susceptibility are poorly understood, central auditory processes such as sound source determination and selective attention appear to play a major role. Little is currently known, however, about how and when these processes develop. The proposed work has two specific aims. Aim 1 will provide information that can be used to determine the course of development for susceptibility to interference from remote frequency background sounds. Aim 2 will focus on identifying acoustic cues that children rely on to detect target signals in the presence of noise. The results of the proposed studies will enhance our understanding of the factors that limit children's ability to hear in noisy environments. These studies could result in more successful speech and language outcomes for children with hearing loss and could lead to the development of strategies that improve the quality of the acoustic signal in the classroom.