Auditory development and the role of experience in infants and young children

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Because vision is poor in young infants, hearing is important for learning about the world and interacting with caregivers. The auditory sense is also the main carrier of linguistic and musical information. The overarching goal of the research is to understand auditory developmental processes and the role of experience in shaping them. The research will focus on four areas. (1) Effects of experience on learning rhythms. Previous research indicates that young infants can process complex musical rhythms, but that infants lose this ability by one year of age if the music of their culture contains predominantly simple rhythms, as is the case with Western music. Here we investigate the role of early musical experience and whether brain plasticity enables Western toddlers to quickly learn complex rhythms if exposed to them. This work is important for understanding musical development and brain plasticity. (2) Understanding how infants combine sound components to form identifiable auditory objects. Just as infant learn to recognize objects by seeing them in visual scenes, they must learn to recognize the sounds that objects make, even when several objects are sounding at the same time. Understanding how this ability develops is critical for understanding the deficits involved in central auditory processing disorders and how children learn in noisy environments such as classrooms. (3) Discriminating and recognizing voices. Successful social interaction depends on recognizing people by their voices. We will investigate developmental changes in voice recognition over the first year after birth, examining the role of experience with human voices in this process. (4) Effects of musical training on attention. A number of studies suggest that music lessons are beneficial for other cognitive domains such as language and mathematical skill. Here we investigate whether this occurs because learning to play a musical instrument trains attentional skills that enhance learning across many domains. This research could elucidate the reasons why musical training is beneficial, and inform educational policy for the benefit of children.