This application requests funds to support a conference, entitled 'Developmental Psychoacoustics.' The 2-day conference would be held at the University of Washington in Seattle. The general goal of the conference is to encourage research into behavioral measures of the hearing capacities of infants and young children.
The specific aims of the conference are (1) to provide a forum for active investigators in developmental psychoacoustics to summarize their recent work; (2) to address some of the major technical difficulties involved in the collection and interpretation of psychophysical data from developing organisms; (3) to place """"""""developmental psychoacoustics"""""""" within the broad context of hearing and hearing development research. The meeting will consist of three parts, each directed toward one of these specific aims. Six representatives of active laboratories in developmental psychoacoustics will summarize their work and highlight what they believe to be major issues in Part 1. In Part 2, two representatives of related fields, psychoacoustics and visual development will discuss some of the difficulties of interpreting developmental data and some possible approaches to these difficulties. In Part 3, representatives of the fields of psychoacoustics, auditory system development, pediatric audiology, and speech perception development will discuss the relationships between developmental psychoacoustics and their respective fields. Participants will be invited to present at the conference. The proceedings will be published as a volume edited by the co-organizers. The meeting would be helpful to hearing scientists and clinicians who are interested in development, or in applying psychophysical measurement techniques to infants, children, and other developing organisms.
