The long-term objective of the proposed research is to describe and explain changes in auditory behavior that occur between infancy and adulthood in humans. The results of this research will help to define the course of normal auditory development. such information is a prerequisite to understanding abnormal development, as well as the function of the mature system. In addition, the methods developed in the course of this research may prove useful in assessing hearing loss in human infants. The research has five specific aims. The first is to examine the development of frequency resolution, the ability to respond selectively to one component of a complex sound. Previous work has shown that this ability is still immature at 3 months postnatal age. An experiment is proposed to examine frequency resolution in younger infants to follow its development. The second specific aim is to examine the development of temporal resolution, the ability to follow changes in a sound over time. Previous work has shown that infants respond poorly to temporal changes. The proposed work is aimed at determining whether the poor behavioral response is a result of immaturity of the primary auditory system.
The third aim i s to understand why infants have difficulty discriminating between frequencies under some conditions. Three experiments are proposed to examine frequency discrimination in 2- month-old infants and to determine whether infants' frequency discrimination varies with stimulus conditions as adults' frequency discrimination does. The fourth specific aim is to develop more reliable and sensitive measures of infant auditory behavior. The proposed experiments will attempt to model infant test methods to better understand how methods influence our measures of infant hearing, develop an improved """"""""video reinforcer"""""""" for testing infants' hearing, and formalize a method for testing 2- to 4-week-old infants. the final specific aim is to ask how the ability to attend selectively to sound affects the infant's behavioral response. One experiment will determine how the infant's response to sound changes with intensity; differences between infants and adults in this measure are predicted if infants are inattentive to the sound. Two other experiments will address how the infant responds to an unexpected sound, and whether giving the infant additional cues about the timing and the acoustic frequency of a sound will improve detection.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01DC000396-14
Application #
2837942
Study Section
Hearing Research Study Section (HAR)
Project Start
1986-06-01
Project End
2001-11-30
Budget Start
1998-12-01
Budget End
1999-11-30
Support Year
14
Fiscal Year
1999
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Washington
Department
Other Health Professions
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
135646524
City
Seattle
State
WA
Country
United States
Zip Code
98195
Lau, Bonnie K; Lalonde, Kaylah; Oster, Monika-Maria et al. (2017) Infant pitch perception: Missing fundamental melody discrimination. J Acoust Soc Am 141:65
Cabrera, Laurianne; Werner, Lynne (2017) Infants' and Adults' Use of Temporal Cues in Consonant Discrimination. Ear Hear 38:497-506
Horn, David L; Won, Jong Ho; Rubinstein, Jay T et al. (2017) Spectral Ripple Discrimination in Normal-Hearing Infants. Ear Hear 38:212-222
Horn, David L; Dudley, Daniel J; Dedhia, Kavita et al. (2017) Effects of age and hearing mechanism on spectral resolution in normal hearing and cochlear-implanted listeners. J Acoust Soc Am 141:613
Lau, Bonnie K; Werner, Lynne A (2014) Perception of the pitch of unresolved harmonics by 3- and 7-month-old human infants. J Acoust Soc Am 136:760-7
Werner, Lynne A (2013) Infants' detection and discrimination of sounds in modulated maskers. J Acoust Soc Am 133:4156-67
Lau, Bonnie K; Werner, Lynne A (2012) Perception of missing fundamental pitch by 3- and 4-month-old human infants. J Acoust Soc Am 132:3874-82
Garinis, Angela; Werner, Lynne; Abdala, Carolina (2011) The relationship between MOC reflex and masked threshold. Hear Res 282:128-37
Werner, Lynne A; Levi, Ellen C; Keefe, Douglas H (2010) Ear-canal wideband acoustic transfer functions of adults and two- to nine-month-old infants. Ear Hear 31:587-98
Dasika, Vasant K; Werner, Lynne A; Norton, Susan J et al. (2009) Measuring sound detection and reaction time in infant and toddler cochlear implant recipients using an observer-based procedure: a first report. Ear Hear 30:250-61

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