Wightman Frederic L, Callahan Michael R, Lutfi Robert A, Kistler Doris J, Oh Eunmi
Department of Psychology, Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53705, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2003 Jun;113(6):3297-305. doi: 10.1121/1.1570443.
When normal-hearing adults and children are required to detect a 1000-Hz tone in a random-frequency multitone masker, masking is often observed in excess of that predicted by traditional auditory filter models. The excess masking is called informational masking. Though individual differences in the effect are large, the amount of informational masking is typically much greater in young children than in adults [Oh et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 109, 2888-2895 (2001)]. One factor that reduces informational masking in adults is spatial separation of the target tone and masker. The present study was undertaken to determine whether or not a similar effect of spatial separation is observed in children. An extreme case of spatial separation was used in which the target tone was presented to one ear and the random multitone masker to the other ear. This condition resulted in nearly complete elimination of masking in adults. In young children, however, presenting the masker to the nontarget ear typically produced only a slight decrease in overall masking and no change in informational masking. The results for children are interpreted in terms of a model that gives equal weight to the auditory filter outputs from each ear.
当要求听力正常的成年人和儿童在随机频率的多音掩蔽器中检测1000赫兹的音调时，通常会观察到掩蔽超过传统听觉滤波器模型预测的水平。这种额外的掩蔽被称为信息掩蔽。尽管个体在这种效应上的差异很大，但幼儿的信息掩蔽量通常比成年人要大得多[Oh等人，《美国声学学会杂志》109，2888 - 2895(2001)]。减少成年人信息掩蔽的一个因素是目标音调和掩蔽器的空间分离。本研究旨在确定在儿童中是否也观察到类似的空间分离效应。使用了一种极端的空间分离情况，即目标音调呈现给一只耳朵，随机多音掩蔽器呈现给另一只耳朵。这种情况在成年人中几乎完全消除了掩蔽。然而，在幼儿中，将掩蔽器呈现给非目标耳朵通常只会使总体掩蔽略有降低，而信息掩蔽没有变化。儿童的结果是根据一个对每只耳朵的听觉滤波器输出给予同等权重的模型来解释的。
