Children's Intentional Switching of Auditory Selective Attention in Spatial and Noisy Acoustic Environments in Comparison to Adults

Autor/inn/en	Loh, Karin; Fintor, Edina; Nolden, Sophie; Fels, Janina
Titel	Children's Intentional Switching of Auditory Selective Attention in Spatial and Noisy Acoustic Environments in Comparison to Adults
Quelle	In: Developmental Psychology, 58 (2022) 1, S.69-82 (14 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Loh, Karin) ORCID (Nolden, Sophie) ORCID (Fels, Janina)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0012-1649
DOI	10.1037/dev0001239
Schlagwörter	Attention; Auditory Stimuli; Acoustics; Attention Control; Children; Young Adults; Age Differences; Cognitive Development; Foreign Countries; Reaction Time; Germany + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Aufmerksamkeit; Auditive Stimulation; Akustik; Aufmerksamkeitstest; Child; Kind; Kinder; Young adult; Junger Erwachsener; Age; Difference; Age difference; Altersunterschied; Kognitive Entwicklung; Ausland; Reaktionsvermögen; Deutschland
Abstract	Children's development and education take place in educational buildings with highly complex acoustic scenes, including spatially distributed target speakers, many surrounding distracting sounds, and general background noises. Auditory selective attention, therefore, is a valuable tool to orient oneself, to focus on specific sound sources, and to extract relevant information. Until now, it is unknown to what extent children have developed the cognitive processes of intentional attention control in spatial situations and how they differ from adults. This work provides a paradigm to examine children's intentional switching of auditory selective attention that also allows to examine effects due to noisy and spatial sound environments presented virtually via headphones. A listening experiment was conducted in Germany with 24 children (6-10 years, 50% female) and 24 young adults (18-26 years, 50% female). First, results revealed higher error rates and lower reaction times in conditions with noise (relative to conditions without noise) for children, but not for adults. This assumes that children are more sensitive to noise and conclude faster with noise trials, taking errors into account. Second, although auditory attention flexibility reflected in attention switch and relevant information selection was comparable between children and adults, it was found that adults benefited from spatial cues when selecting the relevant information. This was not observed to the same extent in children. These results suggest that children's cognitive processes are affected at significantly lower noise levels than adults and that noise effect assessment methods should consider spatial aspects. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2022/4/11