GAP DETECTION IN INFANTS, CHILDREN, AND ADULTS

Listeners who were 6.5 months, 12 months, 5 years, and 21 years of age were required to discriminate a pair of 500-Hz, Gaussian-enveloped to ne pips from a short 500-Hz tone of the same duration and total energy . Groups of 6.5-month-old infants were tested on a single gap duration : 8, 12, 16, 20, 28, or 40 ms. Groups of 12-month-olds were also teste d on a single gap duration: 8, 12, 16, or 20 ms. The 5-year-old childr en and adults were tested on gap durations of 8, 12, and 16 ms. The me an performance of 6.5-month-olds significantly exceeded chance levels on all gap durations except 8 ms, and that of 12-month-olds was above chance levels on all gap durations. For 5-year-old children and adults , mean performance also exceeded chance levels for all gap durations t ested. Adults performed significantly better than 5-year-old children on gap durations of 12 and 16 ms. Gap-detection thresholds, defined by a performance criterion of d'=0.5, were estimated at 11, 5.6, and 5.2 ms for infants, children, and adults, respectively. It is likely that smaller adult-infant differences in the present study compared to tho se reported in previous research stem from our use of Gaussian-envelop ed tone pips and the consequent minimization of adaptation effects. (C ) 1995 Acoustical Society of America.