A developmental look at an auditory illusion: The precedence effect

Abstract

Infants aged 2 and 6 months were tested with the precedence effect, an auditory phenomenon involving sound localization. Each infant was tested with two types of stimuli: sound from a single loudspeaker and precedence-effect sounds produced by the same sound put through two loudspeakers, with one output leading the other by 7 msec. Older infants localized precedence-effect stimuli as they did single-source stimuli, indicating that they perceived this phenomenon as expected. Two-month-olds turned their heads toward single-source sounds, but did not localize precedence-effect sounds, suggesting that that more difficult perceptual task had not been achieved at this age. In general, head-turning toward sound proved far more difficult to elicit in younger infants. A click train was ineffective, but a tape-recorded human voice elicited above-chance low-level turning. The developmental changes in auditory behavior are discussed in terms of the rapid growth of the auditory cortex.

Lateralization of two-transient stimuli

“…Such findings are usually associated with the precedence effect in sound localization (Wallach, Newman, & Rosenzweig, 1949;see Zurek, 1987, for a review). The precedence effect has been the topic of extensive physiological (Cranford & Oberholtzer, 1976;Yin & Litovsky, 1995), developmental (Clifton, Morrongiello, & Dowd, 1984;Morrongiello, Clifton, & Kulig, 1982), applied (Blauert, 1989;Muncey, Nickson, & Dubout, 1953;Snow, 1954), and clinical (Ashmead, Hill, & Taylor, 1989;Ashmead et al, 1998;Hochster & Kelly, 1981) study within the hearing sciences.…”

Development of auditory localization in dogs: Single source and precedence effect sounds

“…At older ages a variety of sounds may elicit the behavior of interest, but during early development a narrower range of sounds may be effective. In several mammalian species, the young respond more to conspecific vocalizations than to other sounds, e.g., chicks (Gottlieb, 1981), guinea pigs (Clements & Kelly, 1978), kittens (Olmstead & Villablanca, 1980), and humans (Clifton, Morrongiello, & Dowd, 1984). We are not aware of any previous developmental studies using conspecific sounds in dogs, but adult dogs can discriminate between dog versus nondog sounds (Heffner, 1975).…”

Stimulus duration and repetition rate influence newborns' head orientation toward sound

“…While newborns did not turn toward "echo-producing," precedence effect stimuli, they did turn reliably toward simple non-echoing sounds (Clifton et al, 1981a). By 24 weeks of age, infants reliably oriented toward both simple and precedence effect sounds (Clifton, Morrongiello, & Dowd, 1984). A similar sequence of development has been found in another species, dogs.…”