Age-related changes in sound localisation ability

Abstract

Auditory spatial processing is an important ability in everyday life and allows the processing of omnidirectional information. In this review, we report and compare data from psychoacoustic and electrophysiological experiments on sound localisation accuracy and auditory spatial discrimination in infants, children, and young and older adults. The ability to process auditory spatial information changes over lifetime: the perception of the acoustic space develops from an initially imprecise representation in infants and young children to a concise representation of spatial positions in young adults and the respective performance declines again in older adults. Localisation accuracy shows a strong deterioration in older adults, presumably due to declined processing of binaural temporal and monaural spectro-temporal cues. When compared to young adults, the thresholds for spatial discrimination were strongly elevated both in young children and older adults. Despite the consistency of the measured values the underlying causes for the impaired performance might be different: (1) the effect is due to reduced cognitive processing ability and is thus task-related; (2) the effect is due to reduced information about the auditory space and caused by declined processing in auditory brain stem circuits; and (3) the auditory space processing regime in young children is still undergoing developmental changes and the interrelation with spatial visual processing is not yet established. In conclusion, we argue that for studying auditory space processing over the life course, it is beneficial to investigate spatial discrimination ability instead of localisation accuracy because it more reliably indicates changes in the processing ability.

Localization and Spatial Discrimination in Children and Adolescents with Moderate Sensorineural Hearing Loss Tested without Their Hearing Aids

“…A direct connection between spatial acuity and signal laterality was found by Briley and Summerfield [2014] and Freigang et al [2014]. For all age groups tested, there were generally smaller MAA for frontal locations than for lateral locations [summarized in Freigang et al, 2015]. Although the present study was performed in a darkened anechoic room with covered loudspeakers as in Freigang et al [2014], performance in SNHL children measured at 4° and 30° was not definitely better than at 60° and 90°.…”

“…MAA gradually decreases in normal-hearing adults from the early 20s to older participants [Freigang et al, 2014[Freigang et al, , 2015. Generally, performance in SNHL children was rather comparable to performance in older adults with age-related normal hearing (60-79 years) than to performance in normal-hearing children, as shown in Table 5.…”

“…Regarding the alteration of MAA with increasing age, there are also adult participants to consider. In normal-hearing children, MAA improves from childhood up to adolescence [Kühnle et al, 2013] and afterwards gradually declines in adults from the early 20s to older participants [Freigang et al, 2014[Freigang et al, , 2015. Generally, performance in SNHL children was rather comparable to performance in older adults with age-related normal hearing loss (60-79 years) than to normal-hearing children.…”

Auditory system: development, genetics, function, aging, and diseases

“…This ability changes throughout the life span. The article “Age-related changes in sound localization ability” by Freigang, Richter, Rübsamen, and Ludwig (Freigang et al, 2015) presents recent advances in this field by discussing electrophysiological and behavioral data. In this article, the term ‘age-related’ does not simply refer to the elderly, but expands to children as well as young and older adults.…”

Indicadores para o transtorno do processamento auditivo em pré-escolares

“…Em seguida, as crianças realizaram imitanciomentria (timpanometria e Após a avaliação, o responsável pela criança foi chamado para que uma devolutiva em relação à avaliação auditiva fosse dada. A devolutiva em Método - 37 relação à avaliação do PAC, foi dada posteriormente, após a análise dos resultados obtidos pela criança em cada teste.…”