Lack of Generalization of Auditory Learning in Typically Developing Children

Halliday, Lorna F.; Taylor, Jenny; Millward, Kerri E.; Moore, David R.

doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2011/09-0213)

Cited by 25 publications

(85 citation statements)

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“…However, the rationale, especially in the present study, was that the trained listeners had auditory rather than phonological processing problems, so it was probably best to focus on a speech-based task that delivered a large number of relevant auditory discrimination trials efficiently, than on one that emphasized identification of meaningless tokens. In fact, listeners in our similar studies (Millward et al 2011; Halliday et al 2012) when asked about their tactics, reported discriminating whole tokens (syllables) rather than meaningless sounds. Regarding the second aspect, of training around rather than outside a categorical boundary, we reasoned that auditory discriminations would be equally difficult in both situations, and that phonetic identification would only be possible around a boundary.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 62%

Benefits of Phoneme Discrimination Training in a Randomized Controlled Trial of 50- to 74-Year-Olds With Mild Hearing Loss

et al. 2014

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Objectives:The aims of this study were to (i) evaluate the efficacy of phoneme discrimination training for hearing and cognitive abilities of adults aged 50 to 74 years with mild sensorineural hearing loss who were not users of hearing aids, and to (ii) determine participant compliance with a self-administered, computer-delivered, home- and game-based auditory training program.Design:This study was a randomized controlled trial with repeated measures and crossover design. Participants were trained and tested over an 8- to 12-week period. One group (Immediate Training) trained during weeks 1 and 4. A second waitlist group (Delayed Training) did no training during weeks 1 and 4, but then trained during weeks 5 and 8. On-task (phoneme discrimination) and transferable outcome measures (speech perception, cognition, self-report of hearing disability) for both groups were obtained during weeks 0, 4, and 8, and for the Delayed Training group only at week 12.Results:Robust phoneme discrimination learning was found for both groups, with the largest improvements in threshold shown for those with the poorest initial thresholds. Between weeks 1 and 4, the Immediate Training group showed moderate, significant improvements on self-report of hearing disability, divided attention, and working memory, specifically for conditions or situations that were more complex and therefore more challenging. Training did not result in consistent improvements in speech perception in noise. There was no evidence of any test-retest effects between weeks 1 and 4 for the Delayed Training group. Retention of benefit at 4 weeks post-training was shown for phoneme discrimination, divided attention, working memory, and self-report of hearing disability. Improved divided attention and reduced self-reported hearing difficulties were highly correlated.Conclusions:It was observed that phoneme discrimination training benefits some but not all people with mild hearing loss. Evidence presented here, together with that of other studies that used different training stimuli, suggests that auditory training may facilitate cognitive skills that index executive function and the self-perception of hearing difficulty in challenging situations. The development of cognitive skills may be more important than the development of sensory skills for improving communication and speech perception in everyday life. However, improvements were modest. Outcome measures need to be appropriately challenging to be sensitive to the effects of the relatively small amount of training performed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 62%

Benefits of Phoneme Discrimination Training in a Randomized Controlled Trial of 50- to 74-Year-Olds With Mild Hearing Loss

et al. 2014

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“…generalization pattern, and that other facets of generalization that we did not assess could have been immature (e.g., the time course of generalization, see Wright et al, 2010b). As mentioned in the Introduction, others have evaluated the generalization of skill learning in children (e.g., Dorfberger et al, 2012;Halliday et al, 2012) but, to our knowledge, we are the first to directly compare generalization patterns between children or adolescents and adults.…”

Section: Generalization Of Learningmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Sensory perception can be improved with training during both childhood (e.g., Banai et al, 2011;Halliday et al, 2012;Dorfberger et al, 2012) and adulthood (for reviews, see Wright and Zhang, 2009, auditory learning;Sagi, 2011, visual learning), but little is known about the maturation of the response to perceptual training. We recently reported differences in how adolescents and adults responded to the same perceptual training regimen on a basic auditory perceptual task (temporal-interval discrimination), suggesting that the processes involved in perceptual learning on this task can continue to develop well into adolescence (Huyck and Wright, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We did not investigate this aspect of the response to perceptual training previously, and while others have assessed the generalization of skill learning in children (e.g., Dorfberger et al, 2012;Halliday et al, 2012), we are not aware of any direct comparison of generalization between children or adolescents and adults. Therefore, before and after training, we assessed performance on the trained backward-masking condition as well as on several untrained tone-in-noise detection conditions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Learning, worsening, and generalization in response to auditory perceptual training during adolescence

Huyck

Wright

2013

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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While it is commonly held that the capacity to learn is greatest in the young, there have been few direct comparisons of the response to training across age groups. Here, adolescents (11-17 years, n = 20) and adults (≥18 years, n = 11) practiced detecting a backward-masked tone for ∼1 h/day for 10 days. Nearly every adult, but only half of the adolescents improved across sessions, and the adolescents who learned did so more slowly than adults. Nevertheless, the adolescent and adult learners showed the same generalization pattern, improving on untrained backward- but not forward- or simultaneous-masking conditions. Another subset of adolescents (n = 6) actually got worse on the trained condition. This worsening, unlike learning, generalized to an untrained forward-masking, but not backward-masking condition. Within sessions, both age groups got worse, but the worsening was greater for adolescents. These maturational changes in the response to training largely followed those previously reported for temporal-interval discrimination. Overall, the results suggest that late-maturing processes affect the response to perceptual training and that some of these processes may be shared between tasks. Further, the different developmental rates for learning and generalization, and different generalization patterns for learning and worsening imply that learning, generalization, and worsening may have different origins.

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“…(2005) and Halliday et al . (2012) to assess whether the discrepant results can be attributed to differences in the participant characteristics, training programme and/or design of the two studies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Tale of Two Studies on Auditory Training in Children: A Response to the Claim that ‘Discrimination Training of Phonemic Contrasts Enhances Phonological Processing in Mainstream School Children’ by Moore, Rosenberg and Coleman (2005)

Halliday

2014

Dyslexia

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In a previous article, Moore, Rosenberg and Coleman (Brain and Language, 2005, 94, 72-85) reported evidence for significant improvements in phonological awareness in mainstream children following 6 h of exposure to a commercially available phoneme discrimination training programme, but not in a control group. In a follow-up study, we failed to replicate this finding, despite using an almost identical training programme (Halliday, Taylor, Millward, & Moore, Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2012, 55, 168-181). This paper directly compares the methods and the results of the two studies, in an effort to explain the discrepant findings. It reports that the trained group in Moore et al. (2005) showed significantly greater improvements in phonological awareness following training than the trained group in Halliday et al. (2012). However, the control group in Halliday et al. (2012) showed significantly greater improvements in phonological awareness than the control group in Moore et al. (2005). The paper concludes that differences in the randomization, blinding, experimenter familiarity and treatment of trained and control groups contributed to the different outcomes of the two studies. The results indicate that a plethora of factors can contribute to training effects and highlight the importance of well-designed randomized controlled trials in assessing the efficacy of a given intervention. © 2014 The Authors. Dyslexia published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Lack of Generalization of Auditory Learning in Typically Developing Children

Abstract: Nonspeech (AFD) or speech (PD) discrimination training can lead to auditory learning in typically developing children of this age range. However, this learning does not always generalize across stimuli or tasks, across modalities, or to higher level measures of language ability.

Cited by 25 publications

References 45 publications

Benefits of Phoneme Discrimination Training in a Randomized Controlled Trial of 50- to 74-Year-Olds With Mild Hearing Loss

Benefits of Phoneme Discrimination Training in a Randomized Controlled Trial of 50- to 74-Year-Olds With Mild Hearing Loss

Learning, worsening, and generalization in response to auditory perceptual training during adolescence

A Tale of Two Studies on Auditory Training in Children: A Response to the Claim that ‘Discrimination Training of Phonemic Contrasts Enhances Phonological Processing in Mainstream School Children’ by Moore, Rosenberg and Coleman (2005)

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