Performance in a Pitch Memory Task by Visually Handicapped Children and Youths

Abstract

The present work discusses results concerning sound perception obtained in a pitch memorization experiment for blind and visually impaired subjects (children and teenagers). Listeners were divided into two age groups: 7-13 year olds and 14-18 year olds. The study tested 20 individuals (8 congenitally blind and 12 visually impaired) and 20 sighted persons comprising reference groups. The duration of the experiments was as short as possible due to the fact that our listeners were children. To date, no study has described results of such experiment for blind/visually handicapped children and teenagers. In the pitch memory experiment blind teenagers outperformed blind children and both age groups of visually impaired subjects in two out of three tested cases. These results may have implications for the development of auditory training in orientation and mobility of young visually handicapped people.

Influence of Musical Experience of Blind and Visually Impaired Young Persons on Performance in Selected Auditory Tasks

“…Similarly to Wan et al (2010) and Bogusz et al (2012a;2012b), the proportion of correct answers was a primary dependent variable for pitch discrimination, pitch-timbre categorization and pitch memorization experiments. In each experiment we asked three questions: (a) is there any advantage of the blind/visually impaired subjects over respective sighted groups with respective musical experience, (b) is there any advantage of the blind subjects over visually impaired subjects with the same musical experience (c) is there any advantage of the blind/visually impaired subjects with substantial (large) musical experience over blind/visually impaired subjects with small musical experience.…”

“…Subjects answered to the experimental tasks verbally and their answers were copied by the experimenter. As detailed acoustic parameters of the experiments were described earlier (Bogusz et al, 2012a;2012b), we recall only the most important information.…”

“…They were adopted from the experiments of Wan et al (2010) and Bogusz et al (2012a;2012b). Sounds were prepared before the experiments in the Matlab environment.…”

“…Twenty of them took part in our previous investigation (Bogusz et al, 2012a(Bogusz et al, , 2012b. The group of visually impaired participants was nonhomogenous, because the subjects had different degrees of vision loss and residual light perception, contrary to homogenous blind subjects.…”

“…The study has been inspired by our previous papers (Bogusz et al, 2012a;2012b Skrodzka et al, 2014; concerning acoustical assistance for the visually handicapped (blind and visually impaired) persons. Correct interpretation of characteristic features of a sound source, differences in sounds and focus of auditory attention on small differences in parameters of an acoustic signal is very important for blind and visually impaired children and teenagers.…”