Summary
As subjects of psychoacoustical research, human infants, especially very young infants, pose special problems. Their response repertoire is limited; they make few unique responses to sound; and they are available for testing for only short periods of time. Our approach to the testing of infants has been to use existing spontaneous responses, but to use the infants’ behavior to judge whether or not a sound has occurred rather than whether or not a response has occurred. This observer-based approach has allowed us to assess sensitivity, frequency resolution, and temporal resolution in infants as young as 1 month of age.
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Olsho, L. W., Koch, E. G., Halpin, C. F., & Carter, E. A. (1987). An observer-based psychoacoustic procedure for use with young infants. Developmental Psychology, 23, 627 – 640.
Teller, D. Y. (1979). The forced-choice preferential looking procedure: A psychophysical technique for use with human infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 2, 135–153.
Trehub, S. E., Schneider, B. A., Thorpe, L. A., & Judge, P. (1991). Observational measures of auditory sensitivity in early infancy. Developmental Psychology, 27, 40–49.
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Werner, L.A. (1995). Observer-based Approaches to Human Infant Psychoacoustics. In: Klump, G.M., Dooling, R.J., Fay, R.R., Stebbins, W.C. (eds) Methods in Comparative Psychoacoustics. BioMethods. Birkhäuser, Basel. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-7463-2_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-7463-2_12
Publisher Name: Birkhäuser, Basel
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