Frequency discrimination and non-lexical reading in children with auditory processing disorders: a preliminary study

The Influence of the Psychophysical Assessment Paradigm on Pitch Discrimination for Adults (and a Pilot Sample of Children)

Pitch discrimination ability has been of research interest due to its potential relationship to language and literacy. However, assessment protocols for pitch discrimination have varied widely. Prior studies with both children and adults have produced conflicting performance findings across different pitch discrimination research paradigms, though they have consistently shown that discrimination accuracy is based on the psychophysical assessment method applied. In the present study, we examined pitch discrimination performance among convenience samples of 19 adult women and ten female children across six different adaptive psychophysical measurement conditions. We found pitch discrimination performance in both groups to be impacted by the measurement paradigm such that, while adults exhibited significantly better discrimination thresholds than did children, the pattern of performance across the six conditions was similar for both the adults and the children.

The Contribution of Frequency Discrimination Ability to Auditory Temporal Patterning Tests in Children

Purpose The Pitch Patterns Test (PPT) and the Duration Patterns Test (DPT) are clinical auditory processing tests that evaluate temporal patterning skills based on pitch (PPT) or duration (DPT) aspects of sound. Although temporal patterning tests are categorized under the temporal processing domain, successful performance on the PPT also relies on accurate pitch discrimination. However, the relationship between pitch discrimination ability and temporal patterning skills has not been thoroughly evaluated. This study examined the contribution of pitch discrimination ability to performance on temporal patterning in children through the use of a pitch discrimination task and the PPT. The DPT was also given as a control measure to assess temporal patterning with no pitch component. Method Thirty-two typically developing elementary school-age children (6;11-11;3 [years;months]) with normal hearing were given a series of three counterbalanced tasks: an adaptive psychophysical pitch discrimination task (difference limen for frequency [DLF]), the PPT, and the DPT. Results Correlational analysis revealed moderate correlations between DLF and PPT scores. After accounting for age, results of a linear regression analysis suggested that pitch discrimination accounts for a significant amount of variance in performance on the PPT. No significant correlation was found between DLF and DPT scores, supporting the hypothesis that the pitch task had no significant temporal patterning component contributing to the overall score. Discussion These findings indicate that pitch discrimination contributes significantly to performance on the PPT, but not the DPT, in a typically developing pediatric population. This is an important clinical consideration in both assessment and utilization of targeted therapy techniques for different clinical populations.