Long-Term Training-Induced Gains of an Auditory Skill in School-Age Children As Compared With Adults.
Y Zaltz, D Ari-Even Roth, A Karni and 1 others
PMID 30062912WHAT IT FOUND
After a single session of hearing small pitch differences, 22 of 40 children performed like adults and stayed that way over nine sessions.
The other 18 remained worse but improved 6 to 8 months later, as did untrained children.
Key findings
01After a single training session, 22 of the 40 children performed within the adult-like range, and 18 did not.
02Performance after the first session was the strongest predictor of performance after multiple sessions.
03Six to eight months later, non-adult-like children improved, but untrained children also improved.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only one nonlinguistic pitch-discrimination task was trained, so results may not apply to other auditory skills. The children were 7 to 9 years old, had normal hearing, no reported language, learning, or attention disorders, and were from mid-high socioeconomic status, so findings may not extend to younger children, children with disorders, or lower socioeconomic status. The paper does not describe random allocation or blinding. About 4% of children's threshold measurements were missing and were imputed. Improvement in non-adult-like children at retention cannot be separated from normal development because untrained children also improved. The study did not report whether gains generalized to untrained conditions.
Declared interests
No conflicts-of-interest declaration is included in the supplied text. The journal metadata lists non-U.S. government research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that auditory training works for all children. The children who did not perform adult-like after a single session did not reach adult-like performance by the end of nine sessions, and the later improvement also occurred in untrained children. The training also included visual corrective feedback, verbal reinforcement, and rewards, so the study does not isolate a single treatment component.