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Perceptual Anchoring in Preschool Children: Not Adultlike, but There

BACKGROUND: Recent studies suggest that human auditory perception follows a prolonged developmental trajectory, sometimes continuing well into adolescence. Whereas both sensory and cognitive accounts have been proposed, the development of the ability to base current perceptual decisions on prior inf...

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Autores principales: Banai, Karen, Yifat, Rachel
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3095618/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21603614
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019769
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author Banai, Karen
Yifat, Rachel
author_facet Banai, Karen
Yifat, Rachel
author_sort Banai, Karen
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Recent studies suggest that human auditory perception follows a prolonged developmental trajectory, sometimes continuing well into adolescence. Whereas both sensory and cognitive accounts have been proposed, the development of the ability to base current perceptual decisions on prior information, an ability that strongly benefits adult perception, has not been directly explored. Here we ask whether the auditory frequency discrimination of preschool children also improves when given the opportunity to use previously presented standard stimuli as perceptual anchors, and whether the magnitude of this anchoring effect undergoes developmental changes. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Frequency discrimination was tested using two adaptive same/different protocols. In one protocol (with-reference), a repeated 1-kHz standard tone was presented repeatedly across trials. In the other (no-reference), no such repetitions occurred. Verbal memory and early reading skills were also evaluated to determine if the pattern of correlations between frequency discrimination, memory and literacy is similar to that previously reported in older children and adults. Preschool children were significantly more sensitive in the with-reference than in the no-reference condition, but the magnitude of this anchoring effect was smaller than that observed in adults. The pattern of correlations among discrimination thresholds, memory and literacy replicated previous reports in older children. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The processes allowing the use of context to form perceptual anchors are already functional among preschool children, albeit to a lesser extent than in adults. Nevertheless, immature anchoring cannot fully account for the poorer frequency discrimination abilities of young children. That anchoring is present among the majority of typically developing preschool children suggests that the anchoring deficits observed among individuals with dyslexia represent a true deficit rather than a developmental delay.
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spelling pubmed-30956182011-05-19 Perceptual Anchoring in Preschool Children: Not Adultlike, but There Banai, Karen Yifat, Rachel PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Recent studies suggest that human auditory perception follows a prolonged developmental trajectory, sometimes continuing well into adolescence. Whereas both sensory and cognitive accounts have been proposed, the development of the ability to base current perceptual decisions on prior information, an ability that strongly benefits adult perception, has not been directly explored. Here we ask whether the auditory frequency discrimination of preschool children also improves when given the opportunity to use previously presented standard stimuli as perceptual anchors, and whether the magnitude of this anchoring effect undergoes developmental changes. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Frequency discrimination was tested using two adaptive same/different protocols. In one protocol (with-reference), a repeated 1-kHz standard tone was presented repeatedly across trials. In the other (no-reference), no such repetitions occurred. Verbal memory and early reading skills were also evaluated to determine if the pattern of correlations between frequency discrimination, memory and literacy is similar to that previously reported in older children and adults. Preschool children were significantly more sensitive in the with-reference than in the no-reference condition, but the magnitude of this anchoring effect was smaller than that observed in adults. The pattern of correlations among discrimination thresholds, memory and literacy replicated previous reports in older children. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The processes allowing the use of context to form perceptual anchors are already functional among preschool children, albeit to a lesser extent than in adults. Nevertheless, immature anchoring cannot fully account for the poorer frequency discrimination abilities of young children. That anchoring is present among the majority of typically developing preschool children suggests that the anchoring deficits observed among individuals with dyslexia represent a true deficit rather than a developmental delay. Public Library of Science 2011-05-16 /pmc/articles/PMC3095618/ /pubmed/21603614 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019769 Text en Banai, Yifat. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Banai, Karen
Yifat, Rachel
Perceptual Anchoring in Preschool Children: Not Adultlike, but There
title Perceptual Anchoring in Preschool Children: Not Adultlike, but There
title_full Perceptual Anchoring in Preschool Children: Not Adultlike, but There
title_fullStr Perceptual Anchoring in Preschool Children: Not Adultlike, but There
title_full_unstemmed Perceptual Anchoring in Preschool Children: Not Adultlike, but There
title_short Perceptual Anchoring in Preschool Children: Not Adultlike, but There
title_sort perceptual anchoring in preschool children: not adultlike, but there
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3095618/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21603614
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019769
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