Infants, preschoolers, and adults were tested to determine the shortest time interval at which they would respond to the precedence effect, an auditory phenomenon produced by presenting the same sound through two loudspeakers with the input to one loudspeaker delayed in relation to the other. Results revealed developmental differences in threshold…

Paired English-learning and Spanish-learning infants were tested for perception of two synthetic speech contrasts differing in voice onset time. Results indicate that Spanish-learning infants discriminated both English and Spanish contrasts, while English-learning infants appeared to have discriminated English contrasts only. (JMB)

Investigates preperceptual auditory storage among eight 9-week-old infants in three experiments using a modification of an adult masking paradigm and a nonnutritive sucking discrimination procedure. Results suggest that echoic storage contributes to auditory perception in infancy and, for infants compared to adults, echoic traces have a longer…

When equated on level of maturity, preterm infants were indistinguishable from full-term infants in their rates of response decrement to stimulus repetition and their subsequent response to a novel stimulus. Responsiveness to auditory novelty at four months was a strong predictor of 18-month mental performance for females but not for males. (RH)