Attentional Modulation of Word Recognition by Children in a Dual-Task Paradigm

Andrew Lotto University of Arizona, Tucson Dawna Lewis Brenda Hoover Patricia Stelmachowicz Boys Town National Research Hospital Contact author: Sangsook Choi, who is now at the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, 500 Oval Drive, West Lafayette, IN 47907. E-mail:...

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Published in:Journal of speech, language, and hearing research language, and hearing research, 2008-08, Vol.51 (4), p.1042-1054
Main Authors: Choi, Sangsook, Lotto, Andrew, Lewis, Dawna, Hoover, Brenda, Stelmachowicz, Patricia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustics
Adults
Attention
Attention Control
Auditory Perception
Child
Child psychology
Children
Children & youth
Cognition & reasoning
Early Adolescents
Female
Humans
Language Impairments
Linguistics
Listening Comprehension
Male
Memory
Noise
Recall (Psychology)
Recognition (Psychology)
Retention (Psychology)
Short Term Memory
Speech
Speech Perception
Speech perception in children
Vocabulary
Word Recognition
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Summary:Andrew Lotto University of Arizona, Tucson Dawna Lewis Brenda Hoover Patricia Stelmachowicz Boys Town National Research Hospital Contact author: Sangsook Choi, who is now at the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, 500 Oval Drive, West Lafayette, IN 47907. E-mail: choi111{at}purdue.edu . Purpose: This study investigated an account of limited short-term memory capacity for children's speech perception in noise using a dual-task paradigm. Method: Sixty-four normal-hearing children (7–14 years of age) participated in this study. Dual tasks were repeating monosyllabic words presented in noise at 8 dB signal-to-noise ratio and rehearsing sets of 3 or 5 digits for subsequent serial recall. Half of the children were told to allocate their primary attention to word repetition and the other half to remembering digits. Dual-task performance was compared to single-task performance. Limitations in short-term memory demands required for the primary task were measured by dual-task decrements in nonprimary tasks. Results: Results revealed that (a) regardless of task priority, no dual-task decrements were found for word recognition, but significant dual-task decrements were found for digit recall; (b) most children did not show the ability to allocate attention preferentially to primary tasks; and (c) younger children (7- to 10-year-olds) demonstrated improved word recognition in the dual-task conditions relative to their single-task performance. Conclusions: Seven- to 8-year-old children showed the greatest improvement in word recognition at the expense of the greatest decrement in digit recall during dual tasks. Several possibilities for improved word recognition in the dual-task conditions are discussed. KEY WORDS: word recognition, noise, dual task, attention allocation, short-term memory CiteULike     Connotea     Del.icio.us     Digg     Facebook     Reddit     Technorati     Twitter     What's this?
ISSN:1092-4388
1558-9102
DOI:10.1044/1092-4388(2008/076)