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Abstract:
In the present study we examined whether preattentive
auditory sensory memory in children is sensitive to constancy in a
single feature while other features vary. The extent of children's
ability to implicitly detect constancy amidst variability is of
theoretical interest because it speaks to the issue of developing
invariant representations of variable input, an ability that's
important to the acquisition of, for example, mental
representations of speech. The mismatch negativity (MMN) component
from evoked potentials was used to measure the preattentive
detection of change in a constant feature of the signal. In an
oddball paradigm children between 7 and 9 years of age were
presented with tones of the same duration (the standard) 85% of the
time or else of a shorter duration (the deviant), and instructed to
ignore the stimuli and attend to a video played without sound. In
different conditions the tones were constant on all other features
or they varied along 10 values each of frequency and intensity.
There was an MMN response in both the constant and varying
background conditions, demonstrating that by 8 years of age
children have developed the ability to preattentively detect
constancy in a variable background. Interestingly, the children had
a difficult time responding to the deviant in the variable
background conditions of a corresponding behavioral task.
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