Central Auditory Processing Development in Primary School Children

International audienceObjective: The aim of this study was twofold: (1) investigating the development of auditory processing abilities, and (2) exploring the possibility of the clinical application of the test battery used in the study.Design: The proposed battery aims to test a wide range of central auditory abilities as defined by ASHA (2005) within strict time constraints: lateralization, discrimination (i.e., frequency, duration and intensity), auditory identification, semantic recognition , temporal order judgment, central masking and stream segregation. All tests use nonverbal material to minimize the effect of language development.Study Sample: Eighty-nine typically developing children from 1st to 5th grade (from 6.7 to 10.6 years old) and 23 young adults were tested on these several auditory tasks.Results: A developmental effect was revealed in all but one proposed task: stream segregation. Interestingly, developmental trajectories differed depending on the task, with a developmental step and maturation occurring before adulthood for some abilities and linear development leading to maturation occurring during adolescence for other abilities.Conclusion: This study shows that (1) auditory processes develop during childhood at different rates and in different ways and (2) the battery can test a wide range of them in a relatively short amount of time