Serial Position Effects for Acoustic Stimuli Among Children With and Without Hearing Loss

Abstract

Purpose This study investigated serial position effects on auditory sequential organization among children with hearing loss and with normal hearing. Method Forty-eight children were divided into 4 equally sized groups: 2 groups of 6–7-year-olds and 2 groups of 9–10-year-olds. Each age group had 12 children with normal hearing and 12 children with sensorineural hearing loss. Participants were asked to reproduce auditory sequences of verbal (syllables /ba/ and /da/) and nonverbal (1-kHz pure tone and a wideband noise) elements by pressing associated buttons. Results No evidence of a recency effect was found, but a primacy effect was observed in the participants’ performance under most experimental conditions. Normal hearing participants in the 6–7-year-old group were better at reproducing 3 to 5 verbal items than their counterparts with hearing loss, independent of item sequence position. Conclusion Results suggest that, regardless of hearing status, all children use similar mnemonic strategies.