Auditory stream segregation in six‐month‐old infants and adults.

Auditory stream segregation in six-month-old infants was examined in a paradigm adapted from Bregman and Rudnicky (1975). In a conditioned head-turn procedure, listeners' detection of changes in the temporal order of 2200 and 2400 Hz target tones was tested under three conditions. For developmental comparison, as well as validation of the stimulus design, adults were tested in an identical procedure. Adults clearly detected changes in the order of the target tones when presented alone, but performance suffered when the target tones were preceded and followed by 1460 Hz flanker tones. However, performance improved when the flanker tones were embedded within a series of additional 1460 Hz tones, which captured the flanker tones into an isochronous stream of tones, perceptually segregated from the targets. Although infants performed worse than adults under the same conditions, infants also benefited from the addition of captor tones, suggesting that they too can use grouping cues to organize and attend to elements in the auditory scene.