Auditory Development

Auditory development is the study of the sequence of events that lead to mature audition, or hearing, which plays an important role in the acquisition of spoken language, comprehension of speech, and the ability to localize sounds and navigate [Page 212]around acoustically complex real-world environments. The goal of auditory processing is to reconstruct a scene of auditory objects that can be identified by the listener (e.g., I hear four people talking at a table in a noisy restaurant). Importantly, a listener must also be able to extract meaning from this auditory scene. The endpoint of development is a mature auditory system that can accomplish this task with accuracy and efficiency. This entry discusses the structural, functional, and perceptual development of the auditory system.

The study of ...