Children's difficulties to understand speech in noisy conditions

In multitalker backgrounds, the auditory cortex of adult humans tracks the attended speech stream rather than the global auditory scene. Still, it is unknown whether such preferential tracking also occurs in children whose speech-in-noise (SiN) abilities are typically lower compared with adults.


A new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate the frequency-specific cortical tracking of different elements of a cocktail-party auditory scene in twenty children (6—9 years; 8 females) and twenty adults (21—40 years; 10 females). During MEG recordings, subjects attended to 4 different 5-min stories, mixed with different levels of multitalker background at four signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs: noiseless, +5, 0, and —5 dB). Coherence analysis quantified the coupling between the time courses of the MEG activity and attended speech stream, multitalker background or global auditory scene, respectively.


In adults, statistically significant coherence was observed between MEG signals originating from the auditory system and the attended stream at < 1 Hz, 1—4 Hz, and 4—8 Hz in all SNR conditions. Children displayed similar coupling at < 1 Hz and 1—4 Hz, but increasing noise impaired the coupling more strongly than in adults. Also, children displayed drastically lower coherence at 4—8 Hz in all SNR conditions.


These results suggest that children's difficulties to understand speech in noisy conditions are related to an immature selective cortical tracking of the attended speech streams. Our results also provide unprecedented evidence for an acquired cortical tracking of speech at syllable-rate and argue for a progressive development of SiN abilities in humans.


Significance statement:


Behaviorally, children are worse than adults at understanding speech-in-noise. Here, neuromagnetic signals were recorded while healthy adults and typically developing 6—9-year- old children attended to a speech stream embedded in a multitalker background noise with varying intensity. Results demonstrate that auditory cortices of both children and adults selectively track the attended speaker's voice rather than the global acoustic input at phrasal and word rates. However, increments of noise compromised the tracking significantly more in children than in adults. Unexpectedly, children displayed limited tracking of both the attended voice and the global acoustic input at the 4—8-Hz syllable rhythm. Thus, both speech-in-noise abilities and cortical tracking of speech syllable repetition rate seem to mature later in adolescence.