Selecting target sounds in noisy environments is difficult for any listener, and this difficulty also includes pitch discrimination. On the other hand, one of the abilities of individuals with high pitch discrimination skills, such as musicians, is their high ability to understand speech in the presence of background noise. Can a relationship be found between pitch discrimination in children and their ability to perceive speech stimuli in the presence of noise?
A total of 75 children between the ages of 8 and 12, comprising of 38 boys and 37 girls, with no underlying illnesses or disorders and normal hearing, were assessed for their ability to perceive pitch differences and Consonant-Vowel discrimination while exposed to noise. The study investigated the statistical correlation between the computational measures obtained from these assessments. At high levels of signal-to-noise ratio, no statistically significant relationship was observed between the percentage of Consonant-Vowel discrimination in the presence of noise and the power of children's pitch discrimination. However, at lower signal-to-noise ratios, significant statistical correlation between these two quantities can be observed. On the other hand, the differences in these relationships at different levels suggest the possibility of differences in the auditory processing system for pitch discrimination. The ability of pitch discrimination in children is effective in their Consonant-Vowel discrimination in the presence of noise. This phenomenon varies at different levels of signal-to-noise ratio and has the greatest effect at lower levels.
