Development of a new sound localisation test method for young children

McCartney, Damon and Seeber, Bernhard
MRC Institute of Hearing Research, Nottingham, UK

There are a number of studies which have looked at how children localise sounds, however, accurate 
and quantitative measurements have rarely been taken due to the difficulty of measuring children’s 
responses. To overcome these difficulties we aim to develop a new test which will investigate how 
children respond to and locate sounds. One major factor when working with young children is the issue 
of motivation and keeping the child’s interest in the task. We have developed a game-like localization 
task which is performed in a unique spatial hearing research setup situated in an anechoic chamber. The 
setup consists of forty eight loudspeakers and three video screens. Different backgrounds, objects and 
animations can be projected onto the screens, defining different game scenes. At the start of the task 
the child’s attention is captured to the front by a short animation. At the end of the animation, a sound is 
presented from a direction in the frontal hemifield, the child responds by turning to the sound. A short 
animation presented at the location of the sound is used as a reward. To measure how the child 
responds to the sound, motion trackers are placed on the child’s body, head and wrists and their 
positions recorded during and shortly after sound presentation. Further, three video cameras record the 
child to verify the tracking data. The position data is evaluated for accuracy of head turns to auditory 
targets, for turn duration and for turn speed. 
We hope the new test method can be used to gain vital information on how children learn to localise and 
respond to sounds. This may be vital for the development of future cochlear implants which will attempt 
to better encode binaural information for localization. 

Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the intramural programme of the MRC.