Perceptual learning in children during perception of the emotional component of speech utterances: The influence of age and gender

Perceptual learning was examined during perception of the emotional component of speech when a valid signal was presented against a background of noise to 7-to 17-year-old boys and girls. Accuracy of emotion recognition (AR) and response time (RT) were recorded in two consecutive test series. Analysis of variance of the results demonstrated a high significance of the series order for both the RT and the AR. The study revealed the ontogenetic features of the characteristics of perceptual learning under these conditions. The most notable changes were observed in the time of discriminating emotions. Mathematically, perceptual learning was modeled exponentially. Model parameters such as the rate of perceptual learning and the initial level of perceptual performance were estimated. It was found that the rate of learning, calculated for both the AR and the RT, had close values and similar trends of changes in both the male and the female samples. This suggests that the rate of perceptual learning is an invariant characteristic of perception of the emotional component of speech in a child. The initial level of perceptual performance increased as a function of age, more notably in the boys than in the girls. The initial level of the RT decreased with age in the girls and almost did not depend on age in the boys. However, the integral AR suggests that the age-related changes in the initial level of the integral perception of emotions are identical in girls and boys.