Comprehension of speech in noise and noise-vocoded speech develops well into adolescence. To further understand the cortical maturation underlying these changes, we (a) compared cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) to tones and noise in adolescents and young adults and (b) examined if CAEPs predict degraded-speech perception.
No immediate practice change; these normative developmental findings are foundational research that may eventually refine age-appropriate benchmarks for auditory testing in adolescents.
Mapping normal maturation of cortical auditory responses during adolescence provides a neurological framework for diagnosing auditory processing difficulties in young people.
- 01Cortical auditory evoked potentials continue to mature during adolescence and into young adulthood.
- 02Both tone and noise stimuli were used to capture different aspects of auditory neural development.
- 03Findings may help explain age-related variability in speech-in-noise performance among teenagers.
- 04Published in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research (doi:10.1044/2026_JSLHR-26-00036).
- 05Results contribute normative data for electrophysiological assessment in adolescent populations.
Cortical auditory evoked potentials continue to mature during adolescence and young adulthood in response to both tones and noise.
studypartially supportedMaturational changes in cortical auditory evoked potentials underpin the development of speech-in-noise perception in adolescents.
studypartially supported- PMID
- 42348485
- DOI
- 10.1044/2026_JSLHR-26-00036.
- Journal
- Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
- Publication type
- research_article
- Evidence level
- 2b
- Population
- Adolescents and young adults with typical hearing
- Intervention
- Cortical auditory evoked potential recording in response to tones and noise stimuli
Primary outcomes
Cortical auditory evoked potential morphology and latency across age groups; Neural correlates of speech-in-noise development