Temporal Processing in Monolingual and Bilingual Normal Hearing Adults

Introduction: The temporal ordering ability refers to the capacity to recognize, identify, and order acoustic stimuli according to their order of presentation during a specific period of time. The auditory system development can benefit when an individual is exposed to two languages, because the second language knowledge promotes a linguistic context that increases the speed and effectiveness of information processing.

Objective: To compare the temporal ordering ability between monolinguals and bilinguals.

Methods: This is a descriptive, quantitative, and transversal study. The sample was composed of 20 subjects(10 monolingual, 10 bilingual), with normal hearing and no complaints of auditory processing, aged 17 to 38 years and averaged 22 years. They were submitted the versions of temporal ordering tests: one with a musical tone called the Duration and Frequency Melodic Pattern Test as Taborga (1997), followed by Pure Tone Test (frequency pattern test [FPT] and duration pattern test [DPT] tonal) as Musiek (2004) and finally the Auditec Test as Saint Louis (1997), performed in the same data. This work is part of a biggest project developed by Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.

Results: In the analysis it was found that bilinguals had 100% accuracy in Melodic and Auditec Test and 75%accuracy in Musiek Test. The monolinguals had 70% accuracy in Auditec, 60%accuracy in Melodic, and15% accuracy in Musiek.

Conclusion: The bilingual subjects performed better on all ordering tests when compared to monolingual subjects. This fact may be related to the role of the left hemisphere having more responsibility in the analysis of temporal aspects of specific acoustic stimuli for the sounds discrimination, being the same hemisphere of language, so that we can infer that studying a second language will have the temporal resolution ability more developed.