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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Int Arch Otorhinolaryngol 2023; 27(01): e56-e66
DOI: 10.1055/s-0041-1741434
Original Research

Effects of Abacus Training on Auditory Spatial Maturation in Children with Normal Hearing

M. Sanjana 
1   Department of Speech and Hearing, Manipal College of Health Professions (MCHP), Manipal, Karnataka, India.
,
K. V. Nisha 
2   Center for Hearing Sciences, Center of Excellence, All India Institute of Speech and Hearing (AIISH), Naimisham Campus, Manasagangothri, Mysore, Karnataka, India.
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Abstract

Introduction The spatial auditory system, though developed at birth, attains functional maturity in the late childhood (12 years). Spatial changes during childhood affect navigation in the environment and source segregation. Accommodation of a new skill through learning, especially during childhood, can expedite this process.

Objective To explore the auditory spatial benefits of abacus training on psychoacoustic metrics in children. The study also aimed to identify the most sensitive metric to abacus training related changes in spatial processing, and utilize this metric for a detailed spatial error profiling.

Methods A standard group comparison analysis with 90 participants divided into three groups: I: children with abacus training (C-AT); II: children with no training (C-UT); III: adults with no training (A-UT). The groups underwent a series of psychoacoustic tests, such as interaural time difference (ITD), interaural level difference (ILD), and virtual auditory space identification (VASI), as well as perceptual tests such as the Kannada version of the speech, spatial, and quality questionnaire (K-SSQ).

Results Significant group differences were observed in the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and post-hoc tests, with the C-AT group showing significantly lower ILD scores (p = 0.01) and significantly higher VASI scores (p<0.001) compared to the C-UT group, which is indicative of better spatial processing abilities in the former group. The discriminant function (DF) analyses showed that the VASI was the most sensitive metric for training-related changes, based on which elaborate error analyses were performed.

Conclusions Despite the physiological limits of the immature neural framework, the performance of the C-AT group was equivalent to that of untrained adults on psychoacoustic tests, which is reflective of the positive role of abacus training in expediting auditory spatial maturation.

Keywords

spatial perception - maturation - psychoacoustics - virtual - discriminant analysis - abacus training


Publication History

Received: 23 April 2021

Accepted: 11 September 2021

Article published online:
06 September 2022

© 2023. Fundação Otorrinolaringologia. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commecial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

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