Adults, but not children, benefit from a pretrial signal cue in a random-frequency, two-tone masker.

This study examined the benefit of a pretrial cue, a preview of the signal, on children's (5-10 years) and adults' detection of a 1000-Hz pure-tone signal in a broadband noise or a random-frequency, two-tone masker. No cuing effect was observed with the noise masker, regardless of listener age. In contrast, all but one adult benefited from the cue with the two-tone masker (average = 9.4 dB). Most children showed no cuing effect (average = 0.1 dB) with the two-tone masker. These results suggest that, unlike adults, the provision of a pretrial cue does not promote frequency-selective listening during detection for 5- to 10-year-olds.