The Importance of Sound for Cognitive Sequencing Abilities

TLDR

Sound is a temporal and sequential signal that may scaffold the development of general cognitive abilities for representing temporal or sequential patterns, so early absence of sound can disturb these sequencing skills. The study presents two types of findings to support the hypothesis that sound scaffolds temporal and serial order cognition. Sound may act as auditory scaffolding for time and serial order behavior, possibly via neural connections between the temporal and frontal lobes. Normal‑hearing adults outperform deaf children on sequencing tasks that rely on hearing, and auditory deprivation leads to neural reorganization that disturbs cognitive sequencing abilities.

Abstract

Sound is inherently a temporal and sequential signal. Experience with sound therefore may help bootstrap - i.e., provide a kind of "scaffolding" for - the development of general cognitive abilities related to representing temporal or sequential patterns. Accordingly, the absence of sound early in development may result in disturbances to these sequencing skills. In support of this hypothesis we present two types of findings. First, normal-hearing adults do best on sequencing tasks when the sense of hearing, rather than vision, can be used. Second, recent findings suggest that deaf children have disturbances on exactly these same kinds of tasks that involve learning and manipulation of serial order information. We suggest that sound provides an "auditory scaffolding" for time and serial order behavior, possibly mediated through neural connections between the temporal and frontal lobes of the brain. Under conditions of auditory deprivation, auditory scaffolding is absent, resulting in neural reorganization and a disturbance to cognitive sequencing abilities.