ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews several aspects of developmental complex perception: preference, pitch, speech, and binaural processing. The study of complex sound perception is fundamental to any description of the auditory system. Adults' perception of pitch depends on several acoustic factors. By 6 months of age, infants appear to respond to musical pattern variations qualitatively like naive adults. Virtually nothing is known about the development of musical pattern perception prior to 6 months of age. The development of another non-sensory mechanism, attention, may also account for the apparent developmental change in complex pitch perception during early infancy. In order to demonstrate complex pitch perception in young infants, it may be necessary to direct their attention toward the pitch. Insofar as music perception is concerned, evidence shows that infants perceive octave relationships and are sensitive to changes in melody and rhythm.
