ABSTRACT
E. Terhardt theorized that experience with speech might play a role in the development of low pitch perception. In the case of octave generalization, experience has been thought to play a different sort of role. Early experience seems to play a role in learning the culture-specific rules about stringing notes together to make an acceptable melody. Some of the most interesting and important questions in auditory development are how experience with sound affects later hearing, the characteristics of sounds that are important to these effects, and the importance of the timing of experience. Contrary to a prediction based solely on experience with different frequencies, newborns prefer a broader bandwidth rather than only those frequencies to which they would have been exposed prenatally. Experience with a specific language may also affect the categorical perception of consonants. Certain common themes arise in the consideration of the effects of experience on the perception of speech, music, and sound location.
