Auditory temporal-order thresholds show no gender differences.

PURPOSE Several studies on auditory temporal-order processing showed gender differences. Women needed longer inter-stimulus intervals than men when indicating the temporal order of two clicks presented to the left and right ear. In this study, we examined whether we could reproduce these results in order to further investigate the differences in auditory processing between men and women. METHODS Neurologically healthy subjects (13 males and 13 females, age range: 19 to 37 years) had to identify the temporal order of two clicks, presented monaurally to the left and right ear. Thresholds for the inter-stimulus intervals between the clicks were determined using a three step transformed up-down procedure. RESULTS The results show no influence of gender in the auditory temporal-order task. Inter-individual differences were, however, large, ranging from a threshold of around 15 ms to around 90 ms. CONCLUSION Contrary to what was found in previous studies, no significant gender difference was measured in temporal-processing abilities using a task with monaurally presented clicks.

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