Short term habituation of the infant auditory evoked response

Shortterm habituation of the vertex auditory evoked response was studied in six infants aged 10 to 14 wk. The infants were presented trains of four synthetic speech stimuli. The average amplitude of the evoked responses was largest to the first member of the stimulus train and then decreased rapidly. The average amplitudes to the second, third, and fourth stimuli in the train were 36, 41 and 22% of the first stimulus amplitude, respectively. The results suggest that the auditory evoked response of awake infants satisfies several of the criteria for shortterm habituation.