ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Quantitative Psychology and Measurement
Automatic for the Kids: Assessment of Cognitive Efficiency in Elementary School Children's Auditory Semantic Processing
Provisionally accepted
- Institute of Educational Research, University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany
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The present study examined time on task effects in semantic processes of listening comprehension on the word and sentence levels. The aim was to investigate whether response times in auditory semantic tasks show systematic relations with accuracy, and whether these tasks therefore provide valid information about the efficiency of semantic listening processes. A total of 480 German elementary school children in Grades 1-4 solved either a semantic categorization task (n = 205) or a sentence verification task (n = 275). Accuracy and response time data were analyzed using generalized linear mixed models. Random effects for persons and items were added to test whether the time on task effects were moderated by individual skill and item difficulty. Results showed that faster responses were associated with higher accuracy for both tasks. Moreover, this relationship was stronger for more skilled comprehenders and easier items. These findings suggest that response times add meaningful information about the efficiency of semantic listening processes and may complement accuracy-based measures in the assessment of listening component skills.
Keywords: Time on task, listening comprehension, cognitive efficiency, Semanticprocessing, automaticity
Received: 12 Jul 2025; Accepted: 27 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Dahdah, Osipov and Naumann. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Patrick Dahdah
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