A listening experiment based on a developed paradigm to investigate the intentional switching of auditory selective attention with binaural sound reproduction was conducted to examine the influence of generic, individualized and individual head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) on the auditory selective attention of children. For many applications, the generic HRTF of an adult artificial head is used. However, generic HRTFs differ from individual HRTFs and since anthropometric data of children differs from that of adults, generic HRTFs developed for adults may not be appropriate for the sound reproduction in children. Apart from the individual and generic HRTF sets, this study included two individualization methods estimating the individual HRTF based on anthropometric dimensions. Both methods individualized the phase of the HRTF, while one of the methods additionally individualized the magnitude spectrum. Since the ability of children to use binaural cues has remained discussed in literature, the influence of different HRTFs could also give insight into how changes in spatial cues may influence the auditory selective attention of children. Therefore, a listening experiment with 28 children aged 6 – 10 years was conducted. The main analysis included the generic and the individualized HRTFs. The individual HRTF was included for front-back configurations and for the analysis of spatial source separation. Significant differences in the performance were observed between the HRTFs. The magnitude and phase individualization achieved the best results, which was most eminent in front-back configurations. The generic HRTF seemed to offer the worst cues for front-back discrimination. This suggested, that the magnitude spectrum of children differs significantly from that of adults. Children might preferably rely on ILDs and spectral colorations than on the ITD. The results underlined the importance of using child-appropriate HRTFs and individualizing the magnitude spectrum of HRTFs for a proper binaural reproduction.

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