Late Auditory Event-Related Potentials (LAERs) are widely used to investigate central auditory responses to sounds. Components of the LAERs reflect successive stages of sound processing, such as detection and discrimination, throughout the auditory pathway, and are influenced by (in)congruent visual information. From infancy to old age, LAERs show morphological and topographical changes. Their maturation is thought to follow a stepwise trajectory marked by distinct changes at the start and end of adolescence. Interestingly, the beginning of adolescence coincides with puberty onset, which triggers a cascade of hormonal changes that may lead to enhanced neural plasticity. Puberty could thus contribute to the maturation of sensory brain regions, including the central auditory cortex in the temporal brain region. To date, the effect of puberty on the development of the central auditory system has remained unexplored. Here, we hypothesize that pubertal maturation underlies the stepwise maturation observed in LAERs. Our project aims to investigate the effect of puberty on the development of auditory and audiovisual speech perception. To date, we have tested 6 pre-pubertal children, 37 early-to-late-pubertal adolescents, and 18 post-pubertal adults. We plan to record LAERs from over 120 children, adolescents, and adults. Participants were presented with speech stimuli in an oddball paradigm across four conditions: audio only, audiovisual congruent, audiovisual incongruent, and visual only. Preliminary findings suggest that puberty drives certain changes in LAER morphology throughout adolescence, particularly in pre/early to mid/late pubertal adolescents. These results indicate that puberty may play a role in the functional maturation of the central auditory pathway, potentially contributing to the fine-tuning of adolescents’ ability to process speech in ecologically challenging, noisy settings.