Purpose: Listening is the gateway to learning in the mainstream classroom; however, classrooms are noisy environments, making listening challenging. Therefore, speech-in-noise tests that realistically incorporate the complexity of the classroom listening environment are needed. The aim of this article was to review the speech stimuli, noise…

This study examined the effects of the cochlear hearing loss of 12 adults on two measures of sequential processing that rely on spectro-temporal information: a gap-detection discrimination task and a melody recognition task. It was concluded that cochlear hearing loss deleteriously affects the processes underlying perceptual organization of…

This study examined the abilities of 18 adults with familial dyslexia to use steady state, dynamic, and temporal cues in synthetic speech continua. Although subjects were able to label and discriminate the continua, they did not necessarily use acoustic cues in the same manner as did normal readers, and their overall performance was less accurate.…

Infants were tested for their discrimination of changes in the melodic contour (direction of successive pitch changes) of brief melodies in the context of discernible variations in key or interval size. (PCB)

Ten children (ages 12-16) with specific language impairments (SLI) and controls matched for chronological or language age were tested with measures of complex sound localization involving the precedence effect phenomenon. SLI children exhibited tracking skills similar to language-age matched controls, indicating impairment in their ability to use…

Examines the relation between aspects of the fundamental frequency (basic pitch) of 16 infant newborn cries and 28 multiparous mothers' perceptions of those cries. Results support the hypothesis that increases in fundamental frequency are related to increases in maternal perceptions of the intensity of the infant's cry. (Author/RWB)

Study measures the precision of auditory localization in 26- to 30-week-old infants using the adult minimum audible angle test. Results show that infants discriminate sound displacements of about 19 degrees, considerably less accurate than adult values of one to two degrees. (Author/RWB)

Studies development of auditory temporal acuity in 56 children aged 6 to 12 years and in 8 adults. Improvement in temporal acuity with age was attributed to development of sensory processes and not to age-related changes in nonsensory factors. (Author/BE)

This examination of the auditory perceptual abilities of 40 children, ages 4-10, and 10 adults found significant differences between the performances of the 4- to 8-year olds and of the adults. Acquisition of adultlike duration discrimination performance was demonstrated between the ages of 8 and 10 years. (Author/JDD)

A forward-gating procedure employing familiar monosyllabic words was used in auditory testing of age- and gender-matched elementary students with and without learning disabilities. Results indicate auditory closure skills were comparable between disabled and nondisabled subjects, but sensory discrimination problems may contribute significantly to…

This paper presents results of 2 experiments examining effects of signal and masker uncertainty on 17 preschoolers' and 13 adults' detection of tonal signals in noise maskers. Effects of masker uncertainty significantly exceeded those of signal uncertainty. For most adults and some children, distracters produced higher thresholds and shallower…

Eighty normally hearing children (ages 4 to 8) judged the clarity of sentences that were systematically bandpass-filtered to increase intelligibility. Study of 10 subjects at each age found that children 5 years or older were able to make reliable clarity judgements using paired comparisons or category rating; however, the method of paired…

This study examined identification and discrimination of initial bilabial stop consonants differing in voicing by 10 9-year-old children with a history of severe otitis media with effusion (OME). Long-term effects of OME were found for both identification and discrimination performance. In cases of language impairment with early OME, no additional…

Examines graduate and undergraduate music majors' ability to detect pitch and rhythm errors in various settings of textually contrasting musical excerpts. Students listened to intentionally marred excerpts and attempted to identify the errors. Analysis of variance revealed that the predictor variables did not function independently of each other.…

This study evaluated the peripheral and central auditory functioning (and thus the potential to perceive obstacles through reflected sound) of eight totally blind persons and eight sighted persons. The blind subjects were able to process auditory information faster than the control group. (Author/DB)