To test whether six-month-old infants recognize the auditory similarity of speech sounds sharing a value on a phonetic-feature dimension, an operant head turn procedure was used. Results indicated that the performance of infants trained on phonetically related speech sounds was far superior to that of infants in the nonphonetic control group.…

Deaf subjects required about 9 dB greater speech-to-noise ratio for 75 percent correct detection of words than did normal-hearing subjects, suggesting that maximum communication effectiveness may occur for hearing impaired children only at higher speech-to-noise ratios than that required by normal-hearing persons. (Author/KW)

Three experiments were undertaken involving three users of multi-electrode cochlear prostheses. The experiments established a scale of stimulus loudness; measured minimum-detectable gaps for sinusoidal stimuli as functions of stimulus level, frequency, and electrode place within the cochlea; and assessed independence of the electrodes using a…