To test a central assumption of the increased perceptual capacity account in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), the effects of perceptual load and target-stimulus degradation on auditory detection sensitivity were contrasted. Fourteen adolescents with ASD and 16 neurotypical controls performed a visual letter search task under three…

The perception and production of emotional and linguistic (focus) prosody were compared in children with cochlear implants (CI) and normally hearing (NH) peers. Thirteen CI and thirteen hearing-age-matched school-aged NH children were tested, as baseline, on non-verbal emotion understanding, non-word repetition, and stimulus identification and…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) exhibit alterations in sensory processing, including changes in the integration of information across the different sensory modalities. In the current study, we used the sound-induced flash illusion to assess multisensory integration in children with ASD and typically-developing (TD) controls.…

Purpose: To understand the components of auditory learning in typically developing children by assessing generalization across stimuli, across modalities (i.e., hearing, vision), and to higher level language tasks. Method: Eighty-six 8- to 10-year-old typically developing children were quasi-randomly assigned to 4 groups. Three of the groups…

This study examined whether "melodic contour deafness" (insensitivity to the direction of pitch movement) in congenital amusia is associated with specific types of pitch patterns (discrete versus gliding pitches) or stimulus types (speech syllables versus complex tones). Thresholds for identification of pitch direction were obtained using discrete…

Research has demonstrated that focused perceptual training facilitates L2 learners' segmental perception and spoken word identification. Hardison (2003) and Motohashi-Saigo and Hardison (2009) found benefits of visual cues in the training for acquisition of L2 contrasts. The present study examined factors affecting perception and production…

Purpose: To explore whether individuals with aphasia exhibit differences in the M350, an electrophysiological marker of lexical activation, compared with healthy controls. Method: Seven people with aphasia, 9 age-matched controls, and 10 younger controls completed an auditory lexical decision task while cortical activity was recorded with…

The etiology of developmental dyslexia remains widely debated. An appealing theory postulates that the reading and spelling problems in individuals with dyslexia originate from reduced sensitivity to slow-rate dynamic auditory cues. This low-level auditory deficit is thought to provoke a cascade of effects, including inaccurate speech perception…

The present study examined the perception of Mandarin disyllabic tones by inexperienced American English speakers. Participants heard two naturally-produced Mandarin disyllables, and indicated if the two were the same or different. A small native Mandarin-speaking control group participated as well. All 21 possible Mandarin contrasts where the…

Patients diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, show impaired integration of information across different senses. The processing-level from which this impairment originates, however, remains unclear. We investigated low-level integration of auditory and visual stimuli in subjects with Autism Spectrum Disorder. High-functioning adult subjects…

Purpose: To assess the Computerized Revised Token Test (CRTT) performance of individuals with normal hearing under several intensity conditions and under several spectral and temporal perturbation conditions. Method: Sixty normal-hearing listeners were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups. Group 1 provided performance-intensity information about…

Specific reading disability (SRD) is now widely recognised as often being caused by phonological processing problems, affecting analysis of spoken as well as written language. According to one theoretical account, these phonological problems are due to low-level problems in auditory perception of dynamic acoustic cues. Evidence for this has come…

Evoked potential studies have demonstrated that musicians have the ability to distinguish musical sounds preattentively and automatically at the temporal, spectral, and spatial levels in more detail. It is however not known whether there is a difference in the early processes of auditory data processing of musicians. The most emphasized and…

Previous research has suggested that children with specific language impairments (SLI) have deficits in basic speech perception abilities, and this may be an underlying source of their linguistic deficits. These findings have come from studies in which perception of synthetic versions of meaningless syllables was typically examined in tasks with…