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…

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)

Binaural loudness summation was measured using three different paradigms with 10 normally hearing and 20 bilaterally symmetrical high-frequency sensorineural hearing loss subjects. Binaural summation increased with presentation level using the loudness matching procedure, with values in the 6-10 dB range. Summation decreased with level using the…

Ninetieth percentile cutoffs for acoustic reflex thresholds (ART) were determined for a sample of 1,374 adult subjects with normal hearing and sensorineural loss of cochlear origin. It was found that 12.2 percent had one ear ART elevated above the ninetieth percentile, but only 5.6 percent had more than one elevated ART. (DB)

The study examined the test-retest reliability in unaided and aided sound-field thresholds and the functional gain values derived from these measurements in 24 hearing-impaired adults. Test-retest standard deviations were slightly larger for functional gain than for unaided thresholds. (Author/DB)

A descending version of K. Hattler's Lengthened Off-Time (LOT) Bekesy test was administered to 24 hearing-impaired adults and 30 normal-hearing adults. The Descending LOT test substantially increased screening sensitivity relative to LOT test identifications, because of larger intertrace gaps. (Author/JDD)

This study established a normal middle ear resonance estimated from sweep frequency tympanometry, established normal equivalent ear canal volume, static acoustic admittance, and tympanometric peak pressure at 226 hertz in 90 children with normal hearing and 68 children with deafness, ages 6-15. No significant intergroup or age differences were…

Materials from the Northwestern University Auditory Test Number 6, spoken by a female speaker, were passed through a low-frequency notch filter, reducing the amplitude range within the spectrum. Data obtained from 12 normal-hearing listeners in filtered and unfiltered conditions demonstrated that alterations to words spoken by the same speaker…

This study of 14 children (ages 5-9) with a history of otitis media with effusion found that subjects had significantly reduced masking-level differences (MLD) compared to controls. Results suggest that the reduction in MLD may be related to abnormal brainstem processing. (Author/JDD)

This study examined developmental effects in auditory perception of word-final /s/ in inflectional morpheme contexts as a function of high-frequency (HF) bandwidth with normal hearing 5-, 7-, 10-year-olds and adults. The higher detection thresholds and larger clarity rating variances for the youngest participants support the use of extended…

Frequency difference limens (DLFs) for pure tones were obtained over a wide range of frequencies and levels from 7 normal-hearing subjects and 16 ears of 12 listeners with sensorineural hearing losses. Results indicated that it is reasonable to use data from normal listeners' DLFs to evaluate DLFs from hearing-impaired listeners. (Author/JDD)

Hearing sensitivity was examined prospectively in 114 young children as a function of otitis media with effusion (OEM)status in years 1, 2, and 3. Results indicated that children classified as bilaterally OME positive in years 1, 2, and 3 had significantly poorer hearing than children classified as bilaterally OME free at these periods. (Contains…

Evaluates the discrimination of signal and silence duration in six-month-old infants, children aged 5 1/2 years, and adults. Results show that infants discriminated duration changes of 20 milliseconds or greater, children discriminated 15 milliseconds, and adults as few as 10 ms. Findings are consistent with other research in revealing age-related…

This study evaluated an assessment procedure designed to assess speech recognition ability in individuals with mild-to-moderate hearing losses. Sets of phonetic contrasts were presented within sentence contexts to 53 listeners (31 hearing impaired) in four listening conditions. The procedure distinguished between normal and hearing impaired…

Seventy-three children (ages 4-18) with hearing impairments were administered the Auditory Perception of Alphabet Letters test. Results indicated excellent reliability, and high intercorrelations with both open-set and closed-set auditory tests. The study concludes that spoken names of alphabet letters can be employed as an effective auditory…