Although the ability to understand speech in adverse listening conditions is paramount for effective communication across the life span, little is understood about how this critical processing skill develops. This study asks how the dynamics of spoken word recognition (i.e., lexical access and competition) change during soft speech in 8- to…

Purpose: Speech motor skill is refined over the course of practice, which is commonly reflected by increased accuracy and consistency. This research examined the relationship between auditory-perceptual ratings of word accuracy and measures of speech motor timing and variability at pre- and posttreatment in children with childhood apraxia of…

Observers experience complex patterns of visual motion in daily life due to their own movements through space, the movement of objects, and the geometry of surfaces in the visible world. Motion information shapes behavior and brain activity beginning in infancy. And yet most prior behavioral research has focused on how children process only one…

As an information-bearing auditory attribute of sound, pitch plays a crucial role in the perception of speech and music. Studies examining pitch processing in autism spectrum disorder have produced equivocal results. To understand this discrepancy from a mechanistic perspective, we used a novel data-driven method, the reverse-correlation paradigm,…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine fatigue associated with sustained and effortful speech-processing in children with mild to moderately severe hearing loss. Method: We used auditory P300 responses, subjective reports, and behavioral indices (response time, lapses of attention) to measure fatigue resulting from sustained…

There is debate whether social impairments in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are truly domain-specific, or if they reflect generalized deficits in lower-level cognitive processes. To solve this issue, we used auditory-evoked EEG responses to assess novelty detection (MMN component) and involuntary attentional orientation (P3 component) induced by…

Purpose: The objective was to investigate acoustic cue processing in lexical-tone recognition by pediatric cochlear-implant (CI) recipients who are native Mandarin speakers. Method: Lexical-tone recognition was assessed in pediatric CI recipients and listeners with normal hearing (NH) in 2 tasks. In Task 1, participants identified naturally…

Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of minimal hearing loss (HL) on children's ability to perform simultaneous tasks in quiet and in noise. Method: Ten children with minimal HL and 11 children with normal hearing (NH) participated. Both groups ranged in age from 8 to 12 years. The children categorized common words…

This literature review aims to interpret behavioural and electrophysiological studies addressing auditory processing in children and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Data have been organised according to the applied methodology (behavioural versus electrophysiological studies) and according to stimulus complexity (pure versus complex…

The treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is a matter of ongoing research and debate, with considerable data supporting both psychopharmacological and behavioral approaches. Researchers continue to search for new interventions to be used in conjunction with or in place of the more traditional approaches. These interventions run the…

Through clinical vignettes taken from the analytic treatment of an autistic child, the paper explores Bion's notion of "selected fact" in relation to the post-Jungian theoretical speculation on the "emergent mind". The issue of the subjectivity of the analyst is considered and explored in this light. A review of some neuroscience research…

Purpose: Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) has been associated with a wide variety of diagnostic descriptions and has been shown to involve different symptoms during successive stages of development. In the present study, the authors attempted to associate the symptoms of CAS in a particular developmental stage with particular…

A history of hearing and a review of the physics of sound is followed by an overview of how the ear works. The outer hair cell is the focus of particular attention because of its central role in the conversion of sound energy into neural energy used by the brain. Contains a list of recommended resources. (CR)

High functioning children with autism and age and intelligence matched controls participated in experiments testing perception of pitch intervals and musical contours. The finding from the interval study showed superior detection of pitch direction over small pitch distances in the autism group. On the test of contour discrimination no group…