It is well documented that aging adversely affects the ability to perceive time-varying acoustic cues. Here we review how physiological measures are being used to explore the effects of aging (and concomitant hearing loss) on the neural representation of temporal cues. Also addressed are the implications of current research findings on the…

A central feature of a sign bilingual approach is the use of sign language, and the associated role of deaf adults in deaf children's education. This project explores whether this approach is compatible with the goals of cochlear implantation, which are to maximise a deaf child's potential to hear and improve speech perception. There is no…

Objective: Time reproduction is deficient in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Whether this deficit is familial and could therefore serve as a candidate endophenotype has not been previously investigated. It is unknown whether timing deficits are also measurable in adolescent children with ADHD and nonaffected…

Purpose: It has long been known that children with specific language impairment (SLI) can demonstrate difficulty with auditory speech perception. However, speech perception can also involve the integration of both auditory and visual articulatory information. Method: Fifty-six preschool children, half with and half without SLI, were studied in…

Given the interest in comparing speech production development in children with normal hearing and hearing impairment, it is important to evaluate how variables within speech elicitation tasks can differentially affect the acoustics of speech production for these groups. In a first experiment, children (6-14 years old) with cochlear implants…

The value of waveform displays as visual feedback was explored in a training study involving perception and production of L2 Japanese by beginning-level L1 English learners. A pretest-posttest design compared auditory-visual (AV) and auditory-only (A-only) Web-based training. Stimuli were singleton and geminate /t,k,s/ followed by /a,u/ in two…

Although communication and social difficulties in autism have received a great deal of research attention, the other key diagnostic feature, extreme repetitive behaviour and unusual narrow interests, has been addressed less often. Also known as "resistance to change" this may be related to atypical processing of infrequent, novel stimuli. This can…

The general magnocellular theory postulates that dyslexia is the consequence of a multimodal deficit in the processing of transient and dynamic stimuli. In the auditory modality, this deficit has been hypothesized to interfere with accurate speech perception, and subsequently disrupt the development of phonological and later reading and spelling…

This study focused on auditory perception, or phonetic discrimination, in foreign language learning. Subjects of the study were English-speakers (n=35) learning French. Researchers measured subjects' auditory sensibility, comparing it with progress in phonetic discrimination during the school year. Progress in the latter was measured by both a…

This study examined changes in infants' performance in detecting tones as a funtion of time. Stimuli were presented in blocks of fixed frequency and intensity, rather than in random order. The findings of earlier studies that an observer can reliably tell from a 1-month-old's behavior when a pure tone is being presented, and that reinforcement of…

Compared the ability of poor and good readers in the second grade to make same-different matches of visual, auditory, and visual-auditory stimuli. (JMB)

Reviewed is research which has investigated failure in auditory processing as a cause of language and learning disorders (including defective articulation, aphasia, dyslexia, and specific learning disability) in children and adults. (Author/LS)

By electronically segmenting stimuli in German, two tests of perception of quantity related to tense or lax syllabic quantity were made possible. In one, the physical duration of the stressed vowel was shortened, and in the other, the occlusion of the consonant following the stressed vowel was shortened. (MSE)

This study investigated the contributions of fundamental frequency, formant spacing, and glottal waveform to talker identification. The first two experiments focused on the effect of glottal waveform in the perception of talker identity. Subjects in the first experiment, 30 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory psychology course,…

A study examined what trained phoneticians do when they are presented with a transcription task to carry out without any knowledge of the dialect they are listening to and without any explicit phonological theory as a point of departure. The "best" tokens of three categories of potential assimilation (full, partial, and zero alveolar)…