Two groups of 15 children (7 to 9 years old) were compared on auditory perceptual skills and academic achievement. Ss with conductive loss (CL) had histories of middle ear pathology. Overall performance of the CL Ss was significantly lower than a normal control group's, with specific deficiencies in auditory perceptual areas. (CL)

The meaning of mothers' perceptions of their infants' temperamental "difficultness" was explored in three ways. Subjective ratings were elicited from mothers who listened to the cries of four- to six-month-old infants who were not their own. Acoustic properties of the cries of the infants were measured and effects of a variety of…

Children 6- to 7- and 9- to 10-years-old listened to pairs of words presented dichotically to the left and right ear either simultaneously or in immediate succession. Results indicated that pragmatic, serial relations dominate younger children's semantic organization, whereas logical, hierarchical relations dominate older children's semantic…

Three studies compared effects of different rhythmic contexts on order judgments of targets embedded in auditory patterns designed to manifest auditory stream segregation. The magnitude of the captor effect varied with temporal predictability of flanking and/or target tones. A pairwise rhythm was likely to improve judgments by facilitating…

Two studies are reported in which the relationship between sound blending and auditory closure and reading performance (word analysis skills, oral reading, and silent reading) was explored in learning disabled youngsters (6 to 11 years old). (Author)

Twenty-one normally developing 3-year-old children were tested on two approximate consonant contrasts, "rake-lake" and "wake-rake," and a control contrast, "wake-bake." The children showed very accurate perceptions of minimal pairs. Children who did not yet articulate "r" or "l" appropriately showed somewhat less consistent perception than…

Results showed that the overall performance of the conductive loss group on the test battery was significantly lower than that of the normal control group. Performance of the experimental group was also significantly lower in specific auditory perceptual areas. (Author)

An investigation was conducted to observe the effects of hearing aids on the ability of 20 blind veterans to localize white noise. In all cases, Ss performed more poorly on a localization task while wearing a hearing aid. (Author)

Children with central auditory processing deficiencies often experience extreme learning difficulty within the educational environment. To augment the training these children may receive from the school speech-language pathologist, and to further enhance these children's learning capabilities, a list of classroom management suggestions is…

In two experiments, the majority of 21 newborn infants who were maintained in an alert state consistently turned their heads toward a continuous sound source presented 90 degrees from midline. For most infants, this orientation response was rather slow, taking median latencies of 2.5 seconds to begin and 5.5 seconds to end. (JMB)

Infants between four and eight months of age were tested for their ability to reach for visible and unseen toys that made sounds. Infants reached for toys in the dark under two auditory illusion conditions, the Haas effect and the midline illusion. Results indicated that, by four months of age, infants perceived the Haas effect and the midline…

Reexamines the history of the apprehension, consumption, and production of reality by means of the aural in light of developments in virtual reality technology. Suggests that, by acknowledging and examining its roots in aural media, the connections of virtual reality to the discourse of authenticity are made clear. (SR)

Discriminating between unknown foreign languages, infants, young children, and adult listeners are able to make same/different-language discrimination judgments at better than chance levels. In two experiments, the same talkers were used for different pairs of languages to see if listeners could discriminate between languages they did not know.…

This study examined the feasibility of using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in auditory research by testing the reliability of scanning parameters using high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratios. Findings indicated reproducibility within and across listeners for consonant-vowel speech stimuli and reproducible results within and…

This article discusses central auditory processing disorders (CAPDs) including background information, a current definition of CAPDs, test battery approaches which follow guidelines of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, and various approaches to intervention. Also noted are remaining questions and various controversies related to…