Ten kindergarteners with no known communication problems were given 10 sets of the "Repetition Task," a procedure used to assess auditory perception, over a span of 5 days. Results suggest the possibility that differences between dysphasic and normal children on the "Repetition Task" may result from differences in perceptual learning. (Author/CL)

Success of cross-modal matching with subjects as young as four years old suggests that it is possible to investigate intermodal organization in young children. (RH)

Infants of 8-28 weeks were tested to determine the smallest sound shift off midline and along the horizontal axis that the infants could reliably discriminate. Results indicated localization acuity increased with age. Video records revealed numerous auditory orienting behaviors with methodological implications. (RH)

Infants' detection of temporal increments to silent intervals "between" groups of tones was compared with their detection of comparable silent increments "within" groups of tones. Results indicated infants discriminated temporally altered sequences from standard only when increments occurred within group. Concludes perceptual…

Findings demonstrate a finer partitioning of auditory space near midline than in hemifields. Discusses implications for an understanding of the development of auditory processing mechanisms in sound localizations. (RH)

In developing a theoretical framework for the field of ecological acoustics, Gaver (1993b) distinguished between the experience of musical listening (perceiving sounds) and everyday listening (perceiving sources of sounds). Within the everyday listening experience, Gaver (1993a) proposed that the frequency of an object results from, and therefore…

l, speech perception in noiseBackground noise is a significant factor influencing hearing-aid satisfaction and is a major reason for rejection of hearing aids. Attempts have been made by previous researchers to relate the use of hearing aids to speech perception in noise (SPIN), with an expectation of improved speech perception followed by an…

Previous research on speech perception in both adults and infants has supported the view that consonants are perceived categorically; that is, listeners are relatively insensitive to variation below the level of the phoneme. More recent work, on the other hand, has shown adults to be systematically sensitive to within category variation [McMurray,…

This study examined spoken word recognition in adults with cochlear implants (CIs) to determine the extent to which linguistic and cognitive abilities predict variability in speech-perception performance. Both a traditional consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC)-repetition measure and a gated-word recognition measure (F. Grosjean, 1996) were used.…

We examine the question of which aspects of language are uniquely human and uniquely linguistic in light of recent suggestions by Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch that the only such aspect is syntactic recursion, the rest of language being either specific to humans but not to language (e.g. words and concepts) or not specific to humans (e.g. speech…

This study aimed to investigate the hypothesis that administration of the air with 30% oxygen compared with normal air (21% oxygen) enhances cognitive functioning through increased activation in the brain. A visuospatial task was presented while brain images were scanned by a 3 T fMRI system. The results showed that there was an improvement in…