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…

Pitch perception is fundamental to melody in music and prosody in speech. Unlike many animals, the vast majority of human adults store melodic information primarily in terms of relative not absolute pitch, and readily recognize a melody whether rendered in a high or a low pitch range. We show that at 6 months infants are also primarily relative…

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to determine the extent to which 4-channel, slow-acting wide dynamic range amplitude compression (WDRC) can counteract the perceptual effects of reduced auditory dynamic range and (b) to examine the relation between objective measures of speech intelligibility and categorical ratings of speech quality for…

A sound presented in close temporal proximity to a visual stimulus can alter the perceived temporal dimensions of the visual stimulus (temporal ventriloquism). In this article, the authors demonstrate temporal ventriloquism in the flash-lag effect (FLE), a visual illusion in which a flash appears to lag relative to a moving object. In Experiment…

The phenomenon of attentional capture by a unique yet irrelevant singleton distractor has typically been studied in visual search. In this article, the authors examine whether a similar phenomenon occurs in the auditory domain. Participants searched sequences of sounds for targets defined by frequency, intensity, or duration. The presence of a…