Physical aspects of listening skills are described, including speech rate, syllable tone, word-word separation vs. joining, listening for "focus," word clues per message, and intonation. (LB)

Three experiments with young children and adults were performed to examine the development of frequency selectivity and to attempt to separate peripheral versus central contributions to frequency selectivity. Results suggested that the shallow notched-noise, fixed-masker-level functions of four-year-old children are probably a result of poor…

The ILO92 was used to determine the level of Distortion Product Otoacoustic Emissions (DPOAEs) at 2f1-f2 for 16 combinations of primary levels in the range of 40 to 80 dB SPL from 40 unimpaired adult ears. An overall increase of DPOAE amplitude with increase in primary level was observed. (Author/CR)

Examines tone perception in Mambila, a Benue-Congo language with four level lexical tones. A categorization experiment was run to determine some of the salient aspects of the perceptual nature of these tones. Results are discussed in light of what is known about universal tendencies of tone systems and the historical development of the Mambila…

This study examined the test-retest reliability of SCAN, a popular screening test for determining the possible presence of a central auditory processing disorder in children. Testing and retesting using a six- to seven-week interval with 25 first-grade and 22 third-grade children found significant improvement from test to retest for both grades.…

Two studies examined the ability of typically developing children and children with phonological disorders to discriminate consonant-vowel- consonant words that differ only in the final consonant in whole word and gated conditions. Results suggest there is a complex relationship among word learning skills, ability to attend to fine phonetic…

Argues that phonemes play a central role in speech recognition. Presents simulations showing how the recognition of nonsense syllables can be very well predicted from the recognition of their component phonemes. Suggests that a model in which syllables are factored into their phonemes can account for the results of multidimensional phonetic…

Assessed perception of phonemic contrast based on voice onset time (VOT) and a nonspeech analog of VOT contrast among children and adolescents with reading disability (RD), ADHD, RD and AHDH, or no impairment. Found that RD children had difficulty processing speech and nonspeech stimuli containing similar auditory temporal cues. Phoneme perception…

Positron emission tomography imaging was used to evaluate the brain's response to auditory stimulation, including speech, in deaf adults (five with cochlear implants and one with an auditory brainstem implant). Functional speech processing was associated with activation in areas classically associated with speech processing. (Contains five…

Studies evaluating temporal auditory processing among individuals with reading and other language deficits have yielded inconsistent findings due to methodological problems (Studdert-Kennedy & Mody, 1995) and sample differences. In the current study, seven auditory masking thresholds were measured in fifty-two 7- to 10-year-old children (26…

The development of speech from infancy to adulthood results from the interaction of neurocognitive factors, by which phonological representations and motor control abilities are gradually acquired, and physical factors, involving the complex changes in the morphology of the articulatory system. In this article, an articulatory-to-acoustic model,…

Seventy-six children with cochlear implants completed a nonword repetition task. The children were presented with 20 nonword auditory patterns over a loudspeaker and were asked to repeat them aloud to the experimenter. The children's responses were recorded on digital audiotape and then played back to normal-hearing adult listeners to obtain…

The relation between reading ability and performance on an auditory temporal pattern discrimination task was investigated in children who were either good or delayed readers. The stimuli in the primary task consisted of sequences of tones, alternating between high and low frequencies. The threshold interstimulus interval (ISI) for discrimination…

The main goal of this study was to implement a computer-animated talking head, Baldi, as a language tutor for speech perception and production for individuals with hearing loss. Baldi can speak slowly; illustrate articulation by making the skin transparent to reveal the tongue, teeth, and palate; and show supplementary articulatory features, such…

Infants' early phonetic perception is hypothesized to play an important role in language development. Previous studies have not assessed this potential link in the first 2 years of life. In this study, speech discrimination was measured in 6-month-old infants using a conditioned head-turn task. At 13, 16, and 24 months of age, language development…