Investigated the abilities of second language speakers to discriminate the prosodic contrasts between idiomatic and literal meanings of ambiguous sentences using utterances previously shown to be reliably identified by acoustic cues. (Author/VWL)

This commentary to EC 232 373 and EC 232 374 challenges the use of a speaker-based definition of stuttering and argues that use of the definition may only relocate the judgment reliability problem and raise as many validity problems as a listener-based definition of stuttering does. (JDD)

A forward-gating procedure employing familiar monosyllabic words was used in auditory testing of age- and gender-matched elementary students with and without learning disabilities. Results indicate auditory closure skills were comparable between disabled and nondisabled subjects, but sensory discrimination problems may contribute significantly to…

The study investigated (1) the reliability of children's (N=10 in grades 1, 3, and 5) judgments of vocal roughness, (2) normal-abnormal cut-off values for these judgments, and (3) children's ratings versus adult clinician ratings of the same samples. Results indicated child judgments commensurate with that of clinicians. (Author/DB)

Auditory-visual pattern equivalence and temporal-spatial equivalence of 72 children of 7-17 years were examined. Data indicated that aspects of intersensory integration were still developing between the ages of 13 and 17. Accuracy in performance increased with age for intra- and intersensory matching. (RH)

No differences were observed between six adults and six six-year-olds in measures of frequency selectivity and comodulation masking release. Children were less able to detect signals in noise backgrounds where the signal had perceptual qualities similar to the noise or in noise backgrounds having high degrees of fluctuation. (Author/JDD)

Reviews and critiques a doctoral dissertation that investigated the ability to detect tempo changes. Points out some omissions in the study, suggesting that its brevity caused the author to omit some possible interpretations. Comments that Ellis' research design provides new ideas for research. (LS)

Two studies examined the relationship between speech perception and speech production errors in children (N=21 and ages 5 and 7) with articulation disorders. Findings indicated the existence of a subgroup of articulation disordered children for whom production errors reflect perception errors. (Author/DB)

A profile analysis procedure was used with the Carrow Auditory-Visual Abilities Test to aid in the identification of systematic modality preferences in two preschool children with articulation disorders. Critical values are identified to facilitate the identification of the child's strengths and weaknesses at the subtest level. (Author/DB)

The ability of 10 normal-speaking 5-year-olds and 10-normal-speaking 7-year-olds to categorize consonants as "dripping" (stop), "flowing" (fricative), "tongue" (lingual place of articulation), "or "lip" (labial place of articulation) was evaluated. Children's ability to categorize was evaluated as an indicator of their awareness of feature…

This paper presents results of 2 experiments examining effects of signal and masker uncertainty on 17 preschoolers' and 13 adults' detection of tonal signals in noise maskers. Effects of masker uncertainty significantly exceeded those of signal uncertainty. For most adults and some children, distracters produced higher thresholds and shallower…

One experiment determined that the minimum angle at which infants can discriminate 2 sound presentations decreases substantially toward 48 weeks of age. In 3 succeeding experiments, infants aged 16, 20, and 28 weeks were able to discriminate sounds presented to each ear between 50 and 75 microseconds apart. (BC)

The article reviews studies on the assessment of rapid auditory processing abilities. Issues in auditory processing research are identified including a link between otitis media with effusion and language learning problems. A theory that linguistically impaired children experience difficulty in perceiving and processing low phonetic substance…

This paper reviews two models for auditory compensation attending visual loss--structural and strategic. The paper concludes that it is not clear to what extent differences in auditory processing represent variations in underlying capacity, the development of strategies, attentional activation, or multiple factors. Previous dismissals of…

Twenty-one normal hearing college students were presented with non-time-gated and time-gated speech stimuli. Findings indicated that poorer accuracy and longer isolation points were observed at lower signal presentation levels, listener confidence at isolation point was only indirectly influenced by presentation level, and monosyllabic word…