This study aims to investigate English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' use of context information under various noise conditions. The participants were seven Japanese undergraduate students. A noise test adopted from the Speech-Perception-in-Noise (SPIN) test (Kalikow et al., 1977) was used. Four signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions (SNR =…

Reading is an essential skill for daily life and academic success. According to the connectionist model of reading, word recognition involves orthographic, phonological, and semantic processing, as well as the interactions among them. Language skill such as phonological processing, develops earlier than reading acquisition, and thus likely serves…

With the lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing popularity of videoconferencing software such as Zoom, the move to online and /or hybrid teaching has never been more rapid. With this change, however, maintaining presence in the classroom has become a great challenge simply because of the nature of online teaching. Presence is a teaching…

Purpose: The main goal of this study was to investigate the minimum amount of sensory information required to recognize spoken words (isolation points [IPs]) in listeners with cochlear implants (CIs) and investigate facilitative effects of semantic contexts on the IPs. Method: Listeners with CIs as well as those with normal hearing (NH)…

Music education is being explored by researchers as a means of improving hearing acuity for children with hearing loss, particularly those with cochlear implants. Music educators are uniquely positioned to contribute to this important endeavor. This article describes normal and impaired hearing and how music perception is affected for students…

Purpose: The visual Text Reception Threshold (TRT) test (Zekveld et al., 2007) has been designed to assess modality-general factors relevant for speech perception in noise. In the last decade, the test has been adopted in audiology labs worldwide. The 1st aim of this study was to examine which factors best predict interindividual differences in…

Purpose: We aimed to develop and validate the Musicians' Hearing Handicap Index (MHHI), a new self-evaluation tool for quantifying occupation-related auditory difficulties in music professionals. Although pure-tone audiometry is often considered the "gold standard" and is usually employed as the main instrument for hearing assessment, it…

Recent studies highlighted that autistic individuals show increased perceptual capacity -- the ability to process more information at any one time. This study examined whether there is a link between this increased perceptual capacity and the sensory hypersensitivity that many autistic people experience on a daily basis. In total, 38 autistic and…

Purpose: The study aimed to compare auditory processing and cognitive test scores measured in a clinical setting with that measured in a school setting using a repeated-measures design. This was done on typically developing children and children with auditory processing disorder (APD). Method: Thirty-two children (16 typically developing and 16…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate how speech naturalness relates to masculinity-femininity and gender identification (accuracy and reaction time) for cisgender male and female speakers as well as transmasculine and transfeminine speakers. Method: Stimuli included spontaneous speech samples from 20 speakers who are transgender…

English-speaking children use plural morphology from around the age of 2, yet often omit the syllabic plural allomorph /-[schwa]z/ until age 5 (e.g., "bus(es)"). It is not clear if this protracted acquisition is due to articulatory difficulties, low input frequency, or fricative-final words (e.g., "bus," "nose") being…

Purpose: The study sought to determine whether the onset of canonical vocalizations in children with cochlear implants (CIs) is related to speech perception skills and spoken vocabulary size at 24 months postactivation. Method: The vocal development in 13 young CI recipients (implanted by their third birthdays; mean age at activation = 20.62…

Purpose: A growing body of evidence suggests that military service members and military veterans are at risk for deficits in central auditory processing. Risk factors include exposure to blast, neurotrauma, hazardous noise, and ototoxicants. We overview these risk factors and comorbidities, address implications for clinical assessment and care of…

Background: Although previous research studies have defined several prognostic factors that affect cognitive-communication performance in patients with all traumatic brain injury (TBI) severity, little is known about what variables are associated with cognitive-communication impairment in complicated mild TBI (mTBI) specifically. Aims: To…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of two listening strategies on rhythmic dictation scores. In a within-subjects design, 54 undergraduate music majors completed two-measure rhythmic dictations under each of three conditions: (a) no prescribed approach, (b) required listening before writing, and (c) required writing while…