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…

An auditory Stroop task was administered to 20 children with hearing impairment (ages 3-10) and 60 normal-hearing children. Results suggest that the voice-gender and semantic dimensions of speech were not processed independently by children with or without hearing loss. Speech processing by children with hearing impairment was carried out in a…

Fourteen Dutch children with dyslexia were compared with controls on automatic processing under a dual task (motor balance task and auditory choice task) model. Results indicated the dyslexic group was more impaired in the dual task condition than in the single task condition, compared with controls. Findings support the automatization deficit…

A review of 11 studies of auditory brainstem response (ABR) in individuals with autism concludes that the ABR data are only suggestive (rather than supportive) of brainstem involvement in autism. The presence of peripheral hearing impairment was observed in some of the autistic individuals. (Author/DB)

Results of applying the electrophysiological measure of auditory long latency event-related potentials (P3 AERP) on 20 children with central auditory processing disorders before and after a structured treatment program found a significant decrease in P3 latency and a significant increase in P3 amplitude when compared with control subjects who had…

Evaluation of the speech perception of eight children (ages four and five) with specific language impairments and documented morphological difficulties found these children to be especially weak in discriminating speech stimuli whose contrastive portions had shorter durations than the noncontrastive portions (typical of English grammatical…

Forty-eight children, either with or without a sensorineural hearing loss and either young (6 and 7 years old) or older (9 and 10 years old) reproduced sequences of acoustic stimuli that varied in number, temporal spacing, and type. Results suggested that the poorer performance of the hearing-impaired children was due to auditory processing…

Investigates the similarities and differences in how listeners with different levels of education experience demonstrate perception of tempo modulation in music. Reports that level of education may affect how listeners demonstrate differences and that responses depended on the direction of tempo change. Notes importance of the music education of…

The central auditory processing (CAP) abilities of 52 low-achieving gifted high school students were measured and compared to matching groups of achieving gifted students, average students, and students with learning disabilities. Results indicated significant CAP deficits in the low-achieving gifted group that were similar to those of the…

The authors (Ingham et al.) of the original report respond to criticisms by Kalinowski et al. that they misinterpreted their data in a study of the effects of frequency-altered feedback on stuttering in four single-subject design investigations. They also address larger issues concerning altered auditory feedback procedures. (DB)

Examination of auditory short-term memory was evaluated with 21 adolescents with Down syndrome (DS) and mental-age-matched and language-production-matched subjects using a digit span task. DS subjects had shorter digit spans than MA controls. Language production level accounted for substantial variance in digit span in individuals with DS.…