Children's recognition of American English consonants in noise.

In contrast to the availability of consonant confusion studies with adults, to date, no investigators have compared children's consonant confusion patterns in noise to those of adults in a single study. To examine whether children's error patterns are similar to those of adults, three groups of children (24 each in 4-5, 6-7, and 8-9 yrs. old) and 24 adult native speakers of American English (AE) performed a recognition task for 15 AE consonants in /ɑ/-consonant-/ɑ/ nonsense syllables presented in a background of speech-shaped noise.

Effects of stimulus bandwidth on the imitation of ish fricatives by normal-hearing children.

Purpose: Recent studies from the authors' laboratory have suggested that reduced audibility in the high frequencies (because of the bandwidth of hearing instruments) may play a role in the delays in phonological development often exhibited by children with hearing impairment. The goal of the current study was to extend previous findings on the effect of bandwidth on fricatives/affricates to more complex stimuli.

Method: Nine fricatives/affricates embedded in 2-syllable nonsense words were filtered at 5 and 10 kHz and presented to normal-hearing 6- to 7-year-olds who repeated words exactly as heard.

An alternate approach to constructing distortion product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) suppression tuning curves.

DPOAE suppression tuning curves (STCs) typically are constructed using suppression criteria of 3 or 6 dB. This paper describes a technique for generating DPOAE STCs using criteria ranging from 3 dB to complete suppression. The criterion effect was examined at various primary levels (f = 4 kHz) in normal-hearing ears.

Determining the upper limits of stimulation for auditory steady-state response measurements.

Objective: To determine the maximum stimulus levels at which a measured auditory steady-state response (ASSR) can be assumed to be a reliable measure of auditory thresholds.

Design: ASSR thresholds were measured at octave frequencies from 500 to 4000 Hz in 10 subjects with profound hearing loss. These subjects provided no behavioral responses to sound at the limits of pure-tone audiometers and at the limits of the stimulus levels produced by the ASSR device.

The importance of high-frequency audibility in the speech and language development of children with hearing loss.

Objectives: To review recent research studies concerning the importance of high-frequency amplification for speech perception in adults and children with hearing loss and to provide preliminary data on the phonological development of normal-hearing and hearing-impaired infants.

Design And Setting: With the exception of preliminary data from a longitudinal study of phonological development, all of the reviewed studies were taken from the archival literature. To determine the course of phonological development in the first 4 years of life, the following 3 groups of children were recruited: 20 normal-hearing children, 12 hearing-impaired children identified and aided up to 12 months of age (early-ID group), and 4 hearing-impaired children identified after 12 months of age (late-ID group).

Novel-word learning in children with normal hearing and hearing loss.

Objective: The goal of this study was to assess performance on a novel-word learning task by normal-hearing and hearing-impaired children for words varying in form (noun versus verb), stimulus level (50 versus 60 dB SPL), and number of repetitions (4 versus 6). It was hypothesized that novel-word learning would be significantly poorer in the subjects with hearing loss, would increase with both level and repetition, and would be better for nouns than verbs.

Design: Twenty normal-hearing and 11 hearing-impaired children (6 to 9 yr old) participated in this study.

Spectral characteristics of speech at the ear: implications for amplification in children.

This study examined the long- and short-term spectral characteristics of speech simultaneously recorded at the ear and at a reference microphone position (30 cm at 0 degrees azimuth). Twenty adults and 26 children (2-4 years of age) with normal hearing were asked to produce 9 short sentences in a quiet environment. Long-term average speech spectra (LTASS) were calculated for the concatenated sentences, and short-term spectra were calculated for selected phonemes within the sentences (/m/, /n/, /s/, [see text], /f/, /a/, /u/, and /i/).

Distortion product otoacoustic emission suppression tuning curves in normal-hearing and hearing-impaired human ears.

Distortion product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) suppression measurements were made in 20 subjects with normal hearing and 21 subjects with mild-to-moderate hearing loss. The probe consisted of two primary tones (f2, f1), with f2 held constant at 4 kHz and f2/f1 = 1.22.

Further efforts to predict pure-tone thresholds from distortion product otoacoustic emission input/output functions.

Recently, Boege and Janssen [J. Acoust. Soc.

Influence of hearing loss on the perceptual strategies of children and adults.

To accommodate growing vocabularies, young children are thought to modify their perceptual weights as they gain experience with speech and language. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether the perceptual weights of children and adults with hearing loss differ from those of their normal-hearing counterparts. Adults and children with normal hearing and with hearing loss served as participants.

Real-ear-to-coupler difference predictions as a function of age for two coupling procedures.

The predicted real-ear-to-coupler difference (RECD) values currently used in pediatric hearing instrument prescription methods are based on 12-month age range categories and were derived from measures using standard acoustic immittance probe tips. Consequently, the purpose of this study was to develop normative RECD predicted values for foam/acoustic immittance tips and custom earmolds across the age continuum. To this end, RECD data were collected on 392 infants and children (141 with acoustic immittance tips, 251 with earmolds) to develop normative regression equations for use in deriving continuous age predictions of RECDs for foam/acoustic immittance tips and earmolds.

Aided perception of /s/ and /z/ by hearing-impaired children.

Objective: The overall goal of this study was to determine the accuracy with which hearing-impaired children can detect the inflectional morphemes /s/ and /z/ when listening to speech through hearing aids.

Design: In the first part of the study a perceptual test was developed with equal numbers of singular and plural nouns spoken by both a male and female talker. Thirty-six normal-hearing children (3 to 5 yr) were tested to determine the age at which children could perform this test without difficulty.