Service learning in auditory rehabilitation courses: the University of Texas at Dallas.

Purpose: The aim of this work was to review service learning (SL) principles and its implementation into the auditory rehabilitation (AR) curriculum at the University of Texas at Dallas and to evaluate the courses to determine whether potential benefits of SL are worth the substantial time commitment and course restructuring.

Method: Via retrospective review, student outcomes for 25 students from 3 cohorts who completed the adult AR course prior to implementation of SL curriculum (pre-SL) were compared with those of 28 students from 3 SL cohorts. Data included final examination grades, ratings for overall course content, amount learned, clarity of responsibility, workload, relevance, and course comments.

Speech recognition at 1-year follow-up in the childhood development after cochlear implantation study: Methods and preliminary findings.

The Childhood Development after Cochlear Implantation (CDaCI) study is a longitudinal multicenter investigation designed to identify factors influencing spoken language in young deaf children with cochlear implants. Normal-hearing peers serve as controls. As part of a comprehensive evaluation battery, a speech recognition hierarchy was designed to assess how well these children recognize speech stimuli across developmental stages.

The University of Texas at Dallas/Callier Center for Communication Disorders Doctor of Audiology Program.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to describe the history and resources of the doctor of audiology (AuD) program at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD)/Callier Center for Communication Disorders, as well as to provide an overview of the program.

Method: Data from 1999, when the AuD program was approved by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Program, to the present were reviewed.

Conclusions: The UTD/Callier Center AuD program includes more than 40 faculty members, spans 3 campuses, and has 8 research laboratories.

Factors associated with individual differences in clinical measures of speech recognition among the elderly.

In the present study, the speech-recognition performance of 50 subjects aged 63 to 83 years was measured for a wide range of materials (nonsense syllables, monosyllabic words, sentences) and listening conditions (presentation levels of 70 and 90 dB SPL, both in quiet and in a noise background). In addition to complete audiologic evaluations, measures of auditory processing (the Test of Basic Auditory Capabilities [TBAC], Watson, 1987) and cognitive function (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised [WAIS-R], and the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised [WMS-R], Wechsler, 1981, 1987) were obtained from all subjects. Principal component analyses were applied to each of the three sets of measures (speech-recognition, auditory, and cognitive) prior to examining associations among the sets using canonical analyses.

Two experiments on the temporal boundaries for the nonlinear additivity of masking.

The present paper describes the results from two experiments which explored the temporal boundary between overlapping and nonoverlapping maskers and its effects on the additivity of masking. In the first experiment, detection thresholds for a short-duration 1000-Hz signal were measured in the presence of two equal-duration broadband maskers which varied in degree of temporal overlap. Following complete overlap of maskers, the temporal separation of masker onsets was systematically varied to create conditions ranging from partially overlapping simultaneous masking to combined forward and backward masking.