Impact of ASL Exposure on Spoken Phonemic Discrimination in Adult CI Users: A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study.

We examined the impact of exposure to a signed language (American Sign Language, or ASL) at different ages on the neural systems that support spoken language phonemic discrimination in deaf individuals with cochlear implants (CIs). Deaf CI users ( = 18, age = 18-24 yrs) who were exposed to a signed language at different ages and hearing individuals ( = 18, age = 18-21 yrs) completed a phonemic discrimination task in a spoken native (English) and non-native (Hindi) language while undergoing functional near-infrared spectroscopy neuroimaging. Behaviorally, deaf CI users who received a CI early versus later in life showed better English phonemic discrimination, albeit phonemic discrimination was poor relative to hearing individuals.

Cortical Auditory Evoked Potential Testing in Children With Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder.

Purpose: In the present report, we reviewed the role of cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) as an objective measure during the evaluation and management process in children with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD).

Method: We reviewed the results of CAEP recordings in 66 patients with ANSD aged between 2 months and 12 years and assessed the relationship between their characteristics (prevalence, morphology, latencies, and amplitudes) and various clinical features, including the mode of medical management.

Results: Overall, the CAEPs were present in 85.

Examining the Relation Between Exercise and Word Learning in Preschool-Age Children.

Purpose: There is evidence suggesting that aerobic exercise immediately after vocabulary training can improve word recall in school-age children. This work examined whether the previously identified word-learning benefits associated with exercise can be extended to preschoolers. Additionally, we evaluated whether the effects of physical activity on vocabulary learning may be influenced by existing language skills that the child possesses.

Developmental Changes in the Perception of Vocal Loudness and Voice Quality in 3- to 6-Year-Old Children.

Purpose: The study's primary aim was to investigate developmental changes in the perception of vocal loudness and voice quality in children 3-6 years of age. A second aim was to evaluate a testing procedure-the intermodal preferential looking paradigm (IPLP)-for the study of voice perception in young children.

Method: Participants were categorized in two age groups: 3- to 4-year-olds and 5- to 6-year-olds.

A comparison of monolingual and bilingual toddlers' word recognition in noise.

Aims And Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine whether differences in language exposure (i.e., being raised in a bilingual versus a monolingual environment) influence young children's ability to comprehend words when speech is heard in the presence of background noise.

Webcams, Songs, and Vocabulary Learning: A Comparison of In-Person and Remote Data Collection as a Way of Moving Forward With Child-Language Research.

This article evaluates a testing procedure for collecting eye-gaze data with toddlers and preschoolers during a word-learning task. We provide feasibility and precision data by comparing performance in an in-person version of the study (conducted under controlled conditions in the lab), with performance in a virtual version in which participants completed the testing procedure from home. Our data support the feasibility of collecting remote eye-gaze data with young children, and present it as a viable alternative for conducting developmental language research when in-person interactions with participants cannot take place.

Examining the Role of Physical Activity on Word Learning in School-Aged Children.

Purpose Previous studies show that there is increased brain activity after exercise, leading to improved word recall in adults. The aim of this study was to examine whether different types of exercise (i.e.

Toddlers' fast-mapping from noise-vocoded speech.

The ability to recognize speech that is degraded spectrally is a critical skill for successfully using a cochlear implant (CI). Previous research has shown that toddlers with normal hearing can successfully recognize noise-vocoded words as long as the signal contains at least eight spectral channels [Newman and Chatterjee. (2013).

Dónde está la ball? Examining the effect of code switching on bilingual children's word recognition.

Hearing words in sentences facilitates word recognition in monolingual children. Many children grow up receiving input in multiple languages - including exposure to sentences that 'mix' the languages. We explored Spanish-English bilingual toddlers' (n = 24) ability to identify familiar words in three conditions: (i) single word (ball!); (ii) same-language sentence (Where's the ball?); or (iii) mixed-language sentence (Dónde está la ball?).

Monolingual and Bilingual Word Recognition and Word Learning in Background Noise.

The question of whether bilingualism leads to advantages or disadvantages in linguistic abilities has been debated for many years. It is unclear whether growing up with one versus two languages is related to variations in the ability to process speech in the presence of background noise. We present findings from a word recognition and a word learning task with monolingual and bilingual adults.

Effect of the relationship between target and masker sex on infants' recognition of speech.

When faced with multiple people speaking simultaneously, adult listeners use the sex of the talkers as a cue for separating competing streams of speech. As a result, adult listeners show better performance when a target and a background voice differ from one another in sex. Recent research suggests that infants under 1 year do not show this advantage.

Toddlers' comprehension of degraded signals: Noise-vocoded versus sine-wave analogs.

Recent findings suggest that development changes the ability to comprehend degraded speech. Preschool children showed greater difficulties perceiving noise-vocoded speech (a signal that integrates amplitude over broad frequency bands) than sine-wave speech (which maintains the spectral peaks without the spectrum envelope). In contrast, 27-month-old children in the present study could recognize speech with either type of degradation and performed slightly better with eight-channel vocoded speech than with sine-wave speech.

Linguistically-based informational masking in preschool children.

Previous work has shown that young children exhibit more difficulty understanding speech in the presence of speech-like distractors than do adults, and are more susceptible to at least some form of informational masking (IM). Yet little is known about how/when the "susceptibility" to linguistically-based IM develops. The authors tested adults, school-age children (aged 8 yrs), and preschool-age children (aged 4 yrs) on sentence recognition in the presence of normal speech, "jumbled" speech, and reversed speech distractors.

CTNND2 deletion and intellectual disability.

Neurodevelopmental disorders are a group of diseases characterized by either structural or functional alterations. The clinical spectrum can vary from isolated intellectual disability to more complex syndromes. Molecular karyotyping can explain 14%-18% of cases due to the presence of large pathogenic CNVs.

Look at the gato! Code-switching in speech to toddlers.

We examined code-switching (CS) in the speech of twenty-four bilingual caregivers when speaking with their 18- to 24-month-old children. All parents CS at least once in a short play session, and some code-switched quite often (over 1/3 of utterances). This CS included both inter-sentential and intra-sentential switches, suggesting that at least some children are frequently exposed to mixed-language sentences.

Additive effects of repetition and predictability during comprehension: evidence from event-related potentials.

Previous research has shown that neural responses to words during sentence comprehension are sensitive to both lexical repetition and a word's predictability in context. While previous research has often contrasted the effects of these variables (e.g.

Infants' name recognition in on- and off-channel noise.

Previous work by Polka, Rvachew, and Molnar [Infancy 13(5), 421-439 (2008)] has reported that infants are poor at focusing their attention on a particular frequency range, and, as a result, are distracted by maskers that are outside of the target frequency range. The current study explores this effect of irrelevant distractors further and finds that 8-month-old infants are significantly less affected by maskers outside the frequency range (off-channel maskers) than by on-channel maskers. Thus while infants may display difficulty ignoring irrelevant distractors, they are able to do so to at least some degree, suggesting some ability to perceive speech from spectrally remote maskers, despite the demonstrated presence of greater informational masking at this age.