Different time courses of maturation for learning and generalization following auditory training in children.

Objective: We recently demonstrated that learning abilities among school-age children vary following frequency discrimination (FD) training, with some exhibiting mature learning while others performing poorly ( learners). This study tested the hypothesis that children's post-training generalisation is related to their learning maturity. Additionally, it investigated how training duration influences children's generalisation, considering the observed decrease with increased training in adults.

The validity of LENA technology for assessing the linguistic environment and interactions of infants learning Hebrew and Arabic.

The present study assessed LENA's suitability as a tool for monitoring future language interventions by evaluating its reliability, construct validity, and criterion validity in infants learning Hebrew and Arabic, across low and high levels of maternal education. Participants were 32 infants aged 3 to 11 months (16 in each language) and their mothers, whose socioeconomic status (SES) was determined based on their years of education (H-high or L-low ME-maternal education). The results showed (1) good reliability for the LENA's automatic count on adult word count (AWC), conversational turns (CTC), and infant vocalizations (CVC), based on the positive associations and fair to excellent agreement between the manual and automatic counts; (2) good construct validity based on significantly higher counts for HME vs.

Identification and Comprehension of Narrow Focus by Arabic-Speaking Adolescents With Moderate-to-Profound Hearing Loss.

Purpose: Processing narrow focus (NF), the stressed word in the sentence, includes both the perceptual ability to identify the stressed word in the sentence and the pragmatic-semantic ability to comprehend the nonexplicit linguistic message. NF and its underlying meaning can be conveyed only via the auditory modality. Therefore, NF can be considered as a measure for assessing the efficacy of the hearing aid (HA) and cochlear implants (CIs) for acquiring nonexplicit language skills.

Difficulties Experienced by Older Listeners in Utilizing Voice Cues for Speaker Discrimination.

Human listeners are assumed to apply different strategies to improve speech recognition in background noise. Young listeners with normal hearing (NH), e.g.

Infants' Preference for Child-Directed Speech Over Time-Reversed Speech in On-Channel and Off-Channel Masking.

Purpose This study aims to examine the development of auditory selective attention to speech in noise by examining the ability of infants to prefer child-directed speech (CDS) over time-reversed speech (TRS) presented in "on-channel" and "off-channel" noise. Method A total of 32 infants participated in the study. Sixteen typically developing infants were tested at 7 and 11 months of age using the central fixation procedure with CDS and TRS in two types of noise at +10 dB signal-to-noise ratio.

The Effect of Soft Tissue Stimulation on Skull Vibrations and Hearing Thresholds in Humans.

Hypothesis: Hearing via soft tissue stimulation involves an osseous pathway.

Background: A recent study that measured both hearing thresholds and skull vibrations found that vibratory stimulation of soft tissue led to hearing sensation that correlated with skull vibrations, supporting the hypothesis of an osseous pathway. It is possible, however, that a lower application force of the vibrator on the stimulated soft tissue would not be sufficient to elicit skull vibration suggesting hearing via a nonosseous pathway.

Practice Makes Transfer Imperfect: Evidence From Auditory Learning.

Background: Evidence from motor and visual studies suggests that the ability to generalize learning gains to untrained conditions decreases as the training progresses. This decrease in generalization was suggested to reflect a shift from higher to lower levels of neuronal representations of the task following prolonged training. In the auditory modality, however, the few studies that tested the influence of prolonging training on generalization ability showed no decrease and sometimes even an increase in generalization.

Listening in Noise Remains a Significant Challenge for Cochlear Implant Users: Evidence from Early Deafened and Those with Progressive Hearing Loss Compared to Peers with Normal Hearing.

Cochlear implants (CIs) are the state-of-the-art therapy for individuals with severe to profound hearing loss, providing them with good functional hearing. Nevertheless, speech understanding in background noise remains a significant challenge. The purposes of this study were to: (1) conduct a novel within-study comparison of speech-in-noise performance across ages in different populations of CI and normal hearing (NH) listeners using an adaptive sentence-in-noise test, and (2) examine the relative contribution of sensory information and cognitive-linguistic factors to performance.

Logarithmic Versus Linear Change in Step Size When Using an Adaptive Threshold-Seeking Procedure in a Frequency Discrimination Task: Does It Matter?

Different rules for changing step sizes (e.g., logarithmic, linear) are alternately used in adaptive threshold-seeking procedures, with no clear justification.

Deficits in Explicit Language Problem Solving Rather Than in Implicit Learning in Specific Language Impairment: Evidence From Learning an Artificial Morphological Rule.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to delineate differences between children with specific language impairment (SLI), typical age-matched (TAM) children, and typical younger (TY) children in learning and mastering an undisclosed artificial morphological rule (AMR) through exposure and usage. Method Twenty-six participants (eight 10-year-old children with SLI, 8 TAM children, and ten 8-year-old TY children) were trained to master an AMR across multiple training sessions. The AMR required a phonological transformation of verbs depending on a semantic distinction: whether the preceding noun was animate or inanimate.

Children With Normal Hearing Are Efficient Users of Fundamental Frequency and Vocal Tract Length Cues for Voice Discrimination.

Background: The ability to discriminate between talkers assists listeners in understanding speech in a multitalker environment. This ability has been shown to be influenced by sensory processing of vocal acoustic cues, such as fundamental frequency (F0) and formant frequencies that reflect the listener's vocal tract length (VTL), and by cognitive processes, such as attention and memory. It is, therefore, suggested that children who exhibit immature sensory and/or cognitive processing will demonstrate poor voice discrimination (VD) compared with young adults.

Training of Speech Perception in Noise in Pre-Lingual Hearing Impaired Adults With Cochlear Implants Compared With Normal Hearing Adults.

Background: Speech perception in noise remains a significant challenge for cochlear implant (CI) users in everyday life. It has been argued that training to use the information provided by the CI is as important as technological advances. So far, however, only few studies have trained speech perception in noise, most (if not all) included postlingually deafened CI adult users using non-sentence training material.

Long-Term Training-Induced Gains of an Auditory Skill in School-Age Children As Compared With Adults.

The few studies that compared auditory skill learning between children and adults found variable results, with only some children reaching adult-like thresholds following training. The present study aimed to assess auditory skill learning in children as compared with adults during single- and multisession training. It was of interest to ascertain whether children who do not reach adult-like performance following a single training session simply require additional training, or whether different mechanisms underlying skill learning need to reach maturity in order to become adult-like performers.

Does hearing in response to soft-tissue stimulation involve skull vibrations? A within-subject comparison between skull vibration magnitudes and hearing thresholds.

Hearing can be elicited in response to bone as well as soft-tissue stimulation. However, the underlying mechanism of soft-tissue stimulation is under debate. It has been hypothesized that if skull vibrations were the underlying mechanism of hearing in response to soft-tissue stimulation, then skull vibrations would be associated with hearing thresholds.

Voice Discrimination by Adults with Cochlear Implants: the Benefits of Early Implantation for Vocal-Tract Length Perception.

Cochlear implant (CI) users find it extremely difficult to discriminate between talkers, which may partially explain why they struggle to understand speech in a multi-talker environment. Recent studies, based on findings with postlingually deafened CI users, suggest that these difficulties may stem from their limited use of vocal-tract length (VTL) cues due to the degraded spectral resolution transmitted by the CI device. The aim of the present study was to assess the ability of adult CI users who had no prior acoustic experience, i.

Intelligibility of bandpass filtered speech: The effect of filter types.

Many studies have examined the contribution of different spectral bands to speech intelligibility, measuring recognition scores of filtered speech stimuli. For a given filter bandwidth, the influence of filter properties on such experiments has been studied mainly with respect to transition band slopes. The objective of the present study was to determine whether nominal transition band slope is a sufficient characterization of filter properties.

Comprehension of "Narrow Focus" by Adolescents in the Autism Spectrum.

Objective: The study compared the performance of adolescents with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) to that of age-matched peers with typical development (TD) and cognitive language-matched peers with TD on measures of identification and comprehension of "narrow focus."

Participants: Forty-nine participants, 17 autistic, 17 TD peers matched for age and sex, and 15 TD children matched for expressive vocabulary participated in the study.

Method: The Hebrew Narrow Focus Test (HNFT) was used.

Is the Role of External Feedback in Auditory Skill Learning Age Dependent?

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of external feedback in auditory perceptual learning of school-age children as compared with that of adults.

Method: Forty-eight children (7-9 years of age) and 64 adults (20-35 years of age) conducted a training session using an auditory frequency discrimination (difference limen for frequency) task, with external feedback (EF) provided for half of them.

Results: Data supported the following findings: (a) Children learned the difference limen for frequency task only when EF was provided.

Recognition and Comprehension of "Narrow Focus" by Young Adults With Prelingual Hearing Loss Using Hearing Aids or Cochlear Implants.

Purpose: The stressed word in a sentence (narrow focus [NF]) conveys information about the intent of the speaker and is therefore important for processing spoken language and in social interactions. The ability of participants with severe-to-profound prelingual hearing loss to comprehend NF has rarely been investigated. The purpose of this study was to assess the recognition and comprehension of NF by young adults with prelingual hearing loss compared with those of participants with normal hearing (NH).

Soft tissue conduction as a possible contributor to the limited attenuation provided by hearing protection devices.

Context: Damage to the auditory system by loud sounds can be avoided by hearing protection devices (HPDs) such as earmuffs, earplugs, or both for maximum attenuation. However, the attenuation can be limited by air conduction (AC) leakage around the earplugs and earmuffs by the occlusion effect (OE) and by skull vibrations initiating bone conduction (BC).

Aims: To assess maximum attenuation by HPDs and possible flanking pathways to the inner ear.

Experimental Analysis of the Mechanism of Hearing under Water.

The mechanism of human hearing under water is debated. Some suggest it is by air conduction (AC), others by bone conduction (BC), and others by a combination of AC and BC. A clinical bone vibrator applied to soft tissue sites on the head, neck, and thorax also elicits hearing by a mechanism called soft tissue conduction (STC) or nonosseous BC.

The effect of listening experience on the discrimination of /ba/ and /pa/ in Hebrew-learning and Arabic-learning infants.

Unlabelled: Infant speech discrimination can follow multiple trajectories depending on the language and the specific phonemes involved. Two understudied languages in terms of the development of infants' speech discrimination are Arabic and Hebrew.

Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to examine the influence of listening experience with the native language on the discrimination of the voicing contrast /ba-pa/ in Arabic-learning infants whose native language includes only the phoneme /b/ and in Hebrew-learning infants whose native language includes both phonemes.

Asymmetric interaural generalization of learning gains in a speech-in-noise identification task.

The pattern of generalization of learning gains to untrained conditions in adult human perceptual skill learning has been used as an effective behavioral probe for studying the functional organization of the learning system. Learning gains were previously reported to generalize symmetrically between the ears for tonal stimuli. However, given the open question concerning the specialization of the hemispheres in the processing of speech sounds, it is not clear whether symmetrical interaural generalization will follow training on such stimuli.

Auditory Discrimination of Lexical Stress Patterns in Hearing-Impaired Infants with Cochlear Implants Compared with Normal Hearing: Influence of Acoustic Cues and Listening Experience to the Ambient Language.

Objectives: To assess discrimination of lexical stress pattern in infants with cochlear implant (CI) compared with infants with normal hearing (NH). While criteria for cochlear implantation have expanded to infants as young as 6 months, little is known regarding infants' processing of suprasegmental-prosodic cues which are known to be important for the first stages of language acquisition. Lexical stress is an example of such a cue, which, in hearing infants, has been shown to assist in segmenting words from fluent speech and in distinguishing between words that differ only the stress pattern.

Delay in auditory behaviour and preverbal vocalization in infants with unilateral hearing loss.

Aim: To evaluate the impact of unilateral hearing loss (UHL) on early aural/oral communication skills of infants by comparing performance to infants with bilateral normal hearing (BNH).

Method: Thirty-four infants with UHL (median age 9.4mo, 25th-75th centile 7.