Children's Perception of Temporally Distorted Sentential Approximations of Varying Length

The purpose of this study was to investigate the abilities of second-grade and fourth-grade children to auditorially process three orders of three- and five-word sentential approximations, which had normal interstimulus intervals (ISI) and ISIs of 200 and 400 ms. Results showed that percent correct scores decreased as a function of increasing sentence length and ISI, and decreasing order of sentential approximation and grade level. The results are discussed relative to theoretical notions of short-term memory and auditory perceptual processing as well as potential clinical applications     

Filtered Speed Audiometry In Normal Childeren And In The Mentally Retarded

Distorted speech sounds were presented to 20 normal children, 5 normal adults and 68 mentally retarded children in such a way that 20 monosyllables were distorted with low-pass, high-pass and band-pass filtering. The experiment was carried out to observe the development of discrimination ability in normal young children and to compare it with that of the mentally retarded.

(1) With unfiltered speech audiometry, 50–dB sensation level was enough for normal children to discriminate monosyllables. As for the mentally retarded, 10–20 dB above the average level of normal children was necessary to get correct discrimination. (2) Discrimination was poorest with low-pass filtering below 1200 Hz. (3) Discrimination was very good for both normal subjects and the mentally retarded with high-pass filtering above 1700 Hz. (4) There was a gap in discrimination between the two subject groups with band-pass filtering of 1200–2400 Hz. (5) There was a very great variation in discrimination scores from one subject to another, especially in the mentally retarded. (6) A clear developmental trend in discrimination ability was found in normal subjects. (7) There was no significant difference in intelligibility between boys and girls.     

Neuro-vestibular correlates in cerebral hemispheric lesions

Vestibular evaluation by ENG in two patients with prior temporoparietal lesions showed abnormalities mainly with eye-tracking and optokinetic tests. Our study indicates that the optokinetic test is easy to perform and has a greater diagnostic significance than the other tests as to the site of lesion.     

Binaural Speech Discrimination

The phenomenon of binaural summation in which the addition of signals presented to the two ears simultaneously takes place at a central level, has been known for many years. It is reasonable to assume that the pattern of summation differs between subjects with central lesions and those with lesions in the peripheral auditory tracts. Various tests have been proposed to aid in locating the site of the lesion which compare the monaural and binaural speech discrimination scores

In the present work, two of these tests have been examined. Thee group of subjects have been used: (1) a normally hearing group; (2) a group with hearing impairment resulting from cochlea pathology, and (3) a group with hearing impairment resulting from lesions at the level of the cochlear nuclei. The results showed that neither test differentiate between peripheral and cochlear nuclei lesions