Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate the effects of aging and cochlear implant (CI) on psychoacoustic and speech recognition abilities and to assess the relative contributions of psychoacoustic and demographic factors to speech recognition of older CI (OCI) users. Method: Twelve OCI users, 12 older acoustic-hearing (OAH) listeners age-matched to…

The present dissertation analyzed speech production and perception in early heritage Spanish-English bilingual children. Specifically, I investigated how perception and production of lexical stress develops in bilingual children. Current models of second language (L2) speech perception do not include heritage bilinguals or suprasegmental aspects…

This study investigated the developmental trajectories of three perceptual domains related to regional dialect competence: the linguistic domain, tested through an intelligibility in noise task; the objective indexical domain, tested through locality judgments and a free classification task; and the subjective indexical domain, tested through…

Purpose: Several investigators have compared infants' detection of speech in speech and nonspeech maskers to evaluate developmental differences in masking. Such comparisons have produced contradictory results, possibly because each investigation used different stimuli. The current study examined target and masker effects on infants' and adults'…

Purpose: In this study, the authors aimed to investigate how differences in language ability relate to differences in processing talker information in the native language and an unfamiliar language by comparing performance for different ages and for groups with impaired language. Method: Three groups of native English listeners with typical…

Speech sounds that contain multiple phonetic cues are often difficult for foreign-language learners, especially if certain cues are weighted differently in the foreign and native languages. Greek adult and child speakers of English were studied to determine the effect of native language on second-language (L2) cue weighting and, in particular, to…

We examined auditory perception in Williams syndrome by investigating strategies used in organizing sound patterns into coherent units. In Experiment 1, we investigated the streaming of sound sequences into perceptual units, on the basis of pitch cues, in a group of children and adults with Williams syndrome compared to typical controls. We showed…

Investigates preperceptual auditory storage among eight 9-week-old infants in three experiments using a modification of an adult masking paradigm and a nonnutritive sucking discrimination procedure. Results suggest that echoic storage contributes to auditory perception in infancy and, for infants compared to adults, echoic traces have a longer…

Evaluates the discrimination of signal and silence duration in six-month-old infants, children aged 5 1/2 years, and adults. Results show that infants discriminated duration changes of 20 milliseconds or greater, children discriminated 15 milliseconds, and adults as few as 10 ms. Findings are consistent with other research in revealing age-related…

This report contains estimates of hearing levels for children 6 to 11 years of age in the United States as determined in the second cycle of the Health Examination Survey, conducted during 1963-1965. A probability sample (N=7,119) was selected to represent the 24 million children 6 to 11 years of age in the noninstitutional population. Hearing…

Asked adults and children ages 7 to 15 to detect changes in an unaccompanied drumbeat. Found significant differences in performance as a function of age when drumbeats fluctuated. Found musical training more influential than age when drumbeat was constant. Discusses a multiprocess model for the perception of tempo. (NL)