Introdução: O sistema auditivo envolve uma formação em rede e se relaciona com outros sistemas como o da linguagem. O Processamento Auditivo Central (PAC) envolve as habilidades auditivas necessárias para a interpretação dos sons que ouvimos. Atualmente, só é possível detectar uma alteração de PAC a partir dos 7 anos de idade. Por outro lado, sabe-se que nesta idade, a criança já está em processo de alfabetização e que a alteração de PAC pode dificultar seu aprendizado. Objetivos: Investigar se o desempenho em provas auditivas realizadas em crianças aos cinco anos de idade apresenta correspondência com o desempenho alcançado aos sete anos. Método: Em dois momentos distintos, foram realizadas avaliações auditivas e do PAC em 36 crianças. Foi realizada audiometria nas oitavas de frequência entre 0,25 a 8,0 KHz, imitanciometria, avaliação eletroacústica com captação das emissões otoacústicas por estímulos transientes e avaliação do efeito inibitório da via eferente. Os testes para avaliar o PAC foram: Localização Sonora, teste de Memória Sequencial Verbal e Não-verbal, teste \'Pediatric Speech Intelligibility\', teste de Identificação de Figuras com ruído de fundo, teste Dicótico de Dígitos e o teste \'Random Gap Detection\'. As crianças também realizaram o Teste de Vocabulário por Figuras USP. À primeira avaliação, a faixa etária variou entre 5:2 e 6:1 meses e à segunda avaliação entre 7:1 e 7:8 meses. O intervalo entre as avaliações I e II variou entre 18 e 23 meses. A partir dos resultados alcançados nos testes do PAC à segunda avaliação, as crianças foram classificadas em três grupos: G I: 10 crianças com alteração de PAC e queixa de fala; G II: 18 crianças com alteração de PAC; e G III: 8 crianças com o PAC normal. Esta classificação foi mantida retrospectivamente para a avaliação I. Nos testes de hipótese foi fixado nível de significância de 0,05. Resultados: A comparação entre as avaliações mostra que já na primeira avaliação é possível identificar risco para a alteração de PAC. Foi estabelecida uma função discriminante que classificou corretamente as crianças com alteração de PAC à primeira avaliação em 77,8% no G I, 66,7% no G II e 87,5% no G III. Conclusão: Crianças que apresentam alteração do PAC aos 7 anos já demonstraram indicadores de alteração aos 5 anos de idade / Introduction: The auditory system involves a network formation and relates to other systems such as language. Central Auditory Processing (CAP) involves the listening skills necessary to interpret the sounds. Currently, it is not possible to diagnose an CAP disorder before the age of 7. On the other hand, it is known that at this age, children are already in literacy process and CAP disorders may hinder their learning. Objectives: To investigate if the performance of five-year-old children in hearing tests has correspondence with the performance achieved at the age of seven. Method: Hearing and CAP tests were applied to 36 children in two different moments. Pure-tone audiometry was performed between 0.25 to 8.0 KHz, in octave intervals, immitanciometry, electroacoustic evaluation with transient evoked otoacoustic emissions and evaluation of the inhibitory effect of efferent pathway. The tests to assess auditory processing were: Sound Localization, Verbal and Nonverbal Sequential Memory tests, Pediatric Speech Intelligibility test, Figure Identification test with ipsilateral White Noise presentation, Dichotic Digits test and Random Gap Detection test. The children also performed the USP Vocabulary Test by Figures. In the first evaluation, the ages ranged between 5:2 and 6:1 months and in the second evaluation between 7:1 and 7:8 months. The interval between evaluation I and II ranged between 18 and 23 months. From the results achieved in the tests of CAP in the second evaluation, the children were classified into three groups: G I: 10 children with CAP disorders and complaints of speech; G II: 18 children with auditory CAP; and G III: 8 children with normal CAP. This classification was maintained retrospectively for evaluation I. In hypothesis tests was set the 0.05 significance level. Results: The comparison between the evaluations showed that the first evaluation can already identify risk for CAP disorders. The discriminant function was established and appropriately classified children with CAP disorders in the first assessment in 77.8% in G I, 66.7% in G II and 87.5% in G III. Conclusion: Children with CAP disorder at the age of 7 had already shown disorder indicators at the age of 5

A avaliação perceptivo-auditiva tem papel fundamental no estudo e na avaliação da voz, no entanto, por ser subjetiva está sujeita a imprecisões e variações. Por outro lado, a análise acústica permite a reprodutibilidade de resultados, porém precisa ser aprimorada, pois não analisa com precisão vozes com disfonias mais intensas e com ondas caóticas. Assim, elaborar medidas que proporcionem conhecimentos confiáveis em relação à função vocal resulta de uma necessidade antiga dentro desta linha de pesquisa e atuação clínica. Neste contexto, o uso da inteligência artificial, como as redes neurais artificiais, indica ser uma abordagem promissora. Objetivo: Validar um sistema automático utilizando redes neurais artificiais para a avaliação de vozes rugosas e soprosas. Materiais e métodos: Foram selecionadas 150 vozes, desde neutras até com presença em grau intenso de rugosidade e/ou soprosidade, do banco de dados da Clínica de Fonoaudiologia da Faculdade de Odontologia de Bauru (FOB/USP). Dessas vozes, 23 foram excluídas por não responderem aos critérios de inclusão na amostra, assim utilizaram-se 123 vozes. Procedimentos: avaliação perceptivo-auditiva pela escala visual analógica de 100 mm e pela escala numérica de quatro pontos; extração de características do sinal de voz por meio da Transformada Wavelet Packet e dos parâmetros acústicos: jitter, shimmer, amplitude da derivada e amplitude do pitch; e validação do classificador por meio da parametrização, treino, teste e avaliação das redes neurais artificiais. Resultados: Na avaliação perceptivo-auditiva encontrou-se, por meio do teste Coeficiente de Correlação Intraclasse (CCI), concordâncias inter e intrajuiz excelentes, com p = 0,85 na concordância interjuízes e p variando de 0,87 a 0,93 nas concordâncias intrajuiz. Em relação ao desempenho da rede neural artificial, na discriminação da soprosidade e da rugosidade e dos seus respectivos graus, encontrou-se o melhor desempenho para a soprosidade no subconjunto composto pelo jitter, amplitude do pitch e frequência fundamental, no qual obteve-se taxa de acerto de 74%, concordância excelente com a avaliação perceptivo-auditiva da escala visual analógica (0,80 no CCI) e erro médio de 9 mm. Para a rugosidade, o melhor subconjunto foi composto pela Transformada Wavelet Packet com 1 nível de decomposição, jitter, shimmer, amplitude do pitch e frequência fundamental, no qual obteve-se 73% de acerto, concordância excelente (0,84 no CCI), e erro médio de 10 mm. Conclusão: O uso da inteligência artificial baseado em redes neurais artificiais na identificação, e graduação da rugosidade e da soprosidade, apresentou confiabilidade excelente (CCI > 0,80), com resultados semelhantes a concordância interjuízes. Dessa forma, a rede neural artificial revela-se como uma metodologia promissora de avaliação vocal, tendo sua maior vantagem a objetividade na avaliação. / The auditory-perceptual evaluation is fundamental in the study and analysis of voice. This evaluation, however, is subjective and tends to be imprecise and variable. On the other hand, acoustic analysis allows reproducing results, although these results must be refined since the analysis is not precise enough for intense dysphonia or chaotic waves. Therefore, the will to develop measurements allowing reliable knowledge related to vocal function is not new on this research and clinical actuation field. In this context, the use of artificial intelligence such as neural networks seems to be a promising research field. Objective: to validate an automatic system using artificial neural networks for evaluation of vocal roughness and breathiness. Methods: One hundred fifty (150) voices were selected from from Clínica de Fonoaudiologia da Faculdade de Odontologia de Bauru (FOB/USP) database. These voices presented variation from neutral to intense roughness and/or breathiness. Twenty-three of them were excluded since they did not match inclusion criteria. Thus, 123 voices were used for analysis. The procedures include use of auditoryperception based on two scales: visual analog scale of 100 mm and four points numerical scale. Additionally, the characteristics of voice signals were extracted by Wavelet Packet Transform and by analysis of acoustic parameters: jitter, shimmer, derivative amplitude and pitch amplitude. Validation of classifying system was carried out by parameterization, training, test and evaluation of artificial neural networks. Results: In the auditory-perceptual evaluation, excellent interrater (p=0.85) and intrarater (0.87<p<0.93) agreement were obtained by means of Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) testing. The artificial neural network performance has achieved the best results for breathiness in the subset composed by parameters jitter, pitch amplitude and fundamental frequency. In this case, the neural network obtained a rate of 74%, demonstrating excellent concordance with auditory-perceptual evaluation for visual analog scale (0.80 ICC) and mean error of 9 mm. As for roughness evaluation, the best subset is composed by Wavelet Packet Transform with 1 resolution level, jitter, shimmer, pitch amplitude and fundamental frequency. For this case, a 73% rate was achieved (0.84 ICC) and mean error of 10 mm was obtained. Conclusion: The use of artificial neural networks for roughness and breathiness evaluation present high reliability (ICC&gt;0.80), with results similar to interrater agreement. Thus, the artificial neural network reveals a promising method for vocal evaluation, bringing objective analysis as a strong advantage.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-18T17:54:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Luciana Faria-Mestrado2 - versao final.pdf: 7674852 bytes, checksum: ce4b64ec4648d3c6d8c780b64dc7677e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-02-04 / A presente dissertação foi desenvolvida no Programa de Mestrado em Educação, na linha de pesquisa Formação e Prática Pedagógica do Profissional Docente , da Universidade do Oeste Paulista. Esse trabalho tem como objetivo analisar o uso de jogos eletrônicos como recurso pedagógico para promover, por meio da Educação Musical, o desenvolvimento da percepção auditiva do aluno. Partindo da sensibilidade auditiva quanto aos parâmetros sonoros (Altura, Duração, Intensidade e Timbre), analisamos o uso dos Jogos Eletrônicos Wii Music (com a modalidade Pitch Perfect) e Let s Tap (com a modalidade Rhythm Tap), ambos para o console Wii da Nintendo (2006), como ferramentas metodológicas no estudo de música no contexto da Educação Básica. Buscamos, também, verificar a possibilidade de, por eles, oferecer um ambiente rico, envolvente e prazeroso de aprendizagem, além de possibilitar uma percepção auditiva aguçada para reconhecer e compreender os referidos parâmetros sonoros. Foram participantes 12 alunos, de 12 a 14 anos, que cursaram, em 2012, o sexto ano do ensino fundamental de uma escola pública na cidade de Presidente Prudente. A pesquisa teve a característica de uma investigação qualitativa, do tipo descritivo-interpretativa. Como procedimento metodológico, contou com 4 fases. Na primeira fase, foi utilizado um questionário inicial com questões abertas para diagnosticar a capacidade auditiva e possíveis conhecimentos musicais dos alunos. Nas segunda e terceira fases, respectivamente, os alunos estiveram em contato com cada um dos jogos, jogando em duplas e individualmente, mediante observação de sistema aberto. Por fim, na quarta fase, foi realizado um questionário final, o mesmo aplicado na primeira fase, a fim de determinar a presença e a natureza das mudanças conseguidas após a prática dos jogos. Como resultado, constatamos que as respostas dos alunos foram mais precisas e apresentaram melhor qualidade de detalhes, indicando-nos desenvolvimento cognitivo e perceptivo em relação aos parâmetros do som. Assim, verificamos que o ato de jogar um jogo eletrônico na escola produziu aprendizagem musical e grande prazer e interesse. Usar o jogo eletrônico como ferramenta metodológica se mostrou uma forma de envolver o aluno em seu processo de aprendizagem, possibilitando, assim, uma formação autônoma.

The purpose of my research is to investigate how preschool teachers think about how the ability to distinguish language sounds affects children's language development and how preschool teachers work on teaching children to distinguish different sounds. I used qualitative interviews and analyzed with interpretative phenomenological analysis. The result I got was that preschool teachers work consciously to distinguish sounds and that they see the importance of children's ability to discern language sounds has an effect on language development. The conclusions I came up with are that preschool teachers actively try to keep the volume down and that they are aware that the concentration is affected by external auditory stimuli. / Syftet med min undersökning var att undersöka hur förskollärare tänker om hur förmågan att urskilja språkljud påverkar barnens språkutveckling och även hur förskollärarna jobbar med att lära barnen urskilja olika ljud. Jag använde mig av kvalitativa intervjuer och analyserade med interpretativ fenomenologisk analys (IPA). Resultatet jag fick var att förskollärarna arbetar medvetet att urskilja ljud och även att de ser vikten av barnens förmåga att urskilja språkljud har en påverkan på språkutvecklingen. Slutsatserna jag kom fram till är att förskollärarna aktivt försöker hålla nere ljudvolymen och att de är medvetna om att koncentrationen påverkas av yttre auditiva stimuli.

This study compares, for listeners with normal hearing and listeners with hearing loss, the recognition performances obtained with digit-pair and digit-triplet stimulus sets presented in multitalker babble. Digits 1 through 10 (excluding 7) were mixed in approximately 1,000 ms segments of babble from 4 to -20 dB signal-to-babble (S/B) ratios, concatenated to form the pairs and triplets, and recorded on compact disc. Nine and eight digits were presented at each level for the digit-triplet and digit-pair paradigms, respectively. For the listeners with normal hearing and the listeners with hearing loss, the recognition performances were 3 dB and 1.2 dB better, respectively, on digit pairs than on digit triplets. For equal intelligibility, the listeners with hearing loss required an approximately 10 dB more favorable S/B than the listeners with normal hearing. The distributions of the 50% points for the two groups had no overlap.

KABATNIKOVÁ, Sára. The Development of Auditory Memory in Children with Specific Language Impairment in Preschool Age. Praha: Faculty of Education, Charles University, 2021. 69 p. The Diploma Thesis. This thesis is devoted to the topic of the level and development of auditory memory in children with specific language impairment in preschool age. The theoretical part of this thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter describes the characteristics of memory - the classification, stages of the memory process and it also lists some tests that are used for memory diagnostics. The second chapter of the thesis describes the memory level in children in preschool age, particularly the level of auditory memory. The diagnostics options of specific language impairment and therapeutic exercises for the development of auditory memory are also described. The third chapter is formed around the subject of specific language impairment. It describes the etiology and symptomatology, especially the symptoms in auditory memory and it also contains possibilities of diagnostics and therapy of specific language impairment. The main goal of the empiric part of the thesis is to find out the level of auditory memory of children who struggle with specific language impairment and who are attending speech therapy...

It has been previously established that when engaged in a difficult attention intensive task, which involves repeating information while blocking out other information (the dichotic listening task), participants are often able to report hearing their own names in an unattended audio channel (Moray, 1959). This phenomenon, called the cocktail party effect is a result of words that are important to oneself having a lower threshold, resulting in less attention being necessary to process them (Treisman, 1960). The current studies examined the ability of a person who was engaged in an attention demanding task to hear and recall low-threshold words from a fictional story. These low-threshold words included a traditional alert word, "fire" and fictional character names from a popular franchise-Harry Potter. Further, the role of stimulus degradation was examined by including synthetic and accented speech in the task to determine how it would impact attention and performance. In Study 1 participants repeated passages from a novel that was largely unfamiliar to them, The Secret Garden while blocking out a passage from a much more familiar source, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Each unattended Harry Potter passage was edited so that it would include 4 names from the series, and the word "fire" twice. The type of speech present in the attended and unattended ears (Natural or Synthetic) was varied to examine the impact that processing a degraded speech would have on performance. The speech that the participant shadowed did not impact unattended recall, however it did impact shadowing accuracy. The speech type that was present in the unattended ear did impact the ability to recall low-threshold, Harry Potter information. When the unattended speech type was synthetic, significantly less Harry Potter information was recalled. Interestingly, while Harry Potter information was recalled by participants with both high and low Harry Potter experience, the traditional low-threshold word, "fire" was not noticed by participants. In order to determine if synthetic speech impeded the ability to report low-threshold Harry Potter names due to being degraded or simply being different than natural speech, Study 2 was designed. In Study 2 the attended (shadowed) speech was held constant as American Natural speech, and the unattended ear was manipulated. An accent which was different than the native accent of the participants was included as a mild form of degradation. There were four experimental stimuli which contained one of the following in the unattended ear: American Natural, British Natural, American Synthetic and British Synthetic. Overall, more unattended information was reported when the unattended channel was Natural than Synthetic. This implies that synthetic speech does take more working memory processing power than even an accented natural speech. Further, it was found that experience with the Harry Potter franchise played a role in the ability to report unattended Harry Potter information. Those who had high levels of Harry Potter experience, particularly with audiobooks, were able to process and report Harry Potter information from the unattended stimulus when it was British Natural. While, those with low Harry Potter experience were not able to report unattended Harry Potter information from this slightly degraded stimulus. Therefore, it is believed that the previous audiobook experience of those in the high Harry Potter experience group acted as training and resulted in less working memory being necessary to encode the unattended Harry Potter information. A pilot study was designed in order to examine the impact of story familiarity in the attended and unattended channels of a dichotic listening task. In the pilot study, participants shadowed a Harry Potter passage (familiar) in one condition with a passage from The Secret Garden (unfamiliar) playing in the unattended ear. A second condition had participants shadowing The Secret Garden (unfamiliar) with a passage from Harry Potter (familiar) present in the unattended ear. There was no significant difference in the number of unattended names recalled. Those with low Harry Potter experience reported significantly less attended information when they shadowed Harry Potter than when they shadowed The Secret Garden. Further, there appeared to be a trend such that those with high Harry Potter experience were reporting more attended information when they shadowed Harry Potter than The Secret Garden. This implies that experience with a franchise and characters may make it easier to recall information about a passage, while lack of experience provides no assistance. Overall, the results of the studies indicate that we do treat fictional characters in a way similarly to ourselves. Names and information about fictional characters were able to break through into attention during a task that required a great deal of attention. The experience one had with the characters also served to assist the working memory in processing the information in degraded circumstances. These results have important implications for training, design of alerts, and the use of popular media in the classroom.

In unserer lautsprachlichen Welt ist Kommunikation stark auf das Hören angewiesen. Normalhörende Kinder sammeln in ihren ersten Lebensjahren Hörerfahrungen, die ihre sprachliche Entwicklung unterstützen. Früh ertaubten oder von Geburt an gehörlosen Kindern fehlt diese Möglichkeit bis zur Cochlea-Implantation. Ein Cochlea-Implantat (CI) ist eine Innenohrprothese, die geschädigte sensorische Haarzellen ersetzt und das Hören ermöglicht, wenn der Hörnerv intakt ist. Nach der Implantation beginnen CI-tragende Kinder ohne relevante Hörerfahrung mit der lautsprachlichen Entwicklung und müssen zu gleichaltrigen normalhörenden Kindern aufschließen. Die CI-Funktionen werden in mehreren Sitzungen an die Wahrnehmung der Person angepasst, doch das CI überträgt die Tonwelt nicht so exakt wie ein intaktes Gehör, was die auditive Umgebungswahrnehmung von CI-tragenden Kindern erschwert. Erwachsene CI-Nutzer können bei der Anpassung verbal kommunizieren, Kleinkinder oder Säuglinge jedoch nicht, weshalb ihre Hörwelt weitgehend unbekannt bleibt. Sprache und Musik teilen einige Wahrnehmungseigenschaften: Prosodie (Sprachmelodie) basiert auf Frequenz und Intonation, Emotionen werden durch Rhythmus und Intensität ausgedrückt, und Klangfarbe ermöglicht die Unterscheidung von Sprechstimmen und Instrumenten. Die Studie untersucht die musikalische Hörverarbeitung bei normalhörenden Säuglingen und CI-tragenden Kleinkindern mit vergleichbarem Höralter. Mithilfe der Mismatch Negativity (MMN) im EEG, die unabhängig von der Aufmerksamkeit des Probanden ausgelöst wird, wurde die Hörwahrnehmung objektiv beurteilt. Verschiedene musikalische Qualitäten wurden mit einem Multi-feature-MMN-Paradigma untersucht. Die Stimuli bestanden aus einem Tonlauf von vier Achtelnoten (Alberti-Bass) und wurden in allen Dur- und Moll-Tonarten in randomisierter Reihenfolge dargeboten, wobei der dritte Ton in Tonhöhe (pitch), Klangfarbe (timbre), Intensität (intensity), Rhythmus (rhythm), Glissando (slide) und einem zweiten Standard (standard2) variierte. Die Probanden wurden während der Stimulus-Präsentation geräuschlos abgelenkt. Es wurden Daten von 17 prälingual ertaubten CI-tragenden Kleinkindern (durchschnittlich 1 Jahr und 7 Monate alt) und 21 normalhörenden Säuglingen (6 Monate alt), beide mit 6 Monaten Hörerfahrung, ausgewertet. Für jede Bedingung wurde der Grand Average in beiden Gruppen und deren Untergruppen gebildet, und die MMN in frühen und späten Zeitfenstern analysiert. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass CI-tragende Kinder bei allen Devianten eine signifikante MMN zeigten. Die Untergruppe „mit Hörerfahrung“ wies bei timbre, intensity, rhythm und standard2 signifikante Ergebnisse auf, während die Untergruppe „ohne Hörerfahrung“ bei allen Devianten Signifikanzen zeigte. Dies wird jedoch aufgrund der kleinen Stichprobengröße nicht als robust betrachtet. Normalhörende Kinder zeigten bei allen Devianten außer standard2 eine signifikante MMN. CI-tragende Kinder reagierten unerwartet stark auf intensity und schwach auf rhythm, während normalhörende Kinder standard2 nicht wahrnehmen konnten. Erstmals wurde die Hörwahrnehmung von früh implantierten, bilateral CI-tragenden Kindern in ihrem frühen Höralter von sechs Monaten untersucht. CI-tragende Kinder konnten alle untersuchten Abweichungen wahrnehmen, wobei timbre und intensity besser und rhythm schwächer als erwartet wahrgenommen wurden. Normalhörende Kinder konnten standard2 aufgrund ihres Entwicklungsstandes nicht wahrnehmen, während ältere CI-tragende Kleinkinder dies kognitiv leisten konnten. Die CI-tragenden Kinder zeigten eine vergleichbare Fähigkeit zur Wahrnehmung akustischer Reize wie normalhörende Kinder, trotz fehlender oder unterbrochener Hörerfahrung.:Inhaltsverzeichnis Relevanz der Dissertation für den Forschungsbereich 1. Einleitung 1.1. Das auditive System 1.1.1. Anatomie des Ohres 1.1.2. Physiologie der akustischen Wahrnehmung 1.1.3. Embryologische Entwicklung des Innenohres: Der Beginn des Hörens 1.1.4. Kindliche Hörstörungen 1.2. Das Cochlea-Implantat (CI) 1.2.1. Definition und Entwicklung 1.2.2. Aufbau und Funktion 1.2.3. CI-Versorgung bei Kleinkindern 1.3. EEG und evozierte Potentiale 1.3.1. EEG 1.3.2. Ereignis-korrelierte Potentiale 1.3.3. CI-Artefakte 1.4. Bedeutung von Musik für die Entwicklung 1.4.1. Musik als Kulturgut 1.4.2. Psychosoziale Aspekte 1.4.3. Hörwahrnehmungen bis zum Kleinkindalter 1.4.4. Musikwahrnehmung mit CI 2. Experiment 2.1. Motivation 2.2. Stand der Wissenschaft 2.3. Fragestellung und Hypothesen 2.4. Methoden 2.4.1. Probanden 2.4.2. Versuchsdesign 2.4.3. Versuchsablauf 2.4.4. Elektrophysiologische Ableitung 2.4.5. Datenanalyse 2.5. Ergebnisse 2.5.1. Patientengruppe (CI-tragende Kinder) 2.5.2. Kontrollgruppe (normalhörende Kinder) 2.5.3. Übersicht über die CI- und die NH-Gruppe 2.5.4. Die Auswirkung des CI-Artefakts auf die MMN 3. Diskussion 3.1. Hörwahrnehmung CI-tragender Kinder 3.1.1. Pitch 3.1.2. Timbre 3.1.3. Intensity 3.1.4. Rhythm 3.1.5. Slide 3.1.6. Standard2 3.1.7. Globaler Vergleich der diskutierten Studien 3.2. Hörwahrnehmung normalhörender 6 Monate alter Säuglinge 3.3. Untergruppen „mit“ und „ohne Hörerfahrung“ 3.4. Latenzen 3.5. Fazit 3.6. Limitationen 3.7. Ausblick 4. Zusammenfassung 4.1. Deutsch 4.2. English Abbildungsverzeichnis Tabellenverzeichnis Literaturverzeichnis Anlage 1: Erklärung zur Eröffnung des Promotionsverfahrens Anlage 2: Erklärung zur Einhaltung aktueller gesetzlicher Vorgaben

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The purpose of the current study was to investigate the impact of emotionality on the memory of children with an autism spectrum disorder. Although emotional events enhance memory in adults and children without an autism spectrum disorder, there are different memory patterns among individuals on the autism spectrum. Specifically, individuals with autism may show a decreased advantage in memory for emotional content and may have deficits in memory for information that is not presented visually. Currently, however, there are no studies that look at how emotional content affects memory specifically in children with autism. In the current study, children with and without autism were presented with stimuli contrasting emotional and neutral content using one of two modalities, auditory and visual, and then completed memory recognition tasks for the stimuli. Results indicate that children with an autism spectrum disorder did not demonstrate enhanced memory for emotional information. Rather, they were equally able to remember emotional and neutral stimuli. Additionally, individuals on the spectrum demonstrated better memory for visual stimuli compared to their neurotypical peers. These results support the notion that individuals with an autism spectrum disorder may learn and remember material differently than those without the disorder and that educators need to acknowledge these differences as children with autism spectrum disorders continue to be integrated into classroom settings.

Children with sensorineural hearing loss may (re)gain hearing with a cochlear implant—a device that transforms sounds into electric pulses and bypasses the dysfunctioning inner ear by stimulating the auditory nerve directly with an electrode array. Many implanted children master the acquisition of spoken language successfully, yet we still have little knowledge of the actual input they receive with the implant and specifically which language sensitive cues they hear. This would be important however, both for understanding the flexibility of the auditory system when presented with stimuli after a (life-) long phase of deprivation and for planning therapeutic intervention. In rhythmic languages the general stress pattern conveys important information about word boundaries. Infant language acquisition relies on such cues and can be severely hampered when this information is missing, as seen for dyslexic children and children with specific language impairment. Here we ask whether children with a cochlear implant perceive differences in stress patterns during their language acquisition phase and if they do, whether it is present directly following implant stimulation or if and how much time is needed for the auditory system to adapt to the new sensory modality. We performed a longitudinal ERP study, testing in bimonthly intervals the stress pattern perception of 17 young hearing impaired children (age range: 9–50 months; mean: 22 months) during their first 6 months of implant use. An additional session before the implantation served as control baseline. During a session they passively listened to an oddball paradigm featuring the disyllable “baba,” which was stressed either on the first or second syllable (trochaic vs. iambic stress pattern). A group of age-matched normal hearing children participated as controls. Our results show, that within the first 6 months of implant use the implanted children develop a negative mismatch response for iambic but not for trochaic deviants, thus showing the same result as the normal hearing controls. Even congenitally deaf children show the same developing pattern. We therefore conclude (a) that young implanted children have early access to stress pattern information and (b) that they develop ERP responses similar to those of normal hearing children.