Stress is a generalized physiological response to environmental stressors. Of the hormone-triggered changes associated with the stress response, circulatory alterations were of particular interest to this research because they can reduce the blood supply to the inner ear and result in hearing decrements. / Because noise is an effective stressor, its effects on the body can be studied from that perspective. The "noise as a stressor" point of view was used in this research to answer the following question: Is a person's typical response to environmental stressors associated with his or her susceptibility to noise-induced hearing loss? / In order to answer this question, subjects were classified as either Type A or Type B on the Jenkins Activity Survey because it has been shown that Type A's exhibit stronger stress responses than do Type B's. Both types of subjects were exposed to a series of experimental conditions that were designed to differ in stressor magnitude. The stressors consisted of combinations of predictable or unpredictable 105 dB SPL noise bursts and a timed word task, designed to be a psychological stressor. / The hypotheses that predicted that Type A subjects who were exposed to unpredictable noise and had the word task to do would report more perceived stress and sustain more temporary hearing loss were not confirmed. However, the hypothesis predicting a relationship between degree of perceived stress and degree of temporary hearing loss was confirmed. Exploratory analyses, which went beyond the hypotheses, strongly suggested that the order of presentation of different noise conditions, and whether or not they were paired with a quiet session are important factors in the determination of both perceived stress and temporary hearing loss. This last finding has significant implications for the research design of future noise exposure studies. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 44-07, Section: B, page: 2105. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1983.

This study dealt with the relationship between an electrophysiologic response, a psychophysical response, and the perception of loudness. The electrophysiologic response of interest was the auditory brainstem evoked response. The psychophysical response of interest were those aspects of loudness perception related to the process of temporal summation and measured by the technique of loudness balancing. The relationship between these two responses was investigated by manipulating the temporal as well as the intensity characteristics of brief click stimuli used to obtain both responses. It was hypothesized that the auditory brainstem response is not directly related to loudness perception. Brainstem responses elicited with different click stimuli perceived as equally loud were therefore not expected to display similar characteristics. Auditory brainstem responses obtained from eight normal hearing young adult subjects supported this hypothesis. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-02, Section: B, page: 0384. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1987.

The study investigated the ability to visually perceive consonant stimuli during focused and divided attention and related these two lipreading measures to the visual contribution to bimodal speech perception under a fixed condition of auditory degradation. Thirty normal hearing young adults participated in the study. The test stimuli consisted of 22 consonants positioned medially between the vowel /a/. The VCV stimulus list contained four presentations of each stimulus item and was presented under four test conditions: audiovisual, auditory-only, visual-only and visual-with concurrent auditory processing. Percent correct scores were computed for all conditions and produced measures specifying (1) the visual contribution magnitude, (2) lipreading ability during focused attention and (3) lipreading ability during divided attention. / Results indicated that lipreading ability during focused attention was superior to lipreading ability during divided attention when performance was assessed under a progressively expanded homophenous-based scoring system. While subject performance was quite uniform during focused attention, performance variability was relatively large during divided attention. Correlations between visual contribution magnitude and lipreading ability during focused attention ranged from .308 to .486 across scoring systems and were significant under two of six scoring arrays. Correlations between visual contribution magnitude and lipreading ability during divided attention ranged from .623 to .675 and were significant under all scoring arrays. / The data indicate that lipreading ability during divided attention more accurately predicts the degree to which visual cues contribute to audiovisual perception of speech. The results are explained in terms of the effect of limited attentional capacity on dual-task processing. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 45-09, Section: B, page: 2860. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1984.

Bekesy audiometry was used to measure and evaluate the Most Comfortable Loudness (M.C.L), Uncomfortable Loudness (U.C.L.), and Aural Distortion levels of 20 normal listeners. / Both continuous (C) and Interrupted (I) pure tones, in a six octave sweep frequency mode, were presented to each subject. The resultant tracking patterns were classified as to Type and included Type I, Type V, and a Crossover Type. This crossover pattern is characterized by the C tone being tracked at lower intensities than the I tone at frequencies below 1500 Hz, at which it crosses over the I tracing and is tracked at a higher intensity for the remainder of the sweep. / A phenomenon of aurally generated distortion was seen to effect the type of pattern tracked at both suprathreshold levels. To evaluate this, the subjects were asked to track the threshold of perceived distortion and these levels were correlated with the tracking patterns. 100% of those subjects who tracked distortion levels at intensities lower than those of the C tone for either their M.C.L. or U.C.L. level had tracked a crossover/sloping pattern. Those subjects who reported either no perception of aural distortion or had perceived its onset at intensities greater than those of the C tone had tracked Type I/V patterns. It is hypothesized that if the subject allowed the C tone to enter into their area of aural distortion a spread of energy occurred resulting in an impression of decreased loudness, and the subject compensated by allowing the C tone to rise in intensity returning to the defined suprathreshold level. This resulted in the Crossover Type pattern. System harmonic distortion, time-order effects, and auditory fatigue were eliminated as significantly contributing factors. / The threshold of aural distortion was found to be perceived with stimulus on-times of between 200 to 300 msec. / The five subjects who reported no perception of aural distortion were able to track the onset of harmonic distortion when introduced into the system thereby eliminating attention and knowledge of the task as contributing variables. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-03, Section: B, page: 0957. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.

The purpose of this study was to provide a comparative assessment of the performance of normal-hearing and hearing-impaired subjects on three closed-response speech discrimination tests: Modified Rhyme Test, Oklahoma University Closed-Response Speech Test and the California Consonant Test. Specifically, the speech discrimination scores and word-initial and final position consonantal errors were examined. / The word lists for the speech discrimination tests were recorded by a speaker with General American English with a variation of Southern Dialect. The study employed 24 normal-hearing and 24 hearing-impaired subjects. Each subject heard the word lists monaurally at MCL under four test conditions: low-band (100-1500 Hz), high-band (2000-6000 Hz), speech in noise (S/N O dB; bandwidth 100-6000 Hz), and wide-band (100-6000 Hz). The word lists and listening conditions were counterbalanced to minimize the order effects. / The speech discrimination results were subjected to an analysis of variance for repeated measures which determined that the differences among test lists varied across conditions and across the two subject groups. The CCT word list seemed to differentiate normal-hearing from hearing-impaired subjects slightly better than the MRT and OUCRT. However, the speech in noise condition elicited clustered scores indicating that none of the three lists were able to differentiate normal-hearing from hearing-impaired subjects. / The consonantal error rank-orderings were subjected to the Spearman Rho analysis within subject groups and to the Mann-Whitney U Test across subject groups. The results indicated that the consonantal error rank-orderings varied as a function of test list, listener condition, subject group, position of the consonant in the word, and from one investigator to the other. / A major finding of this study was that the normal-hearing subjects committed more errors on the consonants in the word initial position. The hearing-impaired subjects committed more errors on the consonants in the word final position. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-07, Section: B, page: 2767. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 36-06, Section: B, page: 2705. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1975.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 35-08, Section: B, page: 3731. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1974.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 37-10, Section: B, page: 4974. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1976.

This study used the LENA Digital Language Processor to look at parental input as a possible factor affecting language performance variability in children with cochlear implants. Eight children between the ages of 2 and 6 with cochlear implants wore the LENA DLP for one full day while engaging in typical family activities. Adult word counts, child word counts, and number of conversational turns were compared to the child's Preschool Language Scales 3rd Edition scores and to LENA data from normal hearing children. It was found that parents of children with cochlear implants talk in a similar fashion to parents of normal hearing children in regards to amount of speech. The children, however, were significantly above agerage on word counts, while being significantly below average on PLS 3 scores. Possible reasons for this discrepancy are discussed.

Learning new object-name associations (i.e., word learning) is an ability crucial to normal development starting in early childhood and continuing through the lifespan. To learn a new word, an object must be associated with an arbitrary phonological (or orthographic) string representing a word. The declarative memory system formulates and encodes associations between two arbitrary stimuli and has been well established as playing a critical role for adult word learning. Research investigating the neural substrates of the declarative memory system and word learning has implicated the hippocampus and the surrounding medial temporal lobe (MTL) as crucial structures. A substantial literature on populations with damage to these particular structures (e.g., hippocampal amnesia, temporal lobectomy) has supports the view that without these structures, declarative learning, and word learning by extension, is grossly impaired. However, a recent study Sharon and colleagues (2011) suggested that non-MTL structures may be sufficient to support word learning under special study conditions ("fast mapping") (Sharon, Moscovitch, & Gilboa, 2011). Fast mapping is a word-learning phenomenon described as the ability to acquire the name for a new word in a single exposure to an unknown word and unfamiliar referent alongside a known word with its referent (e.g., Carey & Bartlett, 1978; Carey, 2010). This study evaluated the ability of patients with unilateral temporal lobectomy (TL) following early-onset temporal lobe epilepsy to learn new object-name associations in two different word learning conditions: fast mapping (FM) and explicit encoding (EE). The word learning performance was evaluated relative to a group of healthy normal comparison participants (NC). The goal of this study was to examine the role of the hippocampus in word learning to answer the question: does a FM condition promote word learning in participants with temporal lobe epilepsy who have had a left temporal lobectomy? NC participants were able to acquire a rich representation of novel items (as evidenced by improved familiarity ratings and generalization of items) while TL participants had severely impaired performance on free recall, recognition testing, and generalization tasks. TL participants did not learn novel object-name associations despite a FM paradigm while the NC group performed significantly above chance on recognition testing. These findings in conjunction with broadly similar results obtained from hippocampal amnesic patients tested using the same paradigm (Warren & Duff, 2012), support the necessity of the hippocampus for rapid and flexible associations to be obtained via the declarative memory system.