No description available.

Naming speed, motor skill, and auditory temporal processing (ATP) are constructs that are important to reading and language. These variables require processing timing information inherent in the stimulus or processing stimuli rapidly. ATP deficits are found in individuals with reading impairments, but studies are conflicting regarding the relationship between reading and ATP. This study examined relationships between naming speed, motor speed, and ATP, and centered on possible factors why inconsistencies have occurred across studies examining the association between reading and ATP. If the timing element of naming speed (rapid automatized naming-RAN) and of motor speed is common to ATP, then RAN and motor speed should predict thresholds for three auditory tasks (CMR, backward masking, and the precedence effect with TOJ) known to require temporal processing. Tasks were administered to adult participants in order to examine the effects with skilled readers. Many of the variables were skewed and there were multiple outliers that altered the analyses. Ultimately, 75 participants were included in the final data set. Results indicated that RAN did not predict thresholds for any of the masking tasks given. However, motor speed predicted thresholds for one CMR and two backward masking tasks, suggesting that motor speed should be controlled for in research assessing the contribution of ATP to reading or language. Neither naming speed nor motor speed predicted localization performance. Non-verbal intelligence predicted performance on several of the masking tasks, consistent with previous research. Performance on all three auditory tasks was similar to that reported in the literature assessing smaller samples of participants. Although the suggestion of a general timing component is not supported, the relationships found between motor speed and several auditory temporal measures indicate that the underlying timing elements are not independent.

The primary purpose of this investigation was to determine whether temporal coding in the auditory system was the same for younger and older listeners. Temporal coding was assessed by amplitude-modulated auditory steady-state responses (AM ASSRs) as a physiologic measure of phase-locking capability. The secondary purpose of this study was to determine whether AM ASSRs were related to behavioral speech understanding ability. AM ASSRs showed that the ability of the auditory system to phase lock to a temporally altered signal is dependent on modulation rate, carrier frequency, and age of the listener. Specifically, the interaction of frequency and age showed that younger listeners had more phase locking than old listeners at 500 Hz. The number of phase-locked responses for the 500 Hz carrier frequency was significantly correlated to word-recognition performance. In conclusion, the effect of aging on temporal processing, as measured by phase locking with AM ASSRs, was found for low-frequency stimuli where phase locking in the auditory system should be optimal. The exploration, and use, of electrophysiologic responses to measure auditory timing analysis in humans has the potential to facilitate the understanding of speech perception difficulties in older listeners.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to examine temporal resolution in normal-hearing preschool children. Word recognition was evaluated in quiet and in spectrally identical continuous and interrupted noise at signal-to-noise ratios (S/Ns) of 10, 0, and −10dB−10dB−10dB. Sixteen children 4to5years4to5years4to5yearsof age and eight adults participated. Performance decreased with decreasing S/N. At poorer S/Ns, participants demonstrated superior performance or a release from masking in the interrupted noise. Adults performed better than children, yet the release from masking was equivalent. Collectively these findings are consistent with the notion that preschool children suffer from poorer processing efficiency rather than temporal resolution per se.

Background: A link between musical expertise and auditory temporal processing abilities was examined. Material and methods: Trained musicians (n=13) and non-musicians (n=12) were tested on speech tasks (phonetic identification, speech recognition in noise) and non-speech tasks (temporal gap detection). Results: Results indicated musicians had shorter between-channel gap detection thresholds and sharper phonetic identification functions, suggesting that perceptual reorganization following musical training assists basic temporal auditory processes. Conclusions: In general, our results provide a conceptual advance in understanding how musical training influences speech processing, an ability which, when impaired, can affect speech and reading competency.