The assessment of language laterality by the dichotic fused-words test may be impaired by interference effects revealed by the dominant report of one member of the stimuli-pair. Stimulus-dominance and ear asymmetry were evaluated in normal population (48 subjects of both sex and handedness) and in 2 patients with a single functional hemisphere.…

Voice is the carrier of speech but is also an ''auditory face'' rich in information on the speaker's identity and affective state. Three experiments explored the possibility of a ''voice inversion effect,'' by analogy to the classical ''face inversion effect,'' which could support the hypothesis of a voice-specific module. Experiment 1 consisted…

Event-related potential (ERP) studies have demonstrated impaired auditory sensory processing in patients with schizophrenia, as reflected in abnormal mismatch negativity (MMN). We sought to extend this finding by evaluating MMN in 13 treatment-refractory patients with schizophrenia, and 14 age- and gender-matched healthy controls. Subjects…

Children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) may have poor audio-visual integration, possibly reflecting dysfunctional "mirror neuron" systems which have been hypothesised to be at the core of the condition. In the present study, a computer program, utilizing speech synthesizer software and a "virtual" head (Baldi), delivered speech stimuli for…

Pitch constancy, perceiving the same pitch from tones with differing spectral shapes, requires one to extract the fundamental frequency from two sets of harmonics and compare them. We previously showed this difficult task to be easier when tonal context is present, presumably because the context creates a tonal reference point from which to judge…

Changes in selection criteria have meant that children are being provided with cochlear implants (CI) at increasingly younger ages. However, there is a paucity of measures that are appropriate for testing complex listening skills--most tests are too cognitively complex for such young children. The Common Objects Token (COT) Test was developed as a…

Auditory perception of English minimal pairs was tested with or without noise background. Each subject was interviewed after the test to collect information regarding their early experience on learning English as a foreign language. This study was designed to examine the differential effects of learning English at three age-starting points and two…

In 2 experiments, the authors tested whether the classical modality effect--that is, the stronger recency effect for auditory items relative to visual items--can be extended to the spatial domain. An order reconstruction task was undertaken with four types of material: visual-spatial, auditory-spatial, visual-verbal, and auditory-verbal.…

The aim of the study was to analyse speech perception of children with cochlear implants (N=29) and children fitted with traditional hearing aids (N=20). One- and two-syllable words were presented auditorily in a forced choice minimal-pair discrimination task. The children repeated the word and pointed to the appropriate picture presented on…

Purpose: To examine the perception of synthetic speech by individuals with severe intellectual disabilities using a closed-response format task. Method: Participants were 14 individuals with severe intellectual disabilities and a group of 14 typical individuals. A between-groups design was used to compare the performance of the 2 groups on word…

This study evaluated the validity of using an earplug so that information is presented to only one ear of children (N=34) in Alberta, Canada, with learning disabilities as a means of improving listening comprehension. Children were asked to recall stories from the Auditory Comprehension Test (ACT) immediately after hearing the story. The children…

The paper examines ways in which language complexity of the stimulus and language ability of the receivers may influence learning via television for hearing impaired and hearing children. Research is reviewed on the impact of language abstraction on learning from television, and findings from paired associate learning trials are cited to suggest…

Summarizing research activities from October 1978 to August 1979, this is the fifth annual report of research on speech processing conducted in the Department of Psychology at Indiana University. The report includes extended manuscripts, short reports, progress reports, and information on instrumentation developments and software support. The…

Summarizing research activities from January 1982 to December 1982, this is the eighth annual report of research on speech perception, analysis and synthesis conducted in the Speech Research Laboratory of the Department of Psychology at Indiana University. The report includes extended manuscripts, short reports, progress reports, and information…

The cause of music consonance perception is not known, but consonance has been defined by both physical and perceptual characteristics. This study tested the extent of differences in interval perceptions and preferences in a non-musically trained group of adults. The independent variables of frequency range, condition of presentation, and harmonic…