Binaural loudness summation was measured using three different paradigms with 10 normally hearing and 20 bilaterally symmetrical high-frequency sensorineural hearing loss subjects. Binaural summation increased with presentation level using the loudness matching procedure, with values in the 6-10 dB range. Summation decreased with level using the…

This study established a normal middle ear resonance estimated from sweep frequency tympanometry, established normal equivalent ear canal volume, static acoustic admittance, and tympanometric peak pressure at 226 hertz in 90 children with normal hearing and 68 children with deafness, ages 6-15. No significant intergroup or age differences were…

Materials from the Northwestern University Auditory Test Number 6, spoken by a female speaker, were passed through a low-frequency notch filter, reducing the amplitude range within the spectrum. Data obtained from 12 normal-hearing listeners in filtered and unfiltered conditions demonstrated that alterations to words spoken by the same speaker…

This study of 14 children (ages 5-9) with a history of otitis media with effusion found that subjects had significantly reduced masking-level differences (MLD) compared to controls. Results suggest that the reduction in MLD may be related to abnormal brainstem processing. (Author/JDD)

Frequency difference limens (DLFs) for pure tones were obtained over a wide range of frequencies and levels from 7 normal-hearing subjects and 16 ears of 12 listeners with sensorineural hearing losses. Results indicated that it is reasonable to use data from normal listeners' DLFs to evaluate DLFs from hearing-impaired listeners. (Author/JDD)

Simultaneous 3- channel recorded auditory brainstem responses (ABR) were obtained from 20 neonates with various high-pass filter settings and low intensity levels. Results support the advocacy of less restrictive high-pass filtering for neonatal and infant ABR screening to air-conducted and bone-conducted clicks. (Author/JDD)

This experiment sought to define a confidence limit for maximum word-recognition scores obtained from 212 young and elderly adults with confirmed cochlear hearing loss. A 95% confidence limit was found and supported through analysis, although it is suggested that, in some cases, word recognition should be measured at additional levels to obtain…

This study, involving 40 normal-hearing 6 year olds, substantiates the form equivalence of the Selective Auditory Attention Test. Analysis shows equal mean difficulty and significant correlations between lists in quiet and between lists presented with competing speech. (Author/JDD)

Two studies with 20 hearing-impaired and 10 normal-hearing adults found that the Hearing Performance Inventory-Revised was insensitive to differences in hearing-impaired listeners' consonant-recognition ability, whereas the Nonsense Syllable Test was sensitive to differences in overall consonant-recognition ability for normal-hearing and…

Examination of 23 4-year-old children classified otitis media negative or positive during their first year of life indicated that otitis positive children required a more advantageous signal-to-competition ratio for sentence intelligibility, compared to otitis-negative peers. No intergroup differences were found in receptive or expressive language…

Twenty reading-disabled, 10 math-disabled, and 25 control-group college students were assessed on a battery of psychophysical tasks that included 5 tests of temporal processing. Findings suggest that poor temporal processing is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of reading disability but that there is a modest association between the two…