Purpose: Working memory capacity and language ability modulate speech reception; however, the respective roles of peripheral and cognitive processing are unclear. The contribution of individual differences in these abilities to utilization of spatial cues when separating speech from informational and energetic masking backgrounds in children has…

There is some evidence for sex differences in habituation in the human fetus, but it is unknown whether this is due to differences in central processing (habituation) or in more peripheral processes, sensory or motor, involved in the response. This study examined whether the sex of the fetus influenced auditory habituation at 33 weeks of…

Many people with the diagnosis of Asperger syndrome (AS) show poorly developed skills in understanding emotional messages. The present study addressed discrimination of speech prosody in children with AS at neurophysiological level. Detection of affective prosody was investigated in one-word utterances as indexed by the N1 and the mismatch…

Four groups of male undergraduates were instructed to perform complex cognitive operations when randomly presented single digits of a dichotic listening paradigm. An erotic tape recording was played into the nonattended ear. Sexual arousal varied directly as a function of the complexity of the distracting cognitive operations. (Author)

In an attempt to address the issue of bimodal coordination of featural stimuli, the sensitivity of 3-month-old infants to the auditory and visual components of male and female stimulus configurations was examined. Measures were made of the infants' visual attention to a male or female face while they listened to a male voice, female voice, or to…