Purpose: This study examined speech changes induced by deep-brain stimulation (DBS) in speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD) using a set of auditory-perceptual and acoustic measures. Method: Speech recordings from nine speakers with PD and DBS were compared between DBS-On and DBS-Off conditions using auditory-perceptual and acoustic analyses.…

Purpose: Stuttering is a neurodevelopmental disorder that disrupts the timing and rhythmic flow of speech production. There is growing evidence indicating that abnormal interactions between the auditory and motor cortices contribute to the development of stuttering. The present study investigated speech auditory-motor synchronization in stuttering…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate cortical tracking of speech (CTS) in adults who stutter (AWS) compared to typically fluent adults (TFAs) to test the involvement of the speech-motor network in tracking rhythmic speech information. Method: Participants' electroencephalogram was recorded while they simply listened to sentences…

Purpose: Maturation of the ability to recognize target speech in the presence of a two-talker speech masker extends into early adolescence. This study evaluated whether children benefit from differences in fundamental frequency (f[subscript o]) contour depth between the target and masker speech, a cue that has been shown to improve recognition in…

Purpose: Envelope following responses (EFRs) could be useful for objectively evaluating audibility of speech in children who are unable to participate in routine clinical tests. However, relative to adults, the characteristics of EFRs elicited by frequency-specific speech and their utility in predicting audibility in children are unknown. Method:…

The developmental trajectory of audiovisual speech perception in Mandarin-speaking children remains understudied. This cross-sectional study in Mandarin-speaking 3- to 4-year-old, 5- to 6-year-old, 7- to 8-year-old children, and adults from Xiamen, China (n = 87, 44 males) investigated this issue using the McGurk paradigm with three levels of…

Word identification accuracy is modulated by many factors including linguistic characteristics of words (frequent vs. infrequent), listening environment (noisy vs. quiet), and listener-related differences (older vs. younger). Nearly, all studies investigating these factors use high-familiarity words and noise signals that are either energetic…

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to assess dual-task interference (i.e., changes between the dual-task and baseline condition) in a listening effort dual-task paradigm in normal-hearing (NH) adults, hearing aid (HA) users, and cochlear implant (CI) users. Method: Three groups of 31 participants were included: (a) NH adults, (b) HA…

Purpose: Developmental dyslexia is a specific learning disorder that affects 5-17% children, and persists into adulthood. Speech perception in noise (SPIN) ability in dyslexia has been largely examined in previous studies. However, the available literature remains controversial and it is unclear under which conditions the deficits occur. The…

Purpose: Speech recognition in noise is challenging for listeners and appears to require support from executive functions to focus attention on rapidly unfolding target speech, track misunderstanding, and sustain attention. The current study was designed to test the hypothesis that lower executive function abilities explain poorer speech…

Purpose: Phoneme categorization (PC) for voice onset time and second formant transition was studied in adult cochlear implant (CI) users with early-onset deafness and hearing controls. Method: Identification and discrimination tasks were administered to 30 participants implanted before 4 years of age, 21 participants implanted after 7 years of…

This study investigated whether individuals with high autistic traits rely on psychoacoustic abilities in affective prosody recognition (APR). In 94 college students, Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and psychoacoustic abilities were measured. Results indicated that higher AQ, higher rapid auditory processing (RAP), and maleness were associated with…

Understanding speech in an accent or dialect different than one's own can be challenging. McLaughlin and Van Engen (2020) were the first to quantify this increase in listening effort using Task Evoked Pupillary Response (TEPR), a common measure of cognitive arousal. They found that monolingual, English speaking adults' pupils dilated more quickly…

Purpose: Despite the recommendation for cochlear implant (CI) processor use during all waking hours, variability in average daily wear time remains high. Previous work has shown that objective wear time is significantly correlated with speech recognition outcomes. We aimed to investigate the causal link between daily wear time and speech…

Purpose: Some speech recognition data suggest that children rely less on voice pitch and harmonicity to support auditory scene analysis than adults. Two experiments evaluated development of speech-in-speech recognition using voiced speech and whispered speech, which lacks the harmonic structure of voiced speech. Method: Listeners were 5- to…