The ability of the sensitivity prediction from acoustic reflex (SPAR) technique to estimate hearing loss in 32 trainable mentally retarded Ss (adults and young adults with normal to profound hearing loss) was investigated by comparing measured pure-tone thresholds determined through tangible-reinforcement operant-conditioning audiometry with…

Points out that the linguistic rules of one's dialect determine what one hears and that items on tests of auditory discrimination may prove difficult for adults and nearly impossible for children. (JM)

Evaluates the discrimination of signal and silence duration in six-month-old infants, children aged 5 1/2 years, and adults. Results show that infants discriminated duration changes of 20 milliseconds or greater, children discriminated 15 milliseconds, and adults as few as 10 ms. Findings are consistent with other research in revealing age-related…

Insertion of a dead hearing aid in 15 otologically normal children (ages 4-6) resulted in a mean hearing loss of 25-30 dB. Results suggest that sensorineural hearing losses of 50 dB may increase to 80 dB with nonfunctioning aids in place, compounding a hearing-impaired child's existing communication and educational difficulties. (Author/VW)

The brainstem auditory evoked potential (BAEP) was evaluated as a hearing screening test in 168 high-risk newborns. The BAEP was found to be a sensitive procedure for the early identification of hearing-impaired newborns. However, the yield of significant hearing abnormalities was less than predicted in other studies using BAEP. (Author/CL)

This paper outlines hearing loss in children in terms of type, etiology, socioeducational effect, and methods of differentiation of these types from the perspective of the school nurse teacher. The source of information, when not otherwise noted, is data obtained on 2,386 school-age children seen by the author on the Ithaca College Mobile…

Results suggested that the ability to manipulate the phonetic components of the spoken language has an important bearing on the development of reading skill. (Authors)

Auditory and visual recognition were studied in subjects ranging in age from 10 to 60 years. In comparison with perceptual and response factors, memory scanning time is relatively insensitive to age differences, and auditory recognition involves the use of a pre-linguistic memory system insensitive to age differences. (Author/MF)

Research is reported that verifies the hypothesis that most hearing-impaired children whose auditory input is limited to the low frequencies (500 Hz or less) do perceive intonation differences. The four experiments reported used children ages 7 to 14. (MSE)

Results were considered significant in that 11 percent of the students screened were identified as potentially hearing impaired as compared to 4 percent of the regular Baltimore City School student population who failed hearing screenings. (Author)

Investigates the phenomenon that subjects speaking under exposure to masking noise demonstrate decreases in oral sensory function and temporal reorganization of the articulatory pattern. The study attempts to measure the effects of this phenomenon under varying durations of exposure to auditory masking. (Author/NCR)

In an examination of speaker-induced variability in an auditory perceptual test, recordings of the PBK word list were mixed with white noise and played to a group of normal hearing college students and a group of normal hearing junior high school students. (Author/CL)

The results of an auditory screening protocol administered to 342 adolescents (ages 10-20) suggest a high level of noise exposure in the adolescent population. Overall failure rate was 25%. Significant correlations were found between firearm use and hearing loss at 6000 Hertz. Screening and education efforts are urged. (Author/CR)

This study evaluated an assessment procedure designed to assess speech recognition ability in individuals with mild-to-moderate hearing losses. Sets of phonetic contrasts were presented within sentence contexts to 53 listeners (31 hearing impaired) in four listening conditions. The procedure distinguished between normal and hearing impaired…