Purpose-A randomized controlled trial (RCT) was conducted to compare the language and auditory processing outcomes of children assigned to Fast ForWord-Language (FFW-L) to the outcomes of children assigned to nonspecific or specific language intervention comparison treatments that did not contain modified speech.Method-Two hundred and sixteen children between the ages of 6 and 9 years with language impairments were randomly assigned to one of four arms: Fast ForWord-Language (FFW-L), academic enrichment (AE), computer-assisted language intervention (CALI), or individualized language intervention (ILI) provided by a speech-language pathologist. All children received 1 hour and 40 minutes of treatment, 5 days per week, for 6 weeks. Language and auditory processing measures were administered to the children by blinded examiners before treatment, immediately after treatment, 3 months after treatment, and 6 months after treatment.Results-The children in all four arms improved significantly on a global language test and a test of backward masking. Children with poor backward masking scores who were randomized to the FFW-L arm did not present greater improvement on the language measures than children with poor backward masking scores who were randomized to the other three arms. Effect sizes, analyses of standard error of measurement, and normalization percentages supported the clinical significance of NIH Public Access (Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1999). Participants in the FFW-L and CALI arms earned higher phonological awareness scores than children in the ILI and AE arms at the six-month follow-up testing. Conclusion-FastForWord-Language, the language intervention that provided modified speech to address a hypothesized underlying auditory processing deficit, was not more effective at improving general language skills or temporal processing skills than a nonspecific comparison treatment (AE) or specific language intervention comparison treatments (CALI and ILI) that did not contain modified speech stimuli. These findings call into question the temporal processing hypothesis of language impairment and the hypothesized benefits of using acoustically modified speech to improve language skills. The finding that children in the three treatment arms and the active comparison arm made clinically relevant gains on measures of language and temporal auditory processing informs our understanding of the variety of intervention activities that can facilitate development.Approximately seven percent of all school-age children have unusual difficulty learning and using language despite adequate hearing, nonverbal intelligence, and motor abilities (Tomblin, Records, & Zhang, 1996). This difficulty, which has been referred to by a variety of terms including language impairment, language-learning disability, specific language impairment, and language-learning impairment, can have serious social, academic, and vocational ramifications (Brinton, Spackman, Fujiki, & Ricks, 2007;Catts, Fey, Tomblin, & Zhang, 2002;Clegg, Hollis, M...

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Keywords: auditory evoked potentials, homosexuality, masculinization, hypermasculinization, androgens, human prenatal developmentThe auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) elicited by click stimuli were measured in heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual males and females having normal hearing sensitivity. Estimates of latency and/or amplitude were

It is widely known that language influences the way speech sounds are categorized. However, categorization of speech sounds by bilinguals is not well understood. There is evidence that bilinguals have different category boundaries than monolinguals, and there is evidence suggesting that bilinguals' phonemic boundaries can shift with language context. This phenomenon has been referred as the double phonemic boundary. In this investigation, the double phonemic boundary is tested in Spanish-English bilinguals (N = 18) and English monolinguals (N = 16). Participants were asked to categorize speech stimuli from a continuum ranging from /ga/ to /ka/ in two language contexts. The results showed phonemic boundary shifts in bilinguals and monolinguals which did not differ across language contexts. However, the magnitude of the phoneme boundary shift was significantly correlated with the level of confidence in using English and Spanish (reading, writing, speaking, and comprehension) for bilinguals, but not for monolinguals. The challenges of testing the double phonemic boundary are discussed, along with the limitations of the methodology used in this study.

Recent evidence on the perceptual performance of bilingual listeners suggests that a nonaudibility-based cost exists in processing a second language. That is, when compared to monolingual English speakers and early bilinguals, listeners who acquired English as a second language after puberty show reduced performance when listening to the second language in background noise, despite normal auditory thresholds. However, past studies have not controlled for the homogeneity of the bilingual participants used in auditory research; therefore, it is unknown whether the deficit observed in bilingual function is due to a lack of control for language-related variables. The ability of a homogeneous group of Spanish-English bilinguals and English monolingual listeners to perceive sentences in quiet and in noise at threshold levels was evaluated using the Hearing in Noise Test (HINT). Both groups performed similarly in quiet conditions. In the noise conditions, the bilingual group's performance was significantly poorer than the monolingual group's performance. However, both groups showed a binaural advantage of 7-8 dB when the signal and noise were separated by 90 degrees.Abbreviations: HINT = Hearing in Noise Test; L1 = first language; L2 = second language; RTS = reception threshold for sentences; SSI = Synthetic Sentence Identification SumarioLa evidencia reciente sobre el rendimiento perceptivo de sujetos bilingües sugiere que, en relación con el procesamiento de una segunda lengua, existe un costo no relacionado con la audibilidad. Esto es, cuando se les compara con hablantes monolingües del inglés y con bilingües de adquisición temprana, los sujetos que adquirieron el inglés como segunda lengua después de la pubertad, muestran una ejecución reducida cuando escuchan esta segunda lengua en medio de ruido de fondo incrementado, a pesar de tener umbrales auditivos normales. Sin embargo, los estudios anteriores no controlaron la homogeneidad de los participantes bilingües utilizados en investigación auditiva; por lo tanto, no se sabe si el déficit observado en la función bilingüe es debido a la falta de control de variables relacionadas con el lenguaje. Se evaluó la capacidad de un grupo homogéneo de sujetos bilingües en españolinglés y de sujetos monolingües en inglés para captar frases en silencio y en ruido, a niveles de umbral, con la prueba de Audición en Ruido (HINT). Ambos grupos rindieron en forma similar en condiciones de silencio. Pero en condiciones de ruido, el rendimiento del grupo bilingüe fue significativamente Reception Thresholds for Sentences in Bilingual (Spanish/English) and Monolingual (English) ListenersReception Thresholds for Sentences in Bilinguals/von Hapsburg et al peor que el rendimiento del grupo monolingüe. Sin embargo, ambos grupos mostraron una ventaja binaural de 7-8 dB cuando la señal y el ruido fueron separados por 90 grados.Palabras Clave: Bilingüe, percepción del lenguaje, umbral de recepción del lenguaje Abreviaturas: HINT = Prueba de Audición en Ruido; L1 = primera lengua; L2 = segunda l...

Recently there has been renewed interest in the auditory processing capabilities of children with specific language impairment. In this study, eight children with specific language impairment and eight nonimpaired, age-matched peers completed a task to assess temporal resolution abilities. Children were asked to detect a tone in three masking conditions wherein the masker contained silent gaps of 0 msec., 40 msec., or 64 msec. in duration. Thresholds were measured in each masking condition at 500 Hz and 2000 Hz. Across the groups, thresholds decreased (improved) significantly as a function of increases in the duration of the gaps. Children in the two groups exhibited remarkably similar thresholds for the three masking conditions. However, children with specific language impairment required a significantly greater number of ascending trials to achieve the threshold criterion than did age-matched children. Results suggest that language-impaired children perceive temporal aspects of acoustic stimuli as well as their normally developing peers. Attentional mechanisms may play an important role in the difficulties they exhibit in auditory processing.

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The overshoot effect was measured before, during, and after the administration of a moderate dose of aspirin. Prior to the drug, detectability of the 6-ms, 3550-Hz signal was 5-11 dB worse when presented 2 ms after the onset of the 200-ms wideband masking noise than when presented 190 ms after masker onset. Following 4 days of aspirin use, detectability in the long-delay condition was unchanged from the predrug value, but (for four of the five subjects) detectability in the short-delay condition was improved by about 4-8 dB. Thus the overshoot effect was markedly reduced by aspirin because the drug partially counteracted the normally poor detectability for signals presented soon after masker onset. This paradoxical improvement in detectability was accompanied by an aspirin-induced loss in detectability of 5-16 dB for a 200-ms sample of that same signal presented in the quiet. Similar paradoxical effects have previously been obtained by inducing a temporary hearing loss with exposure to intense sound. It is presumed that the same basic mechanisms underlie the parallel outcomes. The so-called cochlear amplifier is discussed in this regard, and also the possibility that the known differences in those primary auditory fibers having high and low spontaneous rates may be involved. A supplementary experiment demonstrated that shifting audibility with either a wideband or a narrow-band background noise does not affect the overshoot effect in the same way as does aspirin or exposure to intense sound, further suggesting that the cochlear amplifier must be altered in order for overshoot to be diminished.