Auditory Temporal Resolution in Specifically Language-Impaired and Age-Matched Children

Abstract

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.

Control of Auditory Attention in Children With Specific Language Impairment

“…Limited attention in children with SLI is a possible cause of performance deficits on linguistic tasks (e.g., Bishop, Carlyon, Deeks, & Bishop, 1999;Helzer, Champlin, & Gillam, 1996). There is a high comorbidity of SLI and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses (Cantwell & Baker, 1991;Snowling et al, 2006), and differentiating between effects of the two disorders can be a challenge for clinicians and researchers alike.…”

Investigation of auditory processing disorder and language impairment using the speech-evoked auditory brainstem response

“…Although the presence of auditory processing deficits has been supported by many studies using behavioral measures, there is still a lack of evidence for the rapid auditory processing or discrimination deficits in the LI population (Bishop et al, 1999;Helzer et al, 1996;Sussman, 1993;Tomblin et al, 1995). Because the performance of children with LI is variable for auditory tasks, it is difficult to determine conclusively if the relationship between auditory skills and LI is causal or associated.…”

Auditory perceptual processing in people with reading and oral language impairments: current issues and recommendations

“…However, this weight of evidence is tempered by a handful of experiments that have failed to support the rapid auditory processing deficit hypothesis: McAnally and Stein (1996) and Schulte-Kö rne et al (1998a) found that people with SRD produced normal gap detection scores; Bishop et al (1999b) found that children with SLI were as good as controls at detecting the presence of forward-and backward-masked tones; Helzer, Champlin and Gillam (1996) reported that children with SLI had normal detection for brief tones in noise and in gaps in noise; and Rosen (1999) failed to replicate previous findings of auditory processing deficits in 14 children with 'grammatical' SLI. Further, some experiments have found that children with reading disabilities (Nittrouer, 1999;Waber et al, 2001;Marshall, Snowling and Bailey, in press) and children with spoken language impairments (Lincoln et al, 1992;Bishop et al, 1999a) are poorer than age-matched controls at recalling the order of tone sequences at all rates of presentation, not just at rapid rates as predicted by the rapid auditory processing deficit hypothesis.…”