Basic Auditory Processing Skills and Specific Language Impairment: A New Look at an Old Hypothesis

Abstract

Many children with SLI have auditory processing difficulties, but for most children, these are not specific to brief, rapidly successive acoustic cues. Instead, sensitivity to durational and amplitude envelope cues appear to predict language and literacy outcomes more strongly. This finding now requires replication and exploration in languages other than English.

Fragile Spectral and Temporal Auditory Processing in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Early Language Delay

“…Accordingly, thus far, these findings do not support the hypothesis of superior right and inferior left auditory cortex processing in ASD. While the interaction between low-level auditory deficits and speech, language and literacy problems has gradually begun to be unraveled in other developmental disorders like dyslexia (e.g., Boets et al 2011) or specific language impairment (e.g., Corriveau et al 2007;Fraser et al 2010;Vandewalle et al 2012), the current findings highlight the need for a further expansion of our understanding of the relation between auditory processing abilities and receptive-language abilities in ASD.…”

“…Extensive research during the last decades suggests that auditory temporal processing deficits may affect the development of well-defined and robust phonological representations, hence producing the language and literacy problems characteristic of specific language impairment and developmental dyslexia (e.g., Boets et al 2011;Corriveau et al 2007;Goswami 2011;Hämäläinen et al 2013;Tallal and Gaab 2006; but see Bishop et al 1999;Rosen 2003). Likewise, auditory temporal processing problems in ASD may also impact upon early speech perception, thereby contributing to the characteristic autistic deficits in communication and social interaction (Bhatara et al 2013).…”

Reduced sensitivity to slow-rate dynamic auditory information in children with dyslexia

“…Sound rise time sensitivity has been shown to be a sensitive measure to discriminate between individuals with and without dyslexia. Studies found atypical sound rise time processing in adults (Hämäläinen et al, 2005;Corriveau et al, 2007) and children with dyslexia (Goswami et al, 2002;Richardson et al, 2004;Muneaux et al, 2004;Georgiou et al, 2010) and demonstrated associations between rise time sensitivity and a variety of phonological awareness tasks. Furthermore, sound rise time has been shown to discriminate between normal-reading children and children with dyslexia in several languages (English, Spanish, Chinese: Goswami et al, 2011a;Greek: Georgiou et al, 2010;Finnish: Hämäläinen et al, 2009;Hungarian: Suranyi et al, 2009;French: Muneaux et al, 2004).…”

Auditory-Visual Matching and Language-Based Learning Disorders: Two Studies of Specific Language Impairment and Developmental Dyslexia

“…The data found in research by Corriveau et al (2007) indicate that the auditory processing difficulties that are most strongly predictive of language and phonology in children with SLI are found in tasks requiring the integration of temporal information over relatively long temporal windows. Studies by Richardson et al (2004) and Corriveau et al (2007) found that the relationships among auditory processing, phonological awareness, and literacy were very similar in both samples of children with a developmental language disorder.…”

“…Studies by Richardson et al (2004) and Corriveau et al (2007) found that the relationships among auditory processing, phonological awareness, and literacy were very similar in both samples of children with a developmental language disorder. However, the relationships appear stronger in terms of the absolute variance accounted for in the sample of children with SLI.…”