Presenting symptoms of APD were largely unrelated to auditory sensory processing. Response variability and cognitive performance were the best predictors of poor communication and listening. We suggest that APD is primarily an attention problem and that clinical diagnosis and management, as well as further research, should be based on that premise.

Data suggest that the perception of different auditory stimuli occurs and develops using rather independent mechanisms, even for tasks that are closely related in procedure. While individual children can perform reliably on several distinct tasks, differences between individuals on the same tasks can be large. Because some of the youngest children perform reliably across time, at or near adult levels, immaturity between 6 and 11 yrs of age, as reflected in group statistics, reflects poor performance of some individual children rather than obligate, age-related deficits in AP. While several of the tests used were found to have potential clinical applicability, because of their reliability and ability to distinguish between individuals, it is currently unclear how performance on such tests relates to everyday listening skills.

Psychoacoustic thresholds of pure tone frequency discrimination (FD) in children are elevated relative to those of adults. It has been shown that it is possible to improve FD thresholds in adults, following a single (subhour) training session. To determine whether FD thresholds in children may be improved by training and, consequently, reduced to adult levels, 100 normally hearing 6- to 11-year-old children and adults received approximately 1 h of training on a FD task at 1 kHz. At the start of training, a quarter of all child participants had FD thresholds that resembled those of naive adults (adult-like subgroup). Another quarter achieved thresholds that were adult-like at some point during training (trainable subgroup). For the remainder (nonadult-like subgroup), thresholds did not reach those of naive adult listeners at any point in the training session. Subgroup membership was linked to the influence of three factors-age, nonverbal IQ, and attention. However, across subgroups, learning was found not to generalize to either a different standard frequency (4 kHz) or a variable (roving) presentation paradigm. The results indicate that it is possible for some children to achieve FD thresholds comparable to those of naive adults, either natively or after limited training.

Understanding the neural coding of pitch and frequency is fundamental to the understanding of speech comprehension, music perception and the segregation of concurrent sound sources. Neuroimaging has made important contributions to defining the pattern of frequency sensitivity in humans. However, the precise way in which pitch sensitivity relates to these frequency‐dependent regions remains unclear. Single‐frequency tones also cannot be used to test this hypothesis as their pitch always equals their frequency. Here, temporal pitch (periodicity) and frequency coding were dissociated using stimuli that were bandpassed in different frequency spectra (centre frequencies 800 and 4500 Hz), yet were matched in their pitch characteristics. Cortical responses to both pitch‐evoking stimuli typically occurred within a region that was also responsive to low frequencies. Its location extended across both primary and nonprimary auditory cortex. An additional control experiment demonstrated that this pitch‐related effect was not simply caused by the generation of combination tones. Our findings support recent neurophysiological evidence for a cortical representation of pitch at the lateral border of the primary auditory cortex, while revealing new evidence that additional auditory fields are also likely to play a role in pitch coding.

Claims have been made for associated degrees of impairment on both visual and auditory performance in unilateral neglect and extinction. Since this evidence is primarily based on different tests in each modality, it is difficult to properly quantify the degree of association between performance in vision and audition. The current study compares visual and auditory extinction and temporal order judgments (TOJs) in two cases with clinical visual neglect. Stimuli in both modalities were precisely matched in their temporal and spatial parameters. The results reveal a mixed pattern of association between different auditory tests and their visual counterparts. This suggests that associations between visual and auditory neglect can occur but these are neither obligatory nor pervasive. Instead, our data support models of spatial impairment in neglect and extinction that acknowledge differences in the contribution of spatial information to performance in each modality in responses to changing task demands.