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The Tallal repetition test (TRT) measures the ability of listeners to detect, associate, sequence, and remember complex patterns of stimuli (serial memory) The TRT contains sequencing and serial memory subtests with varying short and long interstimulus intervals (ISIs) Three groups of 12 children were tested using a modified version of the TRT. Subject groups consisted of 7- to 10-year old children with typical development (TD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and specific language impairment (SLI). The TRT contained both tone and CV syllable stimuli to assess temporal processing. As ISI increased, performance improved for both children with TD and SLI in both tone and syllable sequencing tasks, but not for children with ASD, especially in the tone task. Children with TD and those with ASD performed better than those with SLI across most subtests, especially in tasks with short ISIs. Analysis of performance in the serial memory portion of the TRT revealed a predicted pattern of decreased performance as stimuli elements increased. Overall, children with TD and those with ASD appear to have superior auditory temporal order judgment abilities when compared to children with SLI. The linguistic relevance factor shall be considered in assessment and training of various disordered populations.

Silent-center (SC) syllables are consonant-vowel-consonant syllables with the steady-state vowel portion excised from them. These syllables are appealing for research of stop-consonants because they retain the complexity, brevity, and rapid changes inherent in formant transitions while presumably eliminating temporal masking by the vowel. However, questions exist as to whether or not SC syllables are processed in the same manner as their full-vowel (FV) counterparts (i.e. are they processed as speech units or as sounds?). Data is reviewed from a series of experiments which examined listeners discrimination, labeling, and response time for synthesized consonant-vowel-consonant syllables in FV and SC conditions. Results from 3 experiments with typical listeners reveal that: (1) discrimination is significantly better in the SC condition; (2) consonant labeling on a /bab/ to /dad/ continuum is poorer in the SC condition and is significantly poorer at the category boundary; (3) discrimination response-time (RT) is significantly shorter in the SC condition. Labeling and discrimination results reveal that listeners processed the stop-consonants in these SC syllables in a less-categorical manner than in the FV syllables. Taken together with significantly different response-times, these results may indicate that listeners utilize a different mode of processing for SC syllables.

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