Assessment of auditory processing in 6-year-old language-impaired children: Evaluacion del procesamiento auditivo en niños de 6 años con trastornos del lenguaje

Abstract

The performance of a group of twenty 6-year-old children with specific language impairment (SLI) on several behavioural auditory tests was compared to that of a group of twenty age-matched control children. The auditory test battery used in this study consisted of the following tests: a speech-in-noise test, a filtered speech test, a binaural fusion test, a frequency pattern test, a duration pattern test, a temporal integration test, an auditory word discrimination test, an auditory synthesis test, an auditory closure test and a number recall test. Our results show that the SLI children obtained scores on almost all tests that were significantly lower than those of the control group. Many of the basic auditory processing measures in our test battery correlated significantly with receptive and language scores, suggesting a (causal) relationship between auditory processing and language proficiency. Results from discriminant function analyses do not warrant deleting one or more tests from the test battery yet (with the exception of the auditory synthesis test and the temporal integration test, for which we did not find significant group effects). At present, we are conducting experiments with older (SLI and control) children and adults to find whether the significant performance deficits of the SLI children are also found in older SLI children, and to determine the influence of maturational effects on these auditory tests.

Individual Differences in Language Ability Are Related to Variation in Word Recognition, Not Speech Perception: Evidence From Eye Movements

“…Researchers have also proposed deficits in specific types of auditory inputs (Corriveau, Pasquini, & Goswami, 2007; McArthur & Bishop, 2004; McArthur & Bishop, 2005; Tallal & Piercy, 1974). However, other studies have not supported an auditory deficit (Bishop, Adams, Nation, & Rosen, 2005; Bishop, Carlyon, Deeks, & Bishop, 1999; Corriveau, et al, 2007; Heltzer, Champlin, & Gillam, 1996; Norrelgen, Lacerda, & Forssberg, 2002; Stollman, van Velzen, Simkens, Snik, & Van den Broek, 2003), and attempts to study such deficits in the context of word recognition have not supported these hypotheses: artificially manipulating the speech input to instantiate these hypotheses does not differentially impair recognition (Montgomery, 2002; Stark & Montgomery, 1995), challenging the importance of such deficits to downstream language processes.…”

The MAndarin spoken word—Picture IDentification test in noise—Adaptive (MAPID-A) measures subtle speech-recognition-in-noise changes and spatial release from masking in very young children

“…Therefore, it is unsurprising that populations with identified auditory or language-based disorders would exhibit speech perception problems in noise, even if their pure tone hearing thresholds are within the normal range. For example, some children with specific language impairments [24], dyslexia [25] and auditory processing disorder (APD) [26] exhibited reduced speech-recognition-in-noise performance when compared to control groups with the same hearing sensitivity. The design of appropriate intervention programs relies critically on the delineation of the nature of the listening problems specific to each population.…”