Infant Speech Sound Discrimination: The Effects of Contingent versus Noncontingent Stimulus Presentation

1978 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Williams ◽  
John Golenski
1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 643-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Nozza ◽  
Sandra L. Miller ◽  
Reva N. F. Rossman ◽  
Linda C. Bond

Infants were tested on a speech-sound discrimination-in-noise task using the visual reinforcement infant speech discrimination (VRISD) procedure with an adaptive (up-down) threshold protocol. An adult control group was tested using the same stimuli and apparatus. The speech sounds were synthetic /ba/ and /ga/. The masker was band-passed noise presented continuously at 48 dB SPL. Test-retest reliability was good for both groups, although test-retest differences were smaller for adults. For infants the mean of the absolute values of the differences between tests was only 5.2 dB, and there was less than a 10-dB difference between the two tests of 14 (87.5%) of the 16 infants completing the study. The infant-adult difference in discrimination threshold in noise was 6.9 dB, which agrees well with detection-in-noise thresholds from earlier studies and with discrimination-in-noise thresholds obtained on a subset of subjects in our earlier work. Advantages of the adaptive threshold procedure and its possible applications both in research studies and in the clinic are discussed.


1990 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 339-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Nozza ◽  
Reva N. F. Rossman ◽  
Linda C. Bond ◽  
Sandra L. Miller

1988 ◽  
Vol 83 (S1) ◽  
pp. S65-S65
Author(s):  
Robert J. Nozza ◽  
Linda C. Bond ◽  
Sandy L. Miller ◽  
Reva N. F. Rossman

1974 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-425
Author(s):  
Stuart I. Ritterman ◽  
Nancy C. Freeman

Thirty-two college students were required to learn the relevant dimension in each of two randomized lists of auditorily presented stimuli. The stimuli consisted of seven pairs of CV nonsense syllables differing by two relevant dimension units and from zero to seven irrelevant dimension units. Stimulus dimensions were determined according to Saporta’s units of difference. No significant differences in performance as a function of number of the irrelevant dimensions nor characteristics of the relevant dimension were observed.


1969 ◽  
Vol 35 (9) ◽  
pp. 745-747 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald Goldman ◽  
Macalyne Fristoe

Author(s):  
Arnold Abramovitz

It is certain that many children whose auditory perception is queried by audiologists, speech therapists, educationists and psychologists elude the diagnostic screens presently available in each of these disciplines. The need for a qualitative and quantitative psychological assessment of the child's auditory abilities and disabilities led to the development of a test which was intended to evaluate the following functions:(a) Recognition of environmental sounds, (b) Auditory figure-ground discrimination, (c) Speech-sound discrimination (phonemic and intonational) and (d) Tonal pattern discrimination (pitch, loudness, duration and interval). It was not intended to investigate threshold phenomena as such but rather to supplement and complement pure-tone and speech audiometry. The test was applied to 205 children, aged five to ten years, drawn from a normal school population, and 232 children with difficulties and handicaps varying both in degree and kind. Only the first two sub-tests were found to be clinically and experimentally viable, and data for the curtailed test are presented. The following results are noteworthy: (1) The test measures functions which are positively related to both age and intelligence. (2) Brain-injured, retarded and emotionally disturbed children generally test low on auditory figure-ground discrimination; this vulnerability is most likely due to perseveration. (3) Previously unsuspected peripheral hearing losses may sometimes be detected by the use of the test. On the other hand, some children said to have high degrees of hearing loss test at or above their age-level. (4) Many deaf and hard-of-hearing children test higher without their hearing-aids; this is probably due to amplification being achieved at the cost of distortion. (5) Children of average intelligence with reading and/or spelling difficulties often test low on auditory figure-ground discrimination. (6) Blind children who have received auditory training are equal to sighted children in recognition of environmental sounds, but superior in auditory figure-ground discrimination. This does not, however, necessarily signify superior auditory perception as such on the part of the blind. In general it is concluded that the development of tests of auditory perception could add significantly to the psycho-educational assessment of both "normal" and handicapped children.


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