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M Chertoff

Publications and source records attributed to M Chertoff.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

Effects of in-situ calibration of click stimuli on the auditory brainstem response.

We studied the effects on the auditory brainstem response (ABR) of applying a computerized calibration procedure for click stimuli that corrects for individual transducer characteristics and ear canal acoustics. The "calibrated" signal at the eardrum possesses a nearly flat spectrum from 500 to 10,000 Hz. ABRs were recorded from normal-hearing subjects using both calibrated and uncalibrated clicks. The preponderance of energy for the latter stimulus was between 1000 and 4000 Hz. When compared to the responses evoked by the uncalibrated signal, ABRs to calibrated clicks displayed shorter component latencies, increased component amplitudes, and a more sensitive wave V relative to behavioral threshold.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

Dichotic training.

Children (aged 7-10 yrs) who were referred because of learning disabilities and found to have abnormal SSW scores were divided into Experimental and Control Groups. All had essentially normal pure-tone ac HTLs, tympanograms, and W-22 word discrimination scores. Pre-therapy baselines were also obtained on a speech-to-noise (S-in-N) task, a test of phonemic synthesis (PS) and a new procedure with staggered dichotic digits (SDD) patterned after the SSW. The therapy for the 5 Exper. Ss consisted of 15 lessons, given 1 hr each, 2 per week, using staggered dichotic digits [termed Digit Offset Therapy (DOT)]. The "competing" portion of the items ranged from complete overlap to 500-msec separation. The therapy program began with the most widely separated items first, followed by those with greater overlap in the succeeding lessons. Following DOT, the original test battery was readministered to both groups. During the therapy, significant improvement was noted for the Exper. Grp from Sessions 5 through 15 (less than .05 level) compared to the pre-therapy baseline. On the central tests, pre- and post-therapy, the Exper. Grp improved significantly over the Controls (.01 level) on the SDD test. There were also trends toward improvement for the Exper. Grp over the Controls on the SSW and S-in-N tests but neither reached statistical significance. Neither group improved in PS. Explanations for the test findings are discussed.

Child↗