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PubMed2002

Auditory looming perception in rhesus monkeys.

The detection of approaching objects can be crucial to the survival of an organism. The perception of looming has been studied extensively in the visual system, but remains largely unexplored in audition. Here we show a behavioral bias in rhesus monkeys orienting to "looming" sounds. As in humans, the bias occurred for harmonic tones (which can reliably indicate single sources), but not for broadband noise. These response biases to looming sounds are consistent with an evolved neural mechanism that processes approaching objects with priority.

Adaptation, Physiological↗
PubMed1995

Contribution of listeners' approaching motion to auditory distance perception.

Of the several sources of acoustic information for distance perception, those arising from motion of the listener or sound source have received little attention. This motion-related information (recently called acoustic tau) is described, and experiments evaluating its utilization are presented. Accuracy and consistency at walking to the locations of briefly presented sounds were better when people listened while walking than while standing still. Manipulations of the sound to simulate shorter or longer target distances produced appropriate undershooting but not overshooting. The results indicate that people use motion-related acoustic information about distance to guide their locomotor actions, although they do not take full advantage of this information.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

Analysis of visual and auditory rhythmic perception abilities of piano majors.

7 male and 15 female college level piano majors representing three categories of majors served as subjects. Piano instructors were asked to rate subjects' sight-reading ability on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 indicated minimum sight-reading ability and 10 professional sighting. Subjects were exposed to 30 pairs of rhythmic stimuli from the rhythm subtest, Seashore Measures of Musical Talents, to determine whether the second pattern was the same or different from the first. The visual test was reproduced by a 7.5-v bayonet lamp and socket. These flashes were near exact replications of the original source with little or no detectable latency. Aural and visual presentations were significantly different and favorable for aural medium. A significant correlation of .60 was found between ratings of sight-reading and grade point average.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

Diagnosis and management of reading dysfunction for the primary care optometrist.

A model for the identification/diagnosis and management of reading dysfunction for the primary care optometrist is presented. The model is based upon clinical experiences in both private and academic practice and an extensive review of the literature. The model, illustrated in a series of flow charts and a table, incorporates the major perceptual dysfunctions typically encountered by patients who present with reading problems. The first part of the model, labeled fundamental, demonstrates the minimum diagnostic and management techniques for those children who appear to have reading dysfunction. The second part of the model, labeled complex, provides a more extensive diagnostic and management approach. The validity of the approach is further illustrated in a series of 13 arbitrarily selected cases of reading dysfunction which are statistically analyzed. Robust correlations are found among different tests of visual-motor skills (Bender, Test of Visual Analysis Skills), a test of short-term memory (Getman-Henderson-Marcus Test of Visual Recall), and reading decoding. Modest correlation is also found between a test of auditory perception, The Test of Auditory Analysis Skills (TAAS) and reading decoding. Direct testing for dyslexia using the Dyslexia Determination Test illustrates that not all those with reading dysfunction are dyslexic.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Reduced attention shift in response to auditory changes in subjects with tinnitus.

A current idea about the persistence of tinnitus is that fixation of this phantom auditory perception in the central auditory system may be influenced by attention to it. The present study investigated the mechanisms of involuntary attention and analysed performance in categorising sounds in tinnitus, simulated-tinnitus and control subjects. The sounds were presented in one ear and were preceded by presentation of frequent and deviant stimuli in the other ear. The results showed classical attention capture by deviant stimuli. In addition, the unilateral tinnitus subjects responded more accurately in the tinnitus ear than in the non-tinnitus ear. In contrast, the 'simulated-tinnitus' group showed no difference in the results between the ear where the tinnitus simulation was presented and the opposite ear. These findings suggest a difficulty in attention directing when the attention location coincides with the tinnitus ear and provides evidence for an attention focus on the tinnitus ear.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1999

The role of phonological awareness, speech perception, and auditory temporal processing for dyslexia.

There is strong evidence that auditory processing plays a major role in the etiology of dyslexia. Auditory temporal processing of non-speech stimuli, speech perception, and phonological awareness have been shown to be influential in reading and spelling development. However, the relationship between these variables remains unclear. In order to analyze the influence of these three auditory processing levels on spelling, 19 dyslexic and 15 control children were examined. Significant group differences were found for all speech variables, but not for any non-speech variable. Structural equation modeling resulted in a fairly simple model with direct paths to the respective next lower level. One additional path from preattentive speech processing to spelling had to be included in order to improve the model fit. These results strengthen the role of speech and phonological processing for the etiology in dyslexia.

Attention↗
PubMed2005

The cocktail party problem.

This review presents an overview of a challenging problem in auditory perception, the cocktail party phenomenon, the delineation of which goes back to a classic paper by Cherry in 1953. In this review, we address the following issues: (1) human auditory scene analysis, which is a general process carried out by the auditory system of a human listener; (2) insight into auditory perception, which is derived from Marr's vision theory; (3) computational auditory scene analysis, which focuses on specific approaches aimed at solving the machine cocktail party problem; (4) active audition, the proposal for which is motivated by analogy with active vision, and (5) discussion of brain theory and independent component analysis, on the one hand, and correlative neural firing, on the other.

Attention↗
PubMed2007

Functional cerebral asymmetry in auditory motion perception.

Several studies have shown a right-hemispheric advantage for sound localisation. However, most of these studies used stationary sound stimuli, although in most everyday situations humans are in motion when localising sound, or face a moving sound source. To elucidate the question of a functional asymmetry in cortical processing of auditory motion information, we tested 23 neurologically healthy human participants. Virtual leftward or rightward motion (broadband noise) was presented with variable movement angles (MA) in the horizontal plane (via headphones) in either the participants' left or right hemispace. Participants had to indicate whether the sound moved left or rightward. The frequency of "right" judgements determined as a function of MA had a sigmoidal shape in both hemispaces, indicating significant overall discrimination of motion direction. However, the frequency of correct judgements revealed a significantly better performance for the left than for the right hemispace, suggesting a superiority of the right hemisphere. This finding is in agreement with recent neuroimaging results showing higher right-hemispheric activity during localisation of moving sounds. The results might also point to a supramodal right-hemisphere advantage in the attentional processing of motion perception.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1979

Longitudinal study of cognitive abilities and academic achievement.

Assessment was made of the effectiveness of a battery of cognitive tests administered in kindergarten in the prediction of sixth grade achievement in reading comprehension, spelling, language usage, and arithmetic. Cognitive abilities included several factors of intelligence, visual perception and visual sequential memory, visual-motor integration, and auditory perception and auditory sequential memory. Measures of prior learning were also included. Subjects were 58 children in a suburban public school district. A criterion for predictive utility for correlation coefficients was established, and simple correlation coefficients for various kindergarten measures and sixth grade achievement ranged from the criterion of .35 to .69. In partial correlations with the effects of ability to understand ideas expressed in words removed, correlation coefficients for various cognitive measures and achievement tests ranged from the criterion of .35 to .63. Combinations of kindergarten measures having optimal multiple correlations with later school achievement generally approached or exceeded .70. These findings are discussed and suggestions are made for further research.

Achievement↗
PubMed1982

Auditory, visual, and auditory-visual perception of vowels by hearing-impaired children.

The vowels (foreign letters in text) were presented through auditory, visual, and combined auditory-visual modalities to hearing-impaired children having good, intermediate, and poor auditory work-recognition skills. When they received acoustic information only, children with good word-recognition skills confused neighboring vowels (i.e., those having similar formant frequencies). Children with intermediate work-recognition skills demonstrated this same difficulty and confused front and back vowels. Children with poor word-recognition skills identified vowels mainly on the basis of temporal and intensity cues. Through lipreading alone, all three groups distinguished spread from rounded vowels but could not reliably identify vowels within the categories. The first two groups exhibited only moderate difficulty in identifying vowels audiovisually. The third group, although showing a small amount of improvement over lipreading alone, still experienced difficulty in identifying vowels through combined auditory and visual modes.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

Vestibular influence on human auditory space perception.

We investigated the effect of vestibular stimulation on the lateralization of dichotic sound by cold-water irrigation of the external auditory canal in human subjects. Subjects adjusted the interaural level difference of the auditory stimulus to the subjective median plane of the head. In those subjects in whom dizziness and nystagmus indicated sufficient vestibular stimulation, these adjustments were significantly shifted toward the cooled ear compared with the control condition (irrigation with water at body temperature); i.e., vestibular stimulation induced a shift of the sound image toward the nonstimulated side. The mean magnitude of the shift was 7.3 dB immediately after vestibular stimulation and decreased to 2.5 dB after 5 min. As shown by an additional control experiment, this effect cannot be attributed to a unilateral hearing loss induced by cooling of the auditory periphery. The results indicate the involvement of vestibular afferent information in the perception of sound location during movements of the head and/or the whole body. We thus hypothesize that vestibular information is used by central-nervous mechanisms generating a world-centered representation of auditory space.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1997

Auditory development of the hearing child.

Auditory perception is defined, here, as the interpretation of sensory evidence, derived from sound, in terms of the objects and events that caused the sound. Like other kinds of perception, it involves the use, not only of sensory evidence, but also of contextual evidence, prior knowledge, memory, attention, and processing skills. Auditory speech perception is special because the events to be perceived are those of language. Similarly, the listener's knowledge base and processing skills must include those related to language in general, and spoken language in particular. The auditory system is complete and functional at birth but myelination continues for several years in the higher auditory pathways. This pattern of anatomical maturation is reflected in electrophysiological responses. Similarly, infants display sophisticated discrimination and recognition ability but psychoacoustic performance does not reach adult levels for several years. Empirical data on the development of auditory processing are sparse, but much work has been done on auditory speech perception. Infants at 6 months demonstrate the beginnings of phonemic classification, and performance improves during childhood in a variety of areas. These include: phonetic contrast perception, phoneme recognition, perception of speech in noise, selective attention, and the use of linguistic context. Experience obviously plays a key role in the development of the knowledge and skills required for auditory perception in general and auditory speech perception in particular. It is tempting to assume that the sensory evidence available to the developing child is determined only by the functional integrity of the peripheral auditory system, independent of auditory experience. There is, however, increasing evidence in animals of the influence of auditory experience on the organization of the auditory pathways. Such organization could increase the sensory evidence made available from patterns of neural excitation produced in the cochlea.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Cortical plasticity in an early blind musician: an fMRl study.

Many studies have examined tactile perception and simple auditory perception in the blind, but none have previously investigated the neural basis of musical ability in this group. This topic is of particular interest because it has been suggested that early blind individuals may possess advanced musical skills (such as absolute pitch). Presumably, these skills could be the result of neural plasticity. It has been hard to empirically assess this claim because of the difficulty in recruiting an adequate number of subjects for use in a conventional paradigm. In the present paper, we report data from a congenitally blind musician, subject ML. Behavioral tests show that she possessed absolute pitch abilities that were similar to those of a reference group of AP musicians with normal vision. To examine the neural basis of her abilities we then tested subject ML and five control subjects using an fMRI paradigm. A regions-of-interest analysis found that similar areas (the right secondary auditory cortex, left IFG, left SMG) were activated in ML and the control subjects, to a similar degree, in response to music processing. However, ML showed additional activations in left parietal association cortices and extrastriate regions of the occipital lobe. Subject ML's data are consistent with a vast body of literature on blindness-induced plasticity. They extend these findings by demonstrating that cortical plasticity may underlie special musical skills as well. These data illustrate the potential value of case studies to investigate particularly rare phenotypes.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

[Diagnosis and differentiation of children with language development disorders. What role can be attributed to intelligence?].

BACKGROUND: Specific language impairment (SLI) is defined as a developmental disorder in which language comprehension and the child's ability to use expressive spoken language is markedly below the appropriate level for his or her mental age. The intelligence of SLI children is in the normal range, while their language abilities are impaired. "Normal intelligence", the defining feature of SLI is questioned in this study. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Using IDIS (an inventory of diagnostic information in language impairment), we examined 138 children aged 5 and 6 years with severe language impairment; 108 SLI and 30 LI children. Various indicators of speech and language such as articulation, the ability to discriminate sounds, lexicon, grammar and pragmatic abilities but also auditory and visual perception, auditory and visual memory, fine and gross motor function were assessed. RESULTS: The performance of the SLI children was significantly higher in most of the tests than that of the LI children. Factor analysis showed that the two groups also differed in the structure of performance. Auditory short-term memory was reduced in most children irrespective of intelligence. CONCLUSIONS: We propose the retention of the differentiation of subgroups of developmental speech and language disorders depending on the level of intelligence.

Child↗
PubMed1994

Automaticity in speech perception: some speech/nonspeech comparisons.

Three experiments used sine-wave replicas of speech sounds to explore some differences between speech perception and general auditory perception. The experiments compared patterns of behavior in categorization and discrimination tasks for listeners reporting either speech or nonspeech percepts of sine-wave replicas of speech. We hypothesized that the perception of speech sounds is automatized, while the perception of less familiar sounds is not. The first experiment was designed to investigate the perception of relatively long initial consonant transitions using a synthetic /wa/-/ya/ sine-wave analog continuum. Speech listeners perceived the continuum categorically, but nonspeech listeners could not consistently categorize the items in the continuum. In the second experiment, both speech and nonspeech listeners could consistently categorize stimuli having final glides (an/ay/-/aw/ sine-wave replica continuum), but differences between speech and nonspeech listeners were found in the slopes of the identification functions, in reaction times, and in the effect of context. These differences are consistent with the hypothesis that speech perception is automatized. In the third experiment, nonspeech listeners' discrimination sensitivity was greater than speech listeners'. The observed pattern of results suggests that speech perception is accomplished by a fast, obligatory, and thus automatic perceptual mechanism.

Automatism↗
PubMed1989

Auditory perceptual problems in non-organic hearing disorder.

A series of 22 patients who presented with non-organic hearing disorder were examined for auditory perceptual problems. A test battery that examined eight areas of auditory perception revealed significant auditory perceptual problems in each of the 22 patients. The results indicate a view that differs from the traditional view of non-organic hearing disorder as either conscious feigning of a hearing disorder or an unconscious symptom of an unidentified emotional disorder. The information presented here indicates that specific auditory processing disorders could adversely affect patients' hearing and that auditory perceptual disorders could be diagnosed and treated.

Adolescent↗