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Purpose: Processing narrow focus (NF), the stressed word in the sentence, includes both the perceptual ability to identify the stressed word in the sentence and the pragmatic-semantic ability to comprehend the nonexplicit linguistic message. NF and its underlying meaning can be conveyed only via the auditory modality. Therefore, NF can be considered as a measure for assessing the efficacy of the hearing aid (HA) and cochlear implants (CIs) for acquiring nonexplicit language skills. The purpose of this study was to assess identification and comprehension of NF by HA and CI users who are native speakers of Arabic and to associate NF outcomes with speech perception and cognitive and linguistic abilities., Method: A total of 46 adolescents (age range: 11;2-18;8) participated: 18 with moderate-to-severe hearing loss who used HAs, 10 with severe-to-profound hearing loss who used CIs, and 18 with typical hearing (TH). Test materials included the Arabic Narrow Focus Test (ANFT), which includes three subtests assessing identification (ANFT1), comprehension of NF in simple four-word sentences (ANFT2), and longer sentences with a construction list at the clause or noun phrase level (ANFT3). In addition, speech perception, vocabulary, and working memory were assessed., Results: All the participants successfully identified the word carrying NF, with no significant difference between the groups. Comprehension of NF in ANFT2 and ANFT3 was reduced for HA and CI users compared with TH peers, and speech perception, hearing status, and memory for digits predicted the variability in the overall results of ANFT1, ANFT2, and ANFT3, respectively., Conclusions: Arabic speakers who used HAs or CIs were able to identify NF successfully, suggesting that the acoustic cues were perceptually available to them. However, HA and CI users had considerable difficulty in understanding NF. Different factors may contribute to this difficulty, including the memory load during the task as well as pragmatic-linguistic knowledge on the possible meanings of NF.

Purpose This study aims to examine the development of auditory selective attention to speech in noise by examining the ability of infants to prefer child-directed speech (CDS) over time-reversed speech (TRS) presented in "on-channel" and "off-channel" noise. Method A total of 32 infants participated in the study. Sixteen typically developing infants were tested at 7 and 11 months of age using the central fixation procedure with CDS and TRS in two types of noise at +10 dB signal-to-noise ratio. One type of noise was an "on-channel" masker with a spectrum overlapping that of the CDS (energetic masking), and the second was an "off-channel" masker with frequencies that were outside the spectrum of the CDS (distractive masking). An additional group of sixteen 11-month-old infants were tested in quiet and served as controls for the "off-frequency" masker condition. Results Infants preferred CDS over TRS in both age groups, but this preference was more pronounced with "off-channel" masker regardless of age. Also, older infants demonstrated longer looking time for the target stimuli when presented with an "off-channel" masker compared to the "on-channel" masker. Looking time in quiet was similar to looking time in the "off-channel" condition, and looking time for CDS was longer in quiet compared to the "on-channel" condition. Conclusions These findings support the notion that (a) infants as young as 7 months of age are already showing preference for speech in noise, regardless of type of masker; (b) by 11 months of age, listening with the "off-channel" condition did not yield different results than in quiet. Thus, by 11 months of age, infants' cognitive-attentional abilities may be more developed.

Different rules for changing step sizes (e.g., logarithmic, linear) are alternately used in adaptive threshold-seeking procedures, with no clear justification. We hypothesized that the linear rule may yield more accurate thresholds for poor performers because the step sizes are predetermined and fixed across listeners and thus can be small, in contrast to the logarithmic rule, in which step sizes are changed with respect to the listener's performance. Purpose The aim of this study was to test the effect of logarithmic and linear rules on frequency discrimination (FD) thresholds. Method Three experiments involving human subjects and Monte Carlo computer simulations were designed and conducted. In the 1st experiment, FD thresholds were estimated in 40 young adults with either 3-interval 2-alternative forced choice (3I2AFC; n = 19) or 2-interval 2AFC ( n = 21) in a within-subject design. In the 2nd experiment, thresholds were estimated in 16 children (7-8 years old) in a within-subject design, using 3I2AFC. In the 3rd experiment, thresholds were estimated in 30 young adults in a between-subjects design using 3I2AFC. Results No significant differences were shown between the 2 rules, regardless of age group, method, or level of FD performance. Computer simulations supported the empirical findings, predicting similar FD thresholds for both rules in the majority of runs. However, they also yielded more accurate thresholds with the linear rule, but with a larger number of outliers, which increased as the listener's attention level decreased. Conclusion Overall, the use of a particular rule has little influence on FD thresholds. Possible outliers may be minimized by monitoring the participant's attention at the beginning of the run.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to delineate differences between children with specific language impairment (SLI), typical age-matched (TAM) children, and typical younger (TY) children in learning and mastering an undisclosed artificial morphological rule (AMR) through exposure and usage. Method Twenty-six participants (eight 10-year-old children with SLI, 8 TAM children, and ten 8-year-old TY children) were trained to master an AMR across multiple training sessions. The AMR required a phonological transformation of verbs depending on a semantic distinction: whether the preceding noun was animate or inanimate. All participants practiced the application of the AMR to repeated and new (generalization) items, via judgment and production tasks. Results The children with SLI derived significantly less benefit from practice than their peers in learning most aspects of the AMR, even exhibiting smaller gains compared to the TY group in some aspects. Children with SLI benefited less than TAM and even TY children from training to judge and produce repeated items of the AMR. Nevertheless, despite a significant disadvantage in baseline performance, the rate at which they mastered the task-specific phonological regularities was as robust as that of their peers. On the other hand, like 8-year-olds, only half of the SLI group succeeded in uncovering the nature of the AMR and, consequently, in generalizing it to new items. Conclusions Children with SLI were able to learn language aspects that rely on implicit, procedural learning, but experienced difficulties in learning aspects that relied on the explicit uncovering of the semantic principle of the AMR. The results suggest that some of the difficulties experienced by children with SLI when learning a complex language regularity cannot be accounted for by a broad, language-related, procedural memory disability. Rather, a deficit-perhaps a developmental delay in the ability to recruit and solve language problems and establish explicit knowledge regarding a language task-can better explain their difficulties in language learning.

Purpose: The stressed word in a sentence (narrow focus [NF]) conveys information about the intent of the speaker and is therefore important for processing spoken language and in social interactions. The ability of participants with severe-to-profound prelingual hearing loss to comprehend NF has rarely been investigated. The purpose of this study was to assess the recognition and comprehension of NF by young adults with prelingual hearing loss compared with those of participants with normal hearing (NH)., Method: The participants included young adults with hearing aids (HA; n = 10), cochlear implants (CI; n = 12), and NH (n = 18). The test material included the Hebrew Narrow Focus Test (Segal, Kaplan, Patael, & Kishon-Rabin, in press), with 3 subtests, which was used to assess the recognition and comprehension of NF in different contexts., Results: The following results were obtained: (a) CI and HA users successfully recognized the stressed word, with the worst performance for CI; (b) HA and CI comprehended NF less well than NH; and (c) the comprehension of NF was associated with verbal working memory and expressive vocabulary in CI users., Conclusions: Most CI and HA users were able to recognize the stressed word in a sentence but had considerable difficulty understanding it. Different factors may contribute to this difficulty, including the memory load during the task itself and linguistic and pragmatic abilities., Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5572792.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of external feedback in auditory perceptual learning of school-age children as compared with that of adults., Method: Forty-eight children (7-9 years of age) and 64 adults (20-35 years of age) conducted a training session using an auditory frequency discrimination (difference limen for frequency) task, with external feedback (EF) provided for half of them., Results: Data supported the following findings: (a) Children learned the difference limen for frequency task only when EF was provided. (b) The ability of the children to benefit from EF was associated with better cognitive skills. (c) Adults showed significant learning whether EF was provided or not. (d) In children, within-session learning following training was dependent on the provision of feedback, whereas between-sessions learning occurred irrespective of feedback., Conclusions: EF was found beneficial for auditory skill learning of 7-9-year-old children but not for young adults. The data support the supervised Hebbian model for auditory skill learning, suggesting combined bottom-up internal neural feedback controlled by top-down monitoring. In the case of immature executive functions, EF enhanced auditory skill learning. This study has implications for the design of training protocols in the auditory modality for different age groups, as well as for special populations.

Purpose: IN this article, the authors aimed to measure the course of improvement in a gap-detection (GD) task following multisession training in older compared with young adults., Method: Participants with normal hearing (N= 30) were divided into 4 groups: 2 groups of older and young adults who received multisession training over 10 days (9 adults/group, Mage = 64.7 years and 24.1 years, respectively) and 2 control groups of older and young adults (6 adults/group, Mage = 65.4 years and 26.3 years, respectively). Stimuli consisted of silent gaps marked by 2 noise bands centered at 1000 Hz. GD thresholds (GDTs) were measured through use of an adaptive procedure in each testing day, 24 hr post-training and at 1 month post-training., Results: Initial GDTs of the older group were significantly poorer than those of the young adults. However, by the fourth training day, the mean GDTs of the 2 groups were similar, and both groups showed the same rate of improvement in the following sessions. Data of the controls confirmed that the better GDTs of the trained groups resulted from their training. Retention of learning was demonstrated for both age groups., Conclusions: The data from this study support the notion that some aspects of auditory learning and temporal resolution may be preserved in the elderly.

Purpose: The ability of infants to develop recognition of a common stress pattern that is language specific has been tested mainly in trochaic languages with a strong-weak (SW) stress pattern. The goals of the present study were: (a) to test Hebrew-learning infants on their stress pattern preference in the Hebrew language, for which the weak-strong (WS) stress pattern is the common one, and (b) to test whether the infants would generalize any preference for the common stress pattern in Hebrew to English words, which belong to a different rhythmic class., Method: Fifty-six 9-month-old Hebrew-learning infants were tested on their preference for SW and WS stress patterns using Hebrew and English bisyllabic words with the head-turn preference procedure., Results: The infants showed preference for WS Hebrew words but not for SW English words., Conclusion: Hebrew-learning infants recognize the common stress pattern in their native language, supporting language-specific distributional learning by infants. This recognition, however, is not generalized to a foreign language with different prosodic characteristics.

Purpose: To clarify the relationship between psychoacoustic capabilities and speech perception in adolescents with severe-to-profound hearing loss (SPHL)., Method: Twenty-four adolescents with SPHL and young adults with normal hearing were assessed with psychoacoustic and speech perception tests. The psychoacoustic tests included gap detection (GD), difference limen for frequency, and psychoacoustic-tuning curves. To assess the perception of words that differ in spectral and temporal cues, the speech tests included the Hebrew Early Speech Perception test and the Hebrew Speech Pattern Contrast test (L. Kishon-Rabin et al., 2002). All tests were conducted for the listeners with normal hearing at low and high presentation levels and for the participants with SPHL at 20 dB SL., Results: Only GD thresholds were comparable across the 2 groups at similar presentation levels. Psychoacoustic performance was poorer in the group with SPHL, but only selected tests were correlated with speech perception. Poor GD was associated with pattern perception, 1-syllable word identification, and final voicing subtests., Conclusions: Speech perception performance in adolescents with SPHL could not be predicted solely on the basis of spectral and temporal capabilities of the auditory system. However, when the GD threshold was greater than 40 ms, speech perception skills were predictable by psychoacoustic abilities.

The contribution of a two-channel vibrotactile aid (Trill VTA 2/3, AVR Communications LTD) to the audiovisual perception of speech was evaluated in four young children with profound hearing loss using words and speech pattern contrasts. An intensive, hierarchical, and systematic training program was provided. The results show that the addition of the tactile (T) modality to the auditory and visual (A+V) modalities enhanced speech perception performance significantly on all tests. Specifically, at the end of the training sessions, the tactile supplementation increased word recognition scores in a 44-word, closed-set task by 12 percentage points; detection of consonant in final position by 50 percentage points; detection of sibilant in final position by 30 percentage points; and detection of voicing in final position by 25 percentage points. Significant learning over time was evident for all test materials, in all modalities. As expected, fastest learning (i.e., smallest time constants) was found for the AVT condition. The results of this study provide further evidence that sensory information provided by the tactile modality can enhance speech perception in young children.