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This study examined the role of visual speech in providing release from perceptual masking in children by comparing visual speech benefit across conditions with and without a spatial separation cue. Auditory-only and audiovisual speech recognition thresholds in a two-talker speech masker were obtained from 21 children with typical hearing (7-9 years of age) using a color-number identification task. The target was presented from a loudspeaker at 0° azimuth. Masker source location varied across conditions. In the spatially collocated condition, the masker was also presented from the loudspeaker at 0° azimuth. In the spatially separated condition, the masker was presented from the loudspeaker at 0° azimuth and a loudspeaker at -90° azimuth, with the signal from the -90° loudspeaker leading the signal from the 0° loudspeaker by 4 ms. The visual stimulus (static image or video of the target talker) was presented at 0° azimuth. Children achieved better thresholds when the spatial cue was provided and when the visual cue was provided. Visual and spatial cue benefit did not differ significantly depending on the presence of the other cue. Additional studies are needed to characterize how children's preferential use of visual and spatial cues varies depending on the strength of each cue., (© 2024 Acoustical Society of America.)

Objective: Cochlear implantation of prelingually deaf infants provides auditory input sufficient to develop spoken language; however, outcomes remain variable. Inability to participate in speech perception testing limits testing device efficacy in young listeners. In postlingually implanted adults (aCI), speech perception correlates with spectral resolution an ability that relies independently on frequency resolution (FR) and spectral modulation sensitivity (SMS). The correlation of spectral resolution to speech perception is unknown in prelingually implanted children (cCI). In this study, FR and SMS were measured using a spectral ripple discrimination (SRD) task and were correlated with vowel and consonant identification. It was hypothesized that prelingually deaf cCI would show immature SMS relative to postlingually deaf aCI and that FR would correlate with speech identification., Study Design: Cross-sectional study., Setting: In-person, booth testing., Methods: SRD was used to determine the highest spectral ripple density perceived at various modulation depths. FR and SMS were derived from spectral modulation transfer functions. Vowel and consonant identification was measured; SRD performance and speech identification were analyzed for correlation., Results: Fifteen prelingually implanted cCI and 13 postlingually implanted aCI were included. FR and SMS were similar between cCI and aCI. Better FR was associated with better speech identification for most measures., Conclusion: Prelingually implanted cCI demonstrated adult-like FR and SMS; additionally, FR correlated with speech identification. FR may be a measure of CI efficacy in young listeners., (© 2023 American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation.)

Background: Schizophrenia (SCZ) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that leads to poor social function. Oxytocin (OXT), a neuropeptide involved in social cognition, is a potential therapeutic agent for alleviating social dysfunction. Therefore, we investigated the effects of intranasal oxytocin (IN-OXT) on emotional processes in experimental interactive social contexts in individuals with SCZ., Methods: In a male-only parallel randomized placebo-controlled double-blind trial, we investigated the effects of IN-OXT (24 IU) on visual fixation on pictures of faces and emotion recognition in an interactive ball-tossing game that probed processing of social and nonsocial stimuli., Results: Intranasal oxytocin enhanced the recognition of emotions during an emotion-based ball-tossing game. This improvement was specific to the game that included social cue processing. Intranasal oxytocin did not affect eye gaze duration or gaze dwell time on faces in these patients., Conclusions: An acute low dose of IN-OXT had a modest effect on social cue processing and was limited to emotion recognition. Higher doses and long-term trials targeting emotional processing in SCZ may lead to improved social function., (Copyright © 2021 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Adults benefit more from visual speech in speech maskers than in noise maskers because visual speech helps perceptually isolate target talkers from competing talkers. To investigate whether children use visual speech to perceptually isolate target talkers, this study compared children's speech recognition thresholds in auditory and audiovisual condition across two maskers: two-talker speech and noise. Children demonstrated similar audiovisual benefit in both maskers. Individual differences in speechreading accuracy predicted audiovisual benefit in each masker to a similar degree. Results suggest that although visual speech improves children's masked speech recognition thresholds, children may use visual speech in different ways than adults.

Purpose Weaknesses in the use of grammatical forms may reduce the functional use of language for verbally expressive children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and exacerbate difficulties with academic and social skill development. This early efficacy study evaluated a combined explicit-implicit instructional approach to teach novel grammatical forms to children with ASD. Method Seventeen children with ASD between the ages of 4 and 10 years who demonstrated weaknesses in expressive grammatical language completed 2 tasks, each targeting a different novel grammatical form. One form was a gender marking, which required the child to modify the verb if the sentence subject was a boy. The other form was a person marking, which required the child to modify the verb if the sentence subject was the 1st person, "I." Each form was targeted using implicit-only instruction or combined explicit-implicit instruction. With implicit-only instruction, the examiner presented models and recasts of the targeted form. With explicit-implicit instruction, the examiner presented the rule guiding the form as well as models and recasts. Learning was assessed during each of 4 treatment sessions and after a 1-week delay in 2 contexts. Results For the gender target form, significantly more children reliably produced the target form with explicit-implicit instruction (χ 2 = 4.10, p = .04). For the person target form, the difference in instruction was not statistically significant. Task performance revealed a positive association with receptive language skills, but not age, nonverbal intelligence, or severity of autism-related behaviors for the person form. Conclusion This study provides preliminary evidence that expressively verbal children with low-symptom severity ASD can successfully learn novel grammatical forms with intervention that comprises both explicit and implicit instruction.