Verbal Auditory Stimuli Research Articles

Dichotic listening and interhemispheric integration after callosotomy: A systematic review

The right-ear advantage (REA) for recalling dichotically presented auditory-verbal stimuli has been traditionally linked to the dominance of the left cerebral hemisphere for speech processing. Early studies on patients with callosotomy additionally found that the removal of the corpus callosum leads to a complete extinction of the left ear, and consequently the today widely used models to explain the REA assume a central role of callosal axons for recalling the left-ear stimulus in dichotic listening. However, later dichotic-listening studies on callosotomy patients challenge this interpretation, as many patients appear to be able to recall left-ear stimuli well above chance level, albeit with reduced accuracy. The aim of the present systematic review was to identify possible experimental and patient variables that explain the inconsistences found regarding the effect of split-brain surgery on dichotic listening. For this purpose, a systematic literature search was conducted (databases: Pubmed, Web of Knowledge, EBSChost, and Ovid) to identify all empirical studies on patients with surgical section of the corpus callosum (complete or partial) that used a verbal dichotic-listening paradigm. This search yielded ks = 32 publications reporting patient data either on case or group level, and the data was analysed by comparing the case-level incidence of left-ear suppression, left-ear extinction, and right-ear enhancement narratively or statistically considering possible moderator variables (i.a., extent of the callosal surgery, stimulus material, response format, selective attention). The main finding was an increased incidence of left-ear suppression (odds ratio = 7.47, CI95%: [1.21; 83.49], exact p = .02) and right-ear enhancement (odds ratio = 21.61, CI95%: [4.40; 154.11], p < .01) when rhyming as compared with non-rhyming stimuli were used. Also, an increase in left-ear reports was apparent when a response by the right hemisphere was allowed (i.e., response with the left hand). While the present review is limited by the overall small number of cases and a lack of an appropriate control sample in most of the original studies, the findings nevertheless suggest an adjustment of the classical dichotic-listening models incorporating right-hemispheric processing abilities as well as the perceptual competition of the left- and right-ear stimuli for attention.

Neuropsychological Functions and Audiological Findings in Elderly Cochlear Implant Users: The Role of Attention in Postoperative Performance

The present study aimed to investigate in a group of elderly CI users working memory and attention, conventionally considered as predictors of better CI performance and to try to disentangle the effects of these cognitive domains on speech perception, finding potential markers of cognitive decline related to audiometric findings. Methods Thirty postlingually deafened CI users aged >60 underwent an audiological evaluation followed by a cognitive assessment of attention and verbal working memory. A correlation analysis was performed to evaluate the associations between cognitive variables while a simple regression investigated the relationships between cognitive and audiological variables. Comparative analysis was performed to compare variables on the basis of subjects' attention performance. Attention was found to play a significant role in sound field and speech perception. Univariate analysis found a significant difference between poor and high attention performers, while regression analysis showed that attention significantly predicted recognition of words presented at Signal/Noise +10. Further, the high attention performers showed significantly higher scores than low attentional performers for all working memory tasks. Overall findings confirmed that a better cognitive performance may positively contribute to better speech perception outcomes, especially in complex listening situations. WM may play a crucial role in storage and processing of auditory-verbal stimuli and a robust attention may lead to better performance for speech perception in noise. Implementation of cognitive training in auditory rehabilitation of CI users should be investigated in order to improve cognitive and audiological performance in elderly CI users.

Convenient Auditory-Based Language and Executive Function Test for Patients With Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis: A Pilot Study.

About 30%-50% of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) show cognitive impairment ranging from mild dysexecutive syndrome to frontotemporal dementia. We aimed to develop a brief cognitive test, convenient auditory-based language and executive function test (CABLET), for rapid detection of cognitive impairment in ALS, with reduced load on motor function. The CABLET comprises two tests using auditory verbal stimuli: Test 1, assessing word repetition and lexical judgment, and Test 2, evaluating verbal short-term memory and semantics knowledge. The administration time of Test 1 and Test 2 was 1 and 3-5min, respectively. Overall, 61 patients with ALS and 46 age-, sex-, and education-matched healthy controls participated in this study. All participants underwent existing neuropsychological tests and the CABLET. We investigated the applicability of the CABLET to detect ALS with cognitive impairment (ALSci) from normal cognition. Receiver operating characteristic analyses showed that both the CABLET total and Test 2 had good diagnostic accuracy (area under the curve [AUC]: total = 0.894, Test 2 = 0.893). Test 2 had the highest sensitivity (100% sensitivity and 71.4% specificity). No significant difference existed in the AUC between the analyses with and without age, education, and disease severity as covariates. Correlations were observed between the CABLET and established neuropsychological tests, supporting its good convergent validity. Our findings indicated that the CABLET could be useful in identifying ALSci quickly without adjusting for confounding factors. Further validation is required to evaluate it in larger groups and compare with ALS-specific cognitive screen.

New Insights Into the Anatomy, Connectivity and Clinical Implications of the Middle Longitudinal Fasciculus.

The middle longitudinal fascicle (MdLF) is a long, associative white matter tract connecting the superior temporal gyrus (STG) with the parietal and occipital lobe. Previous studies show different cortical terminations, and a possible segmentation pattern of the tract. In this study, we performed a post-mortem white matter dissection of 12 human hemispheres and an in vivo deterministic fiber tracking of 24 subjects acquired from the Human Connectome Project to establish whether a constant organization of fibers exists among the MdLF subcomponents and to acquire anatomical information on each subcomponent. Moreover, two clinical cases of brain tumors impinged on MdLF territories are reported to further discuss the anatomical results in light of previously published data on the functional involvement of this bundle. The main finding is that the MdLF is consistently organized into two layers: an antero-ventral segment (aMdLF) connecting the anterior STG (including temporal pole and planum polare) and the extrastriate lateral occipital cortex, and a posterior-dorsal segment (pMdLF) connecting the posterior STG, anterior transverse temporal gyrus and planum temporale with the superior parietal lobule and lateral occipital cortex. The anatomical connectivity pattern and quantitative differences between the MdLF subcomponents along with the clinical cases reported in this paper support the role of MdLF in high-order functions related to acoustic information. We suggest that pMdLF may contribute to the learning process associated with verbal-auditory stimuli, especially on left side, while aMdLF may play a role in processing/retrieving auditory information already consolidated within the temporal lobe.

A-45 Convergent Validity of Baseline Concussion Measures: SCAT-5 and ImPACT

Abstract Objective Examine convergent validity of immediate and delayed memory, and attention/concentration sub-tests of the SCAT5 and ImPACT. Method Baseline concussion assessment performance was collected from a sample of 747 college athletes from 16 different sports teams (484 men &amp; 263 women), aged 18 to 25 years (M = 19.5, SD = 1.54). ImPACT was administered to groups of 20 or fewer athletes. The SCAT5 was administered individually. Participants were assigned randomly to ImPACT first or SCAT5 first. All athletes agreed to the use of their de-identified data for research. Results Significant positive correlations were found with (1) SCAT-5 total immediate memory correct and ImPACT word memory total percent correct, r(747) = .29, p &amp;lt; .001); (2) SCAT-5 delayed memory score and ImPACT word memory hits delayed, r(746) = .23, p &amp;lt; .001); and (3) SCAT-5 Concentration score and ImPACT Three Letters average-counted-correctly, r(747) = .34, p &amp;lt; .001). The three correlations reflected a small to medium effect. Comparison of test order via independent t-tests revealed no significant differences for any of the tests. Conclusions Finding convergent validity between domain-similar tests presented via ImPACT versus SCAT5 was not surprising. What was surprising were the relatively low values of the correlations and the small effect sizes. These outcomes suggest that testing format (computer self-report in a small group versus self-report with an examiner), differences in stimulus presentation (printed stimuli in ImPACT versus auditory-verbal stimuli in SCAT5), and complexity/format differences in attention/concentration sub-tests, results in tests within the same domain that each produce unique information.

Primary motor cortex and phonological recoding: A TMS-EMG study

Since the 1960s, evidence from healthy participants and brain-damaged patients, neuroimaging and non-invasive brain stimulation studies has specified the neurofunctional architecture of the short-term memory (STM) system, supporting the temporary retention of a limited amount of verbal material. Auditory-verbal, later termed Phonological (Ph) STM or Phonological Loop, comprises two sub-components: i) the main storage system, the Phonological Short-Term Store (PhSTS), to which auditory verbal stimuli have direct access and where phonologically coded information is retained for a few seconds; ii) a Rehearsal Process (REH), which actively maintains the trace held in the PhSTS, preventing its decay and conveys visual verbal material to the PhSTS, after the process of Phonological Recoding (PhREC, or Grapheme-to-Phoneme Conversion) has taken place. PhREC converts visuo-verbal graphemic representations into phonological ones. The neural correlates of PhSTM include two discrete regions in the left hemisphere: the temporo-parietal junction (PhSTS) and the inferior frontal gyrus in the premotor cortex (REH). The neural basis of PhREC has been much less investigated. A few single case studies of patients made anarthric by focal or degenerative cortical damage, who show a pattern of impairment indicative of a deficit of PhREC, sparing the REH process, suggest that the primary motor cortex (M1) might be involved. To test this hypothesis in healthy participants with a neurophysiological approach, we measured the corticospinal excitability of M1, by means of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)-induced Motor Evoked Potentials (MEPs), during the execution of phonological judgements on auditorily vs. visually presented words (Experiment #1). Crucially, these phonological tasks involve REH, while PhREC is required only with visual presentation. Results show MEPs with larger amplitude when stimuli are presented visually. Task difficulty does not account for this difference and the result is specific for linguistic stimuli, indeed visual and auditory stimuli that cannot be verbalized lead to different behavioral and neurophysiological patterns (Experiment #2). The increase of corticospinal excitability when words are presented visually can be then interpreted as an indication of the involvement of M1 in PhREC. The present findings elucidate the neural correlates of PhREC, suggesting an involvement of the peripheral motor system in its activity.

P56-F Auditory-motor task triggers gamma and beta oscillations in patients with schizophrenia and auditory verbal hallucinations

Background In a study with intracranial recordings, auditory-verbal stimuli elicited augmented gamma-oscillations in the posterior portion of the superior temporal gyrus, whereas hand-motor responses elicited gamma-augmentation in the pre- and postcentral gyri (Nagasawa et al., 2010). We aimed to investigate if motor cortical activation (MCA) during an auditory-motor (AM) task is affected by laterality of hand motor responses in healthy subjects (HS) and in patients with auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH). Methods Eight HS and ten patients were asked to press a button using the thumb of both hands independently, during two sessions of 3 min. Each session contained 40 trials; 20 auditory-verbal commands saying “Press” and 20 commands saying “Do not press” (Nagasawa et al., 2010). MCA analysis epochs had duration of 500 ms following the button “press”. We used high-density 256 EEG ANT Neuro. Here we show preliminary results of MCA in HS and AVH patients using power spectral density (PSD) and topographical frequency maps including both hands sensory-motor regions. Results The preliminary data show that the laterality of the cortical activation related to the AM task may not be affected to a large degree by the motor reaction. Resting state EEG and AM task brain maps showed fragmented EEG topography in patients with schizophrenia for all analyzed band frequencies. Conclusions With this method we were able to trigger high beta and gamma bands activity in regions related to sensory-motor cortex. The topography of these frequencies remained stable when the participant used the right or the left hand.

Mechanisms of Memory Retrieval in Slow-Wave Sleep.

Study ObjectivesMemories are strengthened during sleep. The benefits of sleep for memory can be enhanced by re-exposing the sleeping brain to auditory cues; a technique known as targeted memory reactivation (TMR). Prior studies have not assessed the nature of the retrieval mechanisms underpinning TMR: the matching process between auditory stimuli encountered during sleep and previously encoded memories. We carried out two experiments to address this issue.MethodsIn Experiment 1, participants associated words with verbal and nonverbal auditory stimuli before an overnight interval in which subsets of these stimuli were replayed in slow-wave sleep. We repeated this paradigm in Experiment 2 with the single difference that the gender of the verbal auditory stimuli was switched between learning and sleep.ResultsIn Experiment 1, forgetting of cued (vs. noncued) associations was reduced by TMR with verbal and nonverbal cues to similar extents. In Experiment 2, TMR with identical nonverbal cues reduced forgetting of cued (vs. noncued) associations, replicating Experiment 1. However, TMR with nonidentical verbal cues reduced forgetting of both cued and noncued associations.ConclusionsThese experiments suggest that the memory effects of TMR are influenced by the acoustic overlap between stimuli delivered at training and sleep. Our findings hint at the existence of two processing routes for memory retrieval during sleep. Whereas TMR with acoustically identical cues may reactivate individual associations via simple episodic matching, TMR with nonidentical verbal cues may utilize linguistic decoding mechanisms, resulting in widespread reactivation across a broad category of memories.

Voluntary Attentional Orienting in Schoolchildren

Voluntary attentional orienting is the foundation of the capacity to highlight relevant stimuli and suppress competing distractions. It plays a role in the scholastic skills. This study investigated the changes in the orienting skills in 630 schoolchildren (age range: 5.7–10.2 years old), who attended the first ( N = 205, M = 6.1, SD = 0.4), third (212 children, M = 8.2, SD = 0.6), and fifth grade (213 children, M = 10, SD = 0.4) of four primary schools in Italy. Simple attentional orienting, choice attentional orienting on written stimuli, double attentional orienting (auditory and visual), and re-orienting were investigated. The tasks required pressing a key in response to some target stimuli. The stimuli were digits, images of objects, written words, letters, geometric forms, and auditory verbal stimuli. Results showed that attentional orienting improved with age. The children's performances depended on the type of stimuli and activities required for the task. The accuracy of re-orienting with written verbal stimuli did not improve during primary school. With increasing age, children became faster but not more able to focus on written verbal stimuli when shifting of attention was required.

Auditory verbal hallucinations: neuroimaging and treatment.

Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) are a frequently occurring phenomenon in the general population and are considered a psychotic symptom when presented in the context of a psychiatric disorder. Neuroimaging literature has shown that AVH are subserved by a variety of alterations in brain structure and function, which primarily concentrate around brain regions associated with the processing of auditory verbal stimuli and with executive control functions. However, the direction of association between AVH and brain function remains equivocal in certain research areas and needs to be carefully reviewed and interpreted. When AVH have significant impact on daily functioning, several efficacious treatments can be attempted such as antipsychotic medication, brain stimulation and cognitive-behavioural therapy. Interestingly, the neural correlates of these treatments largely overlap with brain regions involved in AVH. This suggests that the efficacy of treatment corresponds to a normalization of AVH-related brain activity. In this selected review, we give a compact yet comprehensive overview of the structural and functional neuroimaging literature on AVH, with a special focus on the neural correlates of efficacious treatment.

Voluntary Attentional Orienting in Schoolchildren: How Visual Orienting Skills Change During Primary School.

Voluntary attentional orienting is the foundation of the capacity to highlight relevant stimuli and suppress competing distractions. It plays a role in the scholastic skills. This study investigated the changes in the orienting skills in 630 schoolchildren (age range: 5.7-10.2 years old), who attended the first (N = 205, M = 6.1, SD = 0.4), third (212 children, M = 8.2, SD = 0.6), and fifth grade (213 children, M = 10, SD = 0.4) of four primary schools in Italy. Simple attentional orienting, choice attentional orienting on written stimuli, double attentional orienting (auditory and visual), and re-orienting were investigated. The tasks required pressing a key in response to some target stimuli. The stimuli were digits, images of objects, written words, letters, geometric forms, and auditory verbal stimuli. Results showed that attentional orienting improved with age. The children's performances depended on the type of stimuli and activities required for the task. The accuracy of re-orienting with written verbal stimuli did not improve during primary school. With increasing age, children became faster but not more able to focus on written verbal stimuli when shifting of attention was required.

Effect of transcranial direct current stimulation on dichotic listening test results in children with disorders of psychological development

Abstract Introduction We use dichotic listening (DL) test to assess functional brain asymmetry when we treat children with disorders of psychological development (DPD) by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Aim In this work we carry out retrospective analysis of children with DPD and study the influence of tDCS on auditory verbal stimuli perception characteristics obtained by DL tests. Material and methods We analyzed the DL test results of 6–13-year-old children; 26 children with specific developmental disorders of scholastic skills (SDDSS), 31 children with specific developmental disorders of speech and language (SDDSL), and 39 healthy children were tested. Some of the children with DPD (21 children) were tested only once, 26 – before and after tDCS, and 10 – before and after the treatment without tDCS. In all cases we estimated laterality indices (LI) and the amounts of “erroneous” answers (ErrA). Results and discussion In the DPD group before the treatment the LI values were lower and the ErrA values were higher in comparison to the values of healthy children; the differences were more significant in the SDDSL than in the SDDSS subgroup. In the SDDSL subgroup after tDCS the LI values got closer to those of the healthy children, and the ErrA values decreased. The LI and ErrA values of children who had not received tDCS treatment did not change. Conclusions The DL test reveals the characteristics of brain asymmetry in case of DPD, and can be useful when planning tDCS treatment and estimating its effectiveness.

Recency, repetition, and the multidimensional basis of recognition memory.

Recency and repetition are two factors that have large effects on human memory performance. One way of viewing the beneficial impact of these variables on recognition memory is to assume that both factors modulate a unidimensional memory trace strength. Although previous functional neuroimaging studies have indicated that recency and repetition may modulate similar brain structures, particularly in the region of the inferior parietal cortex, there is extensive behavioral evidence that human subjects can make independent and accurate recognition memory judgments about both an item's recency and its frequency. In the present study, we used fMRI to examine patterns of brain activity during recognition memory for auditory-verbal stimuli that were parametrically and orthogonally manipulated in terms of recency and number of repetitions. We found in a continuous recognition paradigm that the lateral inferior parietal cortex, a region that has previously been associated with recollective forms of memory, is highly sensitive to recency but not repetition. In a multivariate analysis of whole-brain activation patterns, we found orthogonal components that dissociated recency and repetition variables, indicating largely independent neural bases underlying these two factors. The results demonstrate that although both recency and repetition dramatically improve recognition memory performance, the neural bases for this improvement are dissociable, and thus are difficult to explain in terms of access to a unitary memory trace.

EEG/ERP as a Measure of Mental Workload in a Simple Piloting Task

Operating an aircraft is cognitively challenging: pilots have to control the plane and must remain responsive to potential verbal-auditory stimuli (e.g. Air Traffic Control Communication) and auditory alerts (e.g. Terrain Awareness and Warning System). Fifteen participants had to control an aircraft in order to target one of three differently-colored aircrafts displayed on a computer screen. The name of the color (written in black ink) corresponding to the aircraft to target was displayed in the center of the screen. Simultaneously with the onset of the written name of the color, a spoken color name distractor that participants had to ignore was played. This auditory distractor was either congruent (10%, spoken color name matched the written color) or incongruent (10%, spoken color name did not match the written color). The task difficulty varied in terms of working memory load with an n-back-like sub-task. In the low load condition, participants had to target the aircraft corresponding to the currently presented written instruction (n = 0). In the high load condition, participants had to target the aircraft corresponding to the instruction presented two trials before (n = 2). Behavioral analysis showed that increased mental workload provoked a decrease in piloting performance, i.e. participants tended to forget the correct instruction. On the physiological level, EEG/ERP measurements related to instructions showed that increased mental workload was accompanied by lower P3b amplitude. We assume that the lower P3b amplitude reflects the depletion of the cognitive resources allocated to the processing of the instructions. These results suggest that P3b can be a relevant indicator of the openness of the system to sudden and unexpected critical stimuli such as auditory alerts.

Is Central Auditory Processing Disorder Present in Psychosis?

The scope of this study was to trace central auditory processing issues in patients with first-episode psychosis using a psychoacoustic test battery approach. Patients (n = 17) and volunteer control subjects (n = 17) with no personal or family history of schizophrenia were included in the study on the basis of normal hearing sensitivity. The authors implemented a central auditory processing battery consisting of monaural and binaural tests with verbal and nonverbal stimuli. Perceptual deficits in both nonverbal and verbal auditory stimuli are reported in this study, with temporal central auditory processing deficits and a mean left-ear advantage documented in the patient group. This study points to the possibility of the existence of central auditory processing deficits in first-episode psychosis leading to schizophrenia. Audiologists should be aware of the psychiatric research pointing to enhanced verbal memory as a result of auditory training, linking bottom-up remediation with top-down improvement.

Bilingual children show advantages in nonverbal auditory executive function task

Previous studies have shown that bilinguals have greater control over attentional resources than monolinguals in nonverbal tasks, perhaps reflecting domain-general enhancements of executive functioning (EF). Most studies of this bilingual advantage have used tasks with visual stimuli whereas fewer studies have examined attentional control in bilinguals in auditory tasks. We studied components of EF in two Go/No-Go auditory tasks with (1) nonverbal auditory stimuli and (2) verbal auditory stimuli in 5-year-old Spanish–English bilingual ( n = 30) and English-speaking monolingual ( n = 30) children matched on age, gender, short-term memory (digits forward subtest), and early reading skills (phoneme awareness and letter naming). The Go/No-Go tasks were modeled after a continuous performance task (CPT) (Mahone, Pillion, &amp; Hiemenz, 2001) and included additional blocks of trials to measure the effects of switching targets. The bilingual children made fewer errors and had shorter reaction times (RTs) in the second block of the nonverbal auditory tasks than the monolinguals, but there were no differences on the verbal auditory task. Our results suggest that early bilingualism may confer advantages in young children for responding to nonverbal auditory stimuli under conditions that require cognitive flexibility.

Dissociation between Olfactory and Auditory-Verbal Processing in the Occipital Cortex of Early Blind Subjects

Despite numerous studies on cross-modal brain plasticity, it is still unclear to what extent distinct (nonvisual) sensory modalities are segregated in the reorganized occipital cortex (OC) of blind subjects. In addition, little is known about the potential role of the OC in olfactory processing that is enhanced in these subjects. Using fMRI, we monitored the brain activity in ten early blind (EB) subjects while they were discriminating or categorizing olfactory (fruit and flower odors) versus auditory-verbal stimuli (fruit and flower names). Both modalities selectively activated the ventral part of the OC and were segregated in this cortex; the right fusiform gyrus was most activated during olfactory conditions while part of the left ventral lateral occipital complex showed a preference for auditory-verbal processing. No such occipital activation was observed in sighted controls, but the same right-olfactory/left-auditory hemispheric lateralization was found overall in their brain. These findings constitute the first evidences (1) that the OC is involved in the processing of odors in EB subjects and (2) that sensory modalities are (to some extent) segregated in the OC of EB subjects. Furthermore, the ventral stream seems to develop its designated functional role in processing stimulus identity independently of visual experience.

Cortical gamma‐oscillations modulated by auditory–motor tasks‐intracranial recording in patients with epilepsy

Human activities often involve hand-motor responses following external auditory-verbal commands. It has been believed that hand movements are predominantly driven by the contralateral primary sensorimotor cortex, whereas auditory-verbal information is processed in both superior temporal gyri. It remains unknown whether cortical activation in the superior temporal gyrus during an auditory-motor task is affected by laterality of hand-motor responses. Here, event-related γ-oscillations were intracranially recorded as quantitative measures of cortical activation; we determined how cortical structures were activated by auditory-cued movement using each hand in 15 patients with focal epilepsy. Auditory-verbal stimuli elicited augmentation of γ-oscillations in a posterior portion of the superior temporal gyrus, whereas hand-motor responses elicited γ-augmentation in the pre- and postcentral gyri. The magnitudes of such γ-augmentation in the superior temporal, precentral, and postcentral gyri were significantly larger when the hand contralateral to the recorded hemisphere was required to be used for motor responses, compared with when the ipsilateral hand was. The superior temporal gyrus in each hemisphere might play a greater pivotal role when the contralateral hand needs to be used for motor responses, compared with when the ipsilateral hand does.

Ausgesuchte sprachperzeptive Leistungen bei Kindern mit auditiver Verarbeitungs- und Wahrnehmungsstörung

The ability to detect phonemes in spoken language (phonological processing) is equally important for first and secondary language acquisition (reading, spelling, orthography). Nevertheless, it is a subject of some controversy whether psychometric tests of auditory verbal stimuli (linguistic load) are to take in account in the diagnostics of (central) auditory processing disorders (C)APD. Data in phonological synthesis and in verbal auditory closure, obtained from a research database of children who were audiologically and psychologically diagnosed as with auditory processing deficits, were analyzed retrospectively. These data were collected by a clinical psychologist in the diagnostic setting, who administered the subtests Sound Blending and Auditory Closure out of the German version of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities. Three clinical groups: n=51 with monosymptomatic APD; n=33 with APD+developmental language impairment; n=15 with APD and developmental dyslexia and one control group (typically developing children without clinical developmental disorders). normal hearing status and nonverbal intelligence, monolingual German-speaking, no suspicion of attention deficit hyperactivity disorders and visual perception disorders and scoring > or = 2 SDs below the reference mean in at least 2 auditory symptoms. The controls showed the best performance in "Sound Blending" (T-score 49.2; SD 8.8), followed by children with monosymptomatic APD (T-score 48.0; SD 9.5) and children with co-morbid conditions (APD+developmental dyslexia: T-score 45.9; SD 6.0; APD+language impairment: T-score 44.4; SD 8.7). The differences between the groups did not reach statistical significance. Test scores in "Auditory Closure" were consistently poorer in the APD-groups (children with monosymptomatic APD: T-score 50.9; SD 8.8; children with APD+developmental dyslexia: T-score 49.6; SD 7.7; children with APD+developmental language impairment: T-score 47.1; SD 10.5) than for the normal group (T-score 54.9; SD 7.5). None of the groups performed any differently from the controls. Because the acoustic-verbal automatic dimensions of sound blending and auditory closure did not differentiate the 4 study groups, experts should renounce of them in the diagnostics of (C)APDs.

Views on Disability Around the World

Views on Disability Around the World