Basic Auditory Skills Research Articles

Evaluation of perception of music, environmental sounds, and speech in right versus left cerebral stroke patients

BackgroundStroke is a leading cause of disability and about a third of stroke survivors have aphasia. Stroke also may affect all levels of the auditory pathway and lead to hearing reception and/or perception deficits for different sound types.Aim of the workThe aim of the work is to evaluate the perception of music, environmental sounds, and speech in post-stroke patients in order to determine if there is a difference in the basic auditory perceptual abilities in right versus left cerebral stroke.Subjects and methodsA group of 30 healthy adults and a group of 30 right and left cerebral stroke patients with an age range from 35 to 75 years old were included. The participants were evaluated using a 10-item designed questionnaire for auditory abilities and a test of auditory perceptual/recognition skills. The questionnaire addressed some of the basic auditory skills of attention, discrimination, and recognition of environmental sounds and human voice. The test consisted of non-verbal and verbal domains. The non-verbal domain involved music recognition, discrimination, perception, performance, and environmental sound recognition tasks. While the verbal domain included; recognition of the sound related to speech stimuli and syllable/word recognition tasks.ResultsBetter significant scores in right versus left stroke patients regarding questionnaire results for attention to sound sources either near or fear (p value < 0.001) and discriminating prosodic intonation of statement or interrogation (p value = < 0.001). There was no significant difference between the right cerebral stroke group and the left cerebral stroke group regarding the score of music perception and music performance tasks of the non-verbal domain of the auditory perceptual/recognition skills assessment. Better significant scores were found in the right cerebral stroke patients than the left cerebral stroke patients regarding the scores of both the non-verbal and verbal domains of the auditory perceptual/recognition skills assessment.ConclusionStroke of both right and left cerebral hemispheres has a specific negative effect on some aspects of perception of music, environmental sounds, and speech that need to be addressed in both evaluation protocols and rehabilitation programs.

Singing Mandarin? What Short-Term Memory Capacity, Basic Auditory Skills, and Musical and Singing Abilities Reveal About Learning Mandarin.

Learning Mandarin has become increasingly important in the Western world but is rather difficult to be learnt by speakers of non-tone languages. Since tone language learning requires very precise tonal ability, we set out to test whether musical skills, musical status, singing ability, singing behavior during childhood, basic auditory skills, and short-term memory ability contribute to individual differences in Mandarin performance. Therefore, we developed Mandarin tone discrimination and pronunciation tasks to assess individual differences in adult participants’ (N = 109) tone language ability. Results revealed that short-term memory capacity, singing ability, pitch perception preferences, and tone frequency (high vs. low tones) were the most important predictors, which explained individual differences in the Mandarin performances of our participants. Therefore, it can be concluded that training of basic auditory skills, musical training including singing should be integrated in the educational setting for speakers of non-tone languages who learn tone languages such as Mandarin.

Reaching from afar: Pitfalls and promises of online auditory testing

Online testing of speech perception and auditory abilities over the Internet can be a cost-effective and efficient way to collect data. It eliminates travel requirements, provides flexibility in scheduling tests, and enables broader and safer outreach to potential participants. However, online testing also involves considerable risks to data quality and integrity stemming from multiple factors, which are often difficult to control. These include access to an appropriate testing environment, availability of broadband Internet connection, and adequate computing and audio equipment. Participants also need to have a sufficient level of computer literacy and engagement. In recent years, several approaches and software applications have been used for online data collection. Selection of a specific approach involves a careful balancing of its strengths and weaknesses, based on the goals of a specific study. This presentation will describe one such approach that led to the development of Basic Auditory Skills Evaluation (BASE) battery. The battery was designed for comprehensive online assessment in adults with cochlear implants and has been recently extended to examine speech perception in other populations. The presentation will describe some applications of BASE battery, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using this approach to online auditory testing, and review initial findings.

Basic auditory skills evaluation battery for online testing of cochlear implant users

Cochlear implant (CI) performance varies considerably across domains of auditory function, but clinical testing is typically restricted to speech intelligibility. Although other domains, including environmental sound and music perception or speech comprehension, are considered important to quality-of-life and personal safety, their adaptation into clinical use has been limited. The basic auditory skills evaluation (BASE) battery was developed to provide online access to such comprehensive assessment using the Internet as a test delivery platform. It includes 17 3–5 min tests to evaluate (1) basic spectro-temporal processing, (2) processing of environmental sounds and music, and (3) speech perception and comprehension in quiet and background noise. Two groups of 18 and 25 postlingual adult CI users were tested either at home following online instructions or in the lab by an audiologist. Results revealed a range of performance across tests from near ceiling to close to chance. No significant differences in group performance on any of the tests were observed, suggesting that BASE battery can assess a diverse array of abilities online, with varying difficulty levels. These findings provide preliminary support for the use of the test battery for an Internet-based comprehensive assessment of ecologically relevant aspects of auditory perception in adult CI users.

Development of the Basic Auditory Skills Evaluation Battery for Online Testing of Cochlear Implant Listeners.

Purpose Cochlear implant (CI) performance varies considerably across individuals and across domains of auditory function, but clinical testing is typically restricted to speech intelligibility. The goals of this study were (a) to develop a basic auditory skills evaluation battery of tests for comprehensive assessment of ecologically relevant aspects of auditory perception and (b) to compare CI listeners' performance on the battery when tested in the laboratory by an audiologist or independently at home. Method The battery included 17 tests to evaluate (a) basic spectrotemporal processing, (b) processing of music and environmental sounds, and (c) speech perception in both quiet and background noise. The battery was administered online to three groups of adult listeners: two groups of postlingual CI listeners and a group of older normal-hearing (ONH) listeners of similar age. The ONH group and one CI group were tested in a laboratory by an audiologist, whereas the other CI group self-tested independently at home following online instructions. Results Results indicated a wide range in the performance of CI but not ONH listeners. Significant differences were not found between the two CI groups on any test, whereas on all but two tests, CI listeners' performance was lower than that of the ONH participants. Principal component analysis revealed that four components accounted for 82% of the variance in measured results, with component loading indicating that the test battery successfully captures differences across dimensions of auditory perception. Conclusions These results provide initial support for the use of the basic auditory skills evaluation battery for comprehensive online assessment of auditory skills in adult CI listeners.

The Effectiveness of Interventions for Developmental Dyslexia: Rhythmic Reading Training Compared With Hemisphere-Specific Stimulation and Action Video Games.

Developmental dyslexia is a very common learning disorder causing an impairment in reading ability. Although the core deficit underlying dyslexia is still under debate, significant agreement is reached in the literature that dyslexia is related to a specific deficit in the phonological representation of speech sounds. Many studies also reported an association between reading skills and music. These findings suggest that interventions aimed at enhancing basic auditory skills of children with DD may impact reading abilities. However, music education alone failed to produce improvements in reading skills comparable to those resulting from traditional intervention methods for DD. Therefore, a computer-assisted intervention method, called Rhythmic Reading Training (RRT), which combines sublexical reading exercises with rhythm processing, was implemented. The purpose of the present study was to compare the effectiveness of RRT and that of an intervention resulting from the combination of two yet validated treatments for dyslexia, namely, Bakker’s Visual Hemisphere-Specific Stimulation (VHSS) and the Action Video Game Training (AVG). Both interventions, administered for 13 h over 9 days, significantly improved reading speed and accuracy of a group of Italian students with dyslexia aged 8–14. However, each intervention program produced improvements that were more evident in specific reading parameters: RRT was more effective for improvement of pseudoword reading speed, whereas VHSS + AVG was more effective in increasing general reading accuracy. Such different effects were found to be associated with different cognitive mechanisms, namely, phonological awareness for RRT and rapid automatized naming for VHSS + AVG, thus explaining the specific contribution of each training approach. Clinical Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02791841.

T32. INTACT AUDITORY PERCEPTION IN INDIVIDUALS AT CLINICAL HIGH RISK FOR PSYCHOSIS

Basic perceptual processes are impaired in schizophrenia and may explain key social deficits such as the ability to identify emotions in other people. We recently reported widespread auditory impairments across multiple domains of auditory function in individuals with schizophrenia. Additionally, we found that these auditory impairments are associated with auditory emotion recognition deficits in patients with schizophrenia. These auditory deficits may be closely linked to the neural circuits relevant for the development of psychotic symptoms and thus may be useful predictors of psychosis onset and promising therapeutic targets. However, it is not yet known if basic auditory processing deficits are associated with the impaired emotional processing preceding the illness. We have assessed 25 individuals at clinical high-risk for psychosis and 42 healthy controls between the ages of 12 and 30 on a comprehensive battery of tasks spanning the four empirically derived domains of auditory function. We explored group differences across the battery of basic auditory tasks using between groups t-tests. We also explored the relationship between basic auditory processing and auditory emotion identification within the high-risk group using correlational analysis. We did not observe significant group differences in the ability to identify emotion in vocal samples or in basic auditory skills, with the exception of frequency discrimination, which was significantly better in high-risk subjects (Cohen’s =.67, p<.05). Additionally, none of the basic auditory skills correlated with emotion recognition in the high-risk group. Previous research has indicated widespread impairment of basic auditory skills in schizophrenia that is associated with difficulty understanding emotion from the vocal characteristics of a speaker. We investigated whether these impairments and correlations are present in individuals at high-risk for psychosis. We found no indication of impaired emotion recognition or basic auditory skills in high-risk individuals. Our results suggest that auditory impairment is not a characteristic of high-risk status and thus may emerge after psychosis onset.

Training F0 discrimination improves vowel identification among speech m

Listeners can use voice or fundamental frequency (F0) differences to separate target speech from competing talkers. Discrimination of F0 of harmonic tones has been shown to improve with adaptive training. Here, we examine whether such F0 learning can benefit speech identification in noise. Normal-hearing adults practiced F0 discrimination with standard F0 roved between 120 and 240 Hz. Before and after training, these listeners and a no-contact control group were tested on a vowel identification task, in which Mandarin vowels were embedded within six-talker babble noise at multiple signal-to-noise ratios. After training, the trained listeners improved more than controls on F0 discrimination. Critically, they also improved more in vowel identification. Threshold SNR at 60% intelligibility dropped 1.9 dB as a result of F0 training. The results demonstrate that speech perception in noise can benefit from learning of basic auditory skills, revealing a promising approach for rehabilitative training.

Auditory training improves auditory performance in cochlear implanted children

While the positive benefits of pediatric cochlear implantation on language perception skills are now proven, the heterogeneity of outcomes remains high. The understanding of this heterogeneity and possible strategies to minimize it is of utmost importance. Our scope here is to test the effects of an auditory training strategy, “sound in Hands”, using playful tasks grounded on the theoretical and empirical findings of cognitive sciences. Indeed, several basic auditory operations, such as auditory scene analysis (ASA) are not trained in the usual therapeutic interventions in deaf children. However, as they constitute a fundamental basis in auditory cognition, their development should imply general benefit in auditory processing and in turn enhance speech perception.The purpose of the present study was to determine whether cochlear implanted children could improve auditory performances in trained tasks and whether they could develop a transfer of learning to a phonetic discrimination test. Material and methodsNineteen prelingually unilateral cochlear implanted children without additional handicap (4–10 year-olds) were recruited. The four main auditory cognitive processing (identification, discrimination, ASA and auditory memory) were stimulated and trained in the Experimental Group (EG) using Sound in Hands. The EG followed 20 training weekly sessions of 30 min and the untrained group was the control group (CG). Two measures were taken for both groups: before training (T1) and after training (T2). ResultsEG showed a significant improvement in the identification, discrimination and auditory memory tasks. The improvement in the ASA task did not reach significance. CG did not show any significant improvement in any of the tasks assessed. Most importantly, improvement was visible in the phonetic discrimination test for EG only. Moreover, younger children benefited more from the auditory training program to develop their phonetic abilities compared to older children, supporting the idea that rehabilitative care is most efficient when it takes place early on during childhood.These results are important to pinpoint the auditory deficits in CI children, to gather a better understanding of the links between basic auditory skills and speech perception which will in turn allow more efficient rehabilitative programs.

Laterality of basic auditory perception

Laterality (left–right ear differences) of auditory processing was assessed using basic auditory skills: (1) gap detection, (2) frequency discrimination, and (3) intensity discrimination. Stimuli included tones (500, 1000, and 4000 Hz) and wide-band noise presented monaurally to each ear of typical adult listeners. The hypothesis tested was that processing of tonal stimuli would be enhanced by left ear (LE) stimulation and noise by right ear (RE) presentations. To investigate the limits of laterality by (1) spectral width, a narrow-band noise (NBN) of 450-Hz bandwidth was evaluated using intensity discrimination, and (2) stimulus duration, 200, 500, and 1000 ms duration tones were evaluated using frequency discrimination. A left ear advantage (LEA) was demonstrated with tonal stimuli in all experiments, but an expected REA for noise stimuli was not found. The NBN stimulus demonstrated no LEA and was characterised as a noise. No change in laterality was found with changes in stimulus durations. The LEA for tonal stimuli is felt to be due to more direct connections between the left ear and the right auditory cortex, which has been shown to be primary for spectral analysis and tonal processing. The lack of a REA for noise stimuli is unexplained. Sex differences in laterality for noise stimuli were noted but were not statistically significant. This study did establish a subtle but clear pattern of LEA for processing of tonal stimuli.

Using magnetoencephalography in assessing auditory skills in infants and children

In this paper, the use of magnetoencephalography (MEG) in studying the basic auditory skills in infants and children is reviewed. The auditory skills are related to perceiving sound onsets and offsets of sounds, extracting rules and regularities in sound environments, perceiving differences and changes in sounds, categorizing sound elements, allocating attention towards certain sounds or sound streams, and attaching semantic information into sounds. Studying each of these auditory skills with MEG in particular stimulation paradigms is shortly reviewed, including two examples of data sets in children.

Auditory processing factors in language disorders: the view from Procrustes' bed.

A failure in auditory processing is often cited as a major or contributing cause of language and learning disorders in children and adults, including defective articulation, aphasia, dyslexia, and specific learning disability. The claim persists in spite of the relatively limited and weak evidence for such a factor and the inconsistency of this conclusion with current findings in speech perception research. The implications for traditional educational, diagnostic, and therapeutic procedures involving basic auditory skills such as speech-sound discrimination are discussed.