Deficits in auditory temporal and spectral resolution in language-impaired children

Beverly A. Wright, Linda J. Lombardino, Wayne M. King, Cynthia S. Puranik, Christiana M. Leonard and Michael M. Merzenich
Additional contact information
Beverly A. Wright: University of California
Linda J. Lombardino: University of Florida
Wayne M. King: University of Florida
Cynthia S. Puranik: University of Florida
Christiana M. Leonard: University of Florida
Michael M. Merzenich: University of California

Nature, 1997, vol. 387, issue 6629, 176-178

Abstract: Abstract Between 3 and 6 per cent of children who are otherwise unimpaired have extreme difficulties producing and understanding spoken language1. This disorder is typically labelled specific language impairment. Children diagnosed with specific language impairment often have accompanying reading difficulties (dyslexia)2, but not all children with reading difficulties have specific language impairment3. Some researchers claim that language impairment arises from failures specific to language or cognitive processing4–6. Others hold that language impairment results from a more elemental problem that makes affected children unable to hear the acoustic distinctions among successive brief sounds in speech7–11. Here we report the results of psycho-physical tests employing simple tones and noises showing that children with specific language impairment have severe auditory perceptual deficits for brief but not long tones in particular sound contexts. Our data support the view that language difficulties result from problems in auditory perception, and provide further information about the nature of these perceptual problems that should contribute to improving the diagnosis and treatment of language impairment and related disorders.

Date: 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/387176a0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:387:y:1997:i:6629:d:10.1038_387176a0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/387176a0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().