title: Individual differences in auditory abilities.
abstract: Performance on 19 auditory discrimination and identification tasks was measured for 340 listeners with normal hearing. Test stimuli included single tones, sequences of tones, amplitude-modulated and rippled noise, temporal gaps, speech, and environmental sounds. Principal components analysis and structural equation modeling of the data support the existence of a general auditory ability and four specific auditory abilities. The specific abilities are (1) loudness and duration (overall energy) discrimination; (2) sensitivity to temporal envelope variation; (3) identification of highly familiar sounds (speech and nonspeech); and (4) discrimination of unfamiliar simple and complex spectral and temporal patterns. Examination of Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores for a large subset of the population revealed little or no association between general or specific auditory abilities and general intellectual ability. The findings provide a basis for research to further specify the nature of the auditory abilities. Of particular interest are results suggestive of a familiar sound recognition (FSR) ability, apparently specialized for sound recognition on the basis of limited or distorted information. This FSR ability is independent of normal variation in both spectral-temporal acuity and of general intellectual ability.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405, USA.
authors.forename: Gary R
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Kidd
authors.forename: Charles S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Watson
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gygi
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001299:Audiometry / Q000379:methods; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007360:Intelligence; D007361:Intelligence Tests; D008144:Loudness Perception / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D046709:Pattern Recognition, Physiological; D010897:Pitch Discrimination / Q000502:physiology; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D012016:Reference Values; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology; D013997:Time Factors