Peripheral hearing loss and auditory temporal ordering ability in children.
OBJECTIVE
The main objective of this study was to assess the influence of peripheral hearing loss (abnormal encoding of the auditory system) on auditory information processing. We examine the ability of children with and without hearing loss to correctly reproduce sequence blocks of acoustic stimuli that vary in type, number, and temporal ordering.


METHODS
Twenty-six children between 8 and 12 years old, 13 with hearing loss and 13 without hearing loss, participated in the study. They performed an auditory temporal ordering task (auditory sequential organization task) by recalling two, three, and five verbal (/ba/-/da/and/a/-/da/) and nonverbal stimuli (acoustic transformation of /ba/-/da/) with a fixed interstimulus interval (ISI) of 425 ms. They also reproduced sequences of two elements with variables ISI, 20, and 1000 ms.


RESULTS
Children with hearing loss had significantly lower correct responses than children with normal hearing for sequences of two, three, and five verbal stimuli with similar and complex acoustic features (/ba/-/da/), for an ISI of 425 ms. There was no significant difference in performance between children with hearing loss and their peers with normal hearing on nonverbal sequences or verbal sequences with different and complex acoustic features (/a/-/da/) when ISI was 425 ms. Furthermore, children with hearing loss performed significantly lower than their peers on the three groups of stimuli when ISI was 20 ms between two stimuli.


CONCLUSIONS
Peripheral hearing loss can influence auditory information processing in the central auditory system.
Koravand
Amineh
A
Ecole d'orthophonie et d'audiologie, Université de Montréal and Centre de recherche, CHU Sainte-Justine, Canada. amineh.koravand@umontreal.ca
Jutras
Benoît
B
Roumy
Nada
N
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests / Q000379:methods*; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013068:Speech Production Measurement / Q000379:methods; D013998:Time Perception