AUDITORY TEMPORAL RESOLUTION IN SPECIFICALLY LANGUAGE-IMPAIRED AND AGE-MATCHED CHILDREN

Recently there has been renewed interest in the auditory processing ca pabilities of children with specific language impairment. In this stud y, eight children with specific language impairment and eight nonimpai red, age-matched peers completed a task to assess temporal resolution abilities. Children were asked to detect a tone in three masking condi tions wherein the masker contained silent gaps of 0 msec., 40 msec., o r 64 msec. in duration. Thresholds were measured in each masking condi tion at 500 Hz and 2000 Hz. Across the groups, thresholds decreased (i mproved) significantly as a function of increases in the duration of t he gaps. Children in the two groups exhibited remarkably similar thres holds for the three masking conditions. However, children with specifi c language impairment required a significantly greater number of ascen ding trials to achieve the threshold criterion than did age-matched ch ildren. Results suggest that language-impaired children perceive tempo ral aspects of acoustic stimuli as well as their normally developing p eers. Attentional mechanisms may play an important role in the difficu lties they exhibit in auditory processing.