Psychoacoustic performance in children completing Fast ForWord training

It has been hypothesized that one cause of children's language disorders is poor temporal processing. When children are not able to follow the rapid m odulations in the speech signal that cue phonemic information, development of critical language concepts might be missed. It has also been suggested t hat intensive auditory training on a hierarchy of temporal tasks may signif icantly improve language processing. Temporal processing was evaluated in c hildren with normal language and those with language impairment who were en rolled in an intensive computerized auditory training program. The psychoac oustic tasks were aimed at evaluating the ability to (1) process signals ar riving in very close succession, and (2) discriminate signals changing rapi dly in frequency. Three dependent variables included thresholds for brief t ones presented in three conditions: quiet, just before a masker, and simult aneously with a masker. A fourth dependent variable was the minimum detecta ble change in a tone sweeping up in frequency. Despite minimal changes in p erformance over the five-week period, there were overlaps in performance on all tasks between the groups suggesting a complex relationship between tem poral processing and language development. Children with language impairmen t who had better performance on the masking and frequency discrimination ta sks showed greater success on the auditory training program.