Responses of 122 children were obtained on two measures of central auditory processing to establish normative data. Children aged 6.5 through 12.5 years were tested for humming and tapping responses to the Pitch Pattern Sequence Test (PPST) and the two- and four-digit Dichotic Digit Tests (DDT). Children between ages 6.5 and 9.5 years showed progressively better scores on the tapping response of the PPST and on the four-digit DDT. Children above 9.5 years of age demonstrated adult-like responses on both tests. No differences were demonstrated in performance of children aged 6.5 through 12.5 years on the two-digit DDT or on the humming response of the PPST.

This investigation explored voice use and perception of use in singers as compared with non-singers at the university. Students recorded the amount and type of their voice use for forty-eight hours. They made judgments about their use and whether a voice disturbance was present. Each student was taped, and tapes were judged for disturbances. It was hypothesized that singers would have greater voice use and awareness than non-singers and experienced singers would have greater voice use and awareness than less experienced singers. Singers used their voices more than non-singers, but there were no differences in awareness. No differences between singer groups were noted. There was a high incidence of voice disturbances in all groups. Suggestions for future research were made.

The purpose of the investigation was to compare mean voice onset time in young and old male subjects, as well as to examine variability of VOT productions with age for prevocalic bilabial, alveolar, and velar voiced and voiceless stop consonants. Forty-five Caucasion.males were divided equally into three.age groups. Ten tokens of six stimulus words were recorded and wide band spectrograms were made. Results of an analysis of variance revealed no significant differences in VOT with age when averages of the phonemes were used for analysis; however, a significant interaction between age and voiced phonemes was found when individual trials of phoneme productions were used for analysis.

The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a difference in functional communication skills between elderly persons in nursing homes and those living independently in the community. Thirty non-institutionalized elderly subjects were given the Western Aphasia Battery (WAB) screening tool. These scores were compared to WAB screening scores obtained from 20 institutionalized subjects. The difference between these scores was statistically significant. The institutionalized subjects' scores were also correlated with a Facilitators Evaluation of Communication Skills (FECS) inventory. Results showed a moderate correlation between the institutionalized subjects' WAB screening score and their FECS rating. The benefits of a screening tool for elderly populations are discussed.

This study attempted to investigate the effects of aphasia on word retrieval skills in a bilingual (Spanish-English) anomic patient. Two aspects of word finding difficulties were considered. First, an attempt was made to determine whether the patient exhibited the same degree of difficulty in both languages. Second, after the presentation of three different types of facilatory cues (initial syllable, sentence completion, translated word) the correct number of correct responses per cue were analyzed to determine whether or not the same kinds of cues were equally effective in English and in Spanish. Results indicated that word retrieval was affected to essentially the same degree in both languages, with performance in Spanish only slightly better than in English. Cue effectiveness also appeared to differ across languages.

This study assessed the effective use of pure-tone testing versus speech testing as used to predict the degree of hearing handicap experienced by an individual. Twenty-one subjects over the age of 65 were tested. Each subject was administered the following test battery: spondee threshold; a pure-tone evaluation, including air and bone conduction; Speech Perception in Noise (SPIN) test; Synthetic Sentence Identification (SSI) test; NU-6 for speech discrimination; establishment of most comfortable listening level (MCL) and loudness discomfort listening level (LDL); immittance testing including tympanograms, acoustic reflex thresholds, and reflex decay.