Affiliations: Generation Research Program, Human Science Center,
Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, Prof.-Max-Lange-Platz 11, 83646 Bad
Tölz, Germany | Department of Psychiatry, University of California San
Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093 – 0603 V, USA
Abstract: Purpose: The relationship between auditory temporal-order perception
and phoneme discrimination has been discussed for several years, based on
findings, showing that patients with cerebral damage in the left hemisphere and
aphasia, as well as children with specific language impairments, show deficits
in temporal-processing and phoneme discrimination. Over the last years several
temporal-order measurement procedures and training batteries have been
developed. However, there exists no standard diagnostic tool for adults that
could be applied to patients with aphasia. Therefore, our study aimed at
identifying a feasible, reliable and efficient measurement procedure to test
for auditory-temporal processing in healthy young and elderly adults, which in
a further step can be applied to patients with aphasia. Methods: The tasks varied according to adaptive procedures
(staircase vs. maximum-likelihood), stimuli (tones vs. clicks) and stimulation
modes (binaural- vs. alternating monaural) respectively. A
phoneme-discrimination task was also employed to assess the relationship
between temporal and language processing. Results: The results show that auditory temporal-order thresholds
are stimulus dependent, age related, and influenced by gender. Furthermore, the
cited relationship between temporal-order threshold and phoneme discrimination
can only be confirmed for measurements with pairs of tones. Conclusion: Our results indicate, that different norms have to be
established for different gender and age groups. Furthermore, temporal-order
measurements with tones seem to be more suitable for clinical intervention
studies than measurements with clicks, as they show higher re-test
reliabilities, and only for measurements with tones an association with
phoneme-discrimination abilities was found.
Keywords: Auditory-temporal processing, phoneme discrimination, aphasia, age difference, sex difference, diagnostics
