Longitudinal Changes in Auditory Discrimination in Normal Children and Children with Language-Learning Problems

Two groups of children--one progressing normally in school and the other exhibiting language-learning problems--were tested in each of 3 years on a set of fine-grained auditory discrimination tasks that required listening for small acoustic differences. Children's ages ranged from 6 to 9 years; there were 21 children per group. The children with language-learning problems, despite having normal intelligence and normal pure-tone sensitivity, showed poorer auditory discrimination than normal children for temporally based acoustic differences. This effect continued across the 3 years. Children with language-learning problems also exhibited poorer receptive vocabulary and language performance as well as more deviations from standard Midwest articulation than children making normal progress in school. All children had hearing within the normal range, but at some frequencies there was a significant association of pure-tone sensitivity with performance on the auditory discrimination, receptive language, and speech production tasks.