Auditory sensory memory and working memory processes in children with normal hearing and cochlear implants.

There can be wide variation in the level of oral/aural language ability that prelingually hearing-impaired children develop after cochlear implantation. Automatic perceptual processing mechanisms have come under increasing scrutiny in attempts to explain this variation. Using mismatch negativity methods, this study explored associations between auditory sensory memory mechanisms and verbal working memory function in children with cochlear implants and a group of hearing controls of similar age. Whilst clear relationships were observed in the hearing children between mismatch activation and working memory measures, this association appeared to be disrupted in the implant children. These findings would fit with the proposal that early auditory deprivation and a degraded auditory signal can cause changes in the processes underpinning the development of oral/aural language skills in prelingually hearing-impaired children with cochlear implants and thus alter their developmental trajectory

Auditory hallucinations in dissociative identity disorder and schizophrenia with and without a childhood trauma history: Similarities and differences.

Little is known about similarities and differences in voice hearing in schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder (DID) and the role of child maltreatment and dissociation. This study examined various aspects of voice hearing, along with childhood maltreatment and pathological dissociation in 3 samples: schizophrenia without child maltreatment (n = 18), schizophrenia with child maltreatment (n = 16), and DID (n = 29). Compared with the schizophrenia groups, the DID sample was more likely to have voices starting before 18, hear more than 2 voices, have both child and adult voices and experience tactile and visual hallucinations. The 3 groups were similar in that voice content was incongruent with mood and the location was more likely internal than external. Pathological dissociation predicted several aspects of voice hearing and appears an important variable in voice hearing, at least where maltreatment is present.

Basic auditory processing skills and phonological awareness in low-IQ readers and typically developing controls

We explore the relationships between basic auditory processing, phonological awareness, vocabulary, and word reading in a sample of 95 children, 55 typically developing children, and 40 children with low IQ. All children received nonspeech auditory processing tasks, phonological processing and literacy measures, and a receptive vocabulary task. Compared to age-matched controls, the children with low IQ and low reading skills were significantly impaired in auditory and phonological processing, whereas the children with low IQ and preserved reading skills were not. There were also significant predictive relations between auditory processing and single word reading. Poor auditory processing was not dependent on low IQ, as auditory processing was age appropriate in the low-IQ children who were good readers.