Speech and Hearing Science Commons^™

American And British Speech Differences In Low Socioeconomic Status Homes, Jennifer Markfeld

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Background: Infants living in low socioeconomic status (SES) homes display lower developmental functioning by 12 months than mid- and high-SES infants, and speak fewer words on average as they grow older. Maternal speech is especially important for language development and has been found to be the largest predictor of SES-related differences in children’s vocabulary. Although there are documented differences between British and American infant language development, for example American infant lexicons are typically larger than age matched British infants, there is little research looking at caregiver speech across these countries in low SES groups.

Method: This retrospective study compared 10 …

Build-Up Effect Of Auditory Stream Segregation Using Amplitude-Modulated Narrowband Noise, Harley J. Wheeler

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Recent psychoacoustic experiments (Böckmann-Barthel et al., 2014; Deike et al., 2012) have re-examined research regarding stream segregation and the build-up effect. Stream segregation is the ability to discern auditory objects within a stream of information, such as distinguishing one voice amongst background noise or an instrument within an orchestra. Initial works examining this topic proposed that auditory information is not immediately distinguished as various streams, but rather that differences accumulate over time, allowing listeners to segregate information following a period of build-up (i.e., the build-up effect); whereas more current findings indicate a build-up period is unnecessary for segregation. This experiment’s …