Relationship between auditory processing, speech processing, language processing, and cognitive abilities in typically developing children

The key research questions in this project are:

• Investigate the relationship between the listening tests of a new clinical test battery for the assessment of listening difficulties in a typically-developing population of school-aged children.
• The proposed approach is a tri-level test battery, being a combination of top-level speech perception ability, mid-level phoneme identification ability and low-level acoustic resolution task.
• The combined approach, in conjunction with cognitive test scores, will allow for differentiation of the cause of the observed listening deficit.

The details

A range of deficits can cause children difficulty in understanding speech in challenging situations, like classrooms. Currently, it is difficult to determine the cause of these difficulties. Deficits in auditory processing, speech processing, language processing, or cognition, present in similar manners and can be difficult to test for separately.

A systematic approach to differentiate between these causes has been devised. This project will contribute to our understanding of how these novel tests relate to one another and are influenced by basic underlying processes.

This Manchester-based project will investigate the relationship between the tests of a new clinical test battery for the assessment of listening difficulties in school-aged children in a typically-developing population of school-aged children. The project will also collect normative data sets for children in the UK and Australia.

By first understanding underlying relationships between the levels of the test, this project will allow for this clinical test-battery to be implemented into clinical practice including for the potential establishment of a university service in Manchester.

Supervision team

• The University of Manchester: Dr Antje Heinrich, Dr Helen Glyde, Professor Harvey Dillon
• The University of Melbourne: Associate Professor Dani Tomlin, Professor Gary Rance