Control of Auditory Attention in XXXX With Specific Language Impairment.

@entity1 @entity10791 @entity10870
Purpose: @entity1 with @entity10870 ( @entity10870 ) appear to demonstrate deficits in attention and its control. Selective attention involves the cognitive control of attention directed toward a relevant stimulus and simultaneous inhibition of attention toward irrelevant stimuli. The current study examined attention control during a cross-modal word recognition task. Method: Twenty @entity1 with @entity10870 (ages 9-12 years) and 20 age-matched peers with @entity10791 ( @entity10791 ) listened to words through headphones and were instructed to attend to the words in 1 ear while ignoring the words in the other ear. They were simultaneously presented with pictures and asked to make a lexical decision about whether the pictures and auditory words were the same or different. Accuracy and reaction time were measured in 5 conditions, in which the stimulus in the unattended channel was manipulated. Results: The groups performed with similar accuracy. Compared with their peers with @entity10791 , @entity1 with @entity10870 had slower reaction times overall and different within-group patterns of performance by condition. Conclusions: @entity1 with @entity10791 showed efficient inhibitory control in conditions that required active suppression of competing stimuli. @entity1 with @entity10870 had difficulty exerting control over their auditory attention in all conditions, with particular difficulty inhibiting distractors of all types.
