Individual differences in auditory abilities among normal‐hearing listeners

An extended version of the Test of Basic Auditory Capabilities (TBAC) [Watson et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 71, S73 (1982)] includes 19 subtests that evaluate listeners’ abilities to discriminate and identify auditory stimuli. Stimuli include single tones, tonal sequences, SAM and rippled noise, temporal gaps, nonwords, words, sentences, and environmental sounds. A total of 340 college‐student subjects were tested with this battery of tests. A principal components analysis yielded a four‐factor solution that accounts for roughly 50% of the variance. The first factor primarily reflects loudness and duration discrimination, the second is associated with sensitivity to temporal envelope variation (SAM noises), the third is associated with identification of highly familiar sounds, whether they be speech or nonspeech, and the fourth factor includes pitch‐discrimination and spectral‐temporal tasks, suggesting a common ability to discriminate complex patterns. As in earlier studies in this series, measures of spectral and temporal resolving power for laboratory‐generated sounds are very weak predictors of individual differences in speech processing. SAT scores and grades in college courses were also examined to assess the relation between auditory perceptual abilities and abilities in language and mathematics. [Work supported by NIH/NIDCD.]