Learning about hearing by listening to Charles S. Watson for 45 years Free

I met and started working with C. S. Watson on or about the Fall of 1958. Even then there was usually a pause and a wind‐up before he made a point, usually neither concise nor terse. But once made, a point would be repeated and repeated. These oft‐repeated points transform and become ‘‘Watson’s Precepts.’’ Several such precepts, related to the study of speech perception by the hearing‐impaired, will be quoted or paraphrased and their significance illustrated with samples from his work or that of others. Included on the list are the following. ‘‘Bryan and Harter found that learning to perceive Morse Code continued over many hundreds of hours of practice. Training in many auditory tasks may require similar investments of practice time.’’ ‘‘One must distinguish response proclivities and sensory capabilities and tasks with low‐ or high‐uncertainty stimulus conditions.’’ ‘‘Psychoacoustic measures, other than the audiogram, don’t correlate with speech perception measures.’’ Finally, it will be revealed how this collection of ‘‘precepts’’ has led to his current views of speech perception by the hearing impaired and to our current collaboration on auditory training for the hearing‐aid users which features extensive practice and transition from low‐ to high‐uncertainty stimulus conditions.