Recent advances in our ability to measure pre-neural and neural function in the auditory pathways of hearing impaired children and adults has identified a group of individuals who show normal cochlear function but clear auditory deficits. Recent investigations (carried out at the University of Melbourne and elsewhere) have demonstrated that affected children and adults suffer a range of perceptual problems including severe disruption of speech signals. As such, patients with AN/AD can often hear, but not understand what is said to them. This study will determine the degree to which speech understanding is disrupted in a group of children with auditory neuropathy/dys-synchrony, and the degree to which perception is improved by conventional amplification and/or cochlear implantation. Furthermore, we will investigate the effects that this disorder has on expressive speech and language development in affected children.