Designed to assess listening ability and to indicate implications for listening instruction, this instrument comes in a full and an abbreviated form. The 45 multiple choice items on the full form measure 53 specific listening skills in five categories: (1) simple recall, (2) recognizing and following spoken directions, (3) recognizing a speaker's…

Designed to assess listeners' comprehension of ambiguous and polysemous utterances, this instrument is a series of 24 statements that include varying degrees and types of ambiguity. Subjects listen to prerecorded audio tapes of these statements, presented in a neutral tone that provides no stress or pitch cues to aid "disambiguation."…

To investigate young children's understanding of metaphorical language, 90 chidren from preschool to third grade were read stories ending with metaphorical sentences of varying degrees of difficulty--sentences representing more or less predictable story outcomes and differing in the complexity and explicitness of their figures of speech. After…

Reports three experiments which examined preschool, first-grade, and third-grade children's understanding of metaphorical language. Subjects acted out short stories which ended in metaphorical sentences by using toys. Predictability of the story endings and the complexity of the metaphorical sentences are found to affect metaphor comprehension.…

Reviews the research on how readers or listeners construct mental models of the situation a writer or speaker is describing. Narrative components and spatial models are discussed. (YP)

Asserts the importance of empathy as a necessary condition for health service professionals. Describes classroom techniques and assignments that teach and assess empathic-listening skills. Includes students' ratings of 14 learning activities designed to enhance listening skills and empathy. (CFR)

Investigates the development of awareness of conversational principles in preschool, first-, and third-grade children by presenting them with short stories ending with a verbal statement by a story character. Results suggest that children's understanding of conversational principles improves considerably between preschool and first grade.…

To determine whether the impressive rates for speed reading (e.g., 500 words per minute) can be approximated in speed listening, two experiments compared the comprehension level of material heard at a normal speaking rate with that heard at accelerated rates. In the first experiment, the major demonstration experiment, three groups of college…

Investigates how feedback from a listener helps kindergarteners attend to message quality and how such feedback affects speaking and listening skills. Results indicate that kindergarteners learn to assess message adequacy by observing listeners flounder with inadequate messages.(Author/AS)