Recent studies in the field of intonational phonology have shown that information-seeking questions can be distinguished from confirmation-seeking questions by prosodic means in a variety of languages (Armstrong, 2010, for Puerto Rican Spanish; Grice & Savino, 1997, for Bari Italian; Kugler, 2003, for Leipzig German; Mata & Santos, 2010, for…

The tendency to hear a tone sequence as 2 or more streams (segregated) builds up, but a sudden change in properties can reset the percept to 1 stream (integrated). This effect has not hitherto been explored using an objective measure of streaming. Stimuli comprised a 2.0-s fixed-frequency inducer followed by a 0.6-s test sequence of alternating…

Change blindness, or the failure to detect (often large) changes to visual scenes, has been demonstrated in a variety of different situations. Failures to detect auditory changes are far less studied, and thus little is known about the nature of change deafness. Five experiments were conducted to explore the processes involved in change deafness…

Infants in more alert states demonstrated significantly higher rates of sucking following sound change. Treating state as a dependent variable revealed that state was not significantly affected by a change in stimulus conditions. (RH)

The effect of prior otitis media with effusion (OME) or current middle ear effusion (MEE) on phonetic perception was examined by testing infants' discrimination of "boo" and "goo" syllables in 2 test sessions. Middle ear function was assessed following each perception test using tympanometry. Perceptual performance was compared…

Assesses musicians' perceptions of beat in monotonic stimuli and attempts to define empirically the range of perceived beat tempo in music. Subjects performed a metric pulse in response to periodic stimulus tones. Results indicate a relatively narrow range within which beats are perceived by trained musicians. (LS)

Presents a study which investigated the perception of music majors and nonmusic majors concerning their ability to discriminate the way in which altered musical excerpts differed in pitch or tempo (or both) from preceding presentations. Concludes that both groups responded similarly across conditions and replications, and that tempo changes were…

We investigated how different psychophysical procedures affect frequency discrimination performance in children. Four studies used a design in which listeners heard two tone pairs and had to identify whether the first or second pair contained a higher frequency target tone. Thresholds for 6-and 7-year-olds were higher than those for 8- and…

Inspection times for both auditory and visual stimuli were correlated with verbal and nonverbal intelligence. Correlations were -.3188 and -.0929 for auditory and visual inspection times with verbal intelligence, and -.2322 and -.2676 with nonverbal intelligence. Results do not support claims that inspection time is closely related to…

Nine subjects, 5 of whom claimed absolute pitch (AP) ability were instructed to rapidly strike notes on the piano to match randomized tape-recorded piano notes. Stimulus set sizes were 64, 16, or 4 consecutive semitones, or 7 diatonic notes of a designated octave. A control task involved motor movements to notes announced in advance. Accuracy,…

Administers a battery of auditory perceptual processing tasks to 103 reading disabled children and 103 average readers. Finds that auditory discrimination did not discriminate between the groups. States that 2 levels of phonological awareness exist and that screening and diagnostic instruments should address both to have predictive validity. (MG)

Training programs for auditory and for visual figure-ground perception were constructed and tested with brain-damaged and mentally retarded children. Training groups showed higher gain scores than the control group on both tests, but the effect was significant only for visual training on visual figure-ground perception. (Author/SJL)

The cause of music consonance perception is not known, but consonance has been defined by both physical and perceptual characteristics. This study tested the extent of differences in interval perceptions and preferences in a non-musically trained group of adults. The independent variables of frequency range, condition of presentation, and harmonic…

Discusses the possibility that early linguistic experience affects infant speech perception and that this effect may be of practical consequence in later language learning. (EKN)

Examines first-, third-, and fifth-grade children's ability to hear two simultaneous melodies. Finds that older children identify two melodies faster and more accurately than do younger children, and that register and timbre combinations affect which melody is identified first. Notes implications for elementary music education. (DSK)