According to architectural designers, although they are aware of the sound environment when designing spaces, in many cases visual (design) and cost (cost-effectiveness, etc.) were the predominant factors. In many cases, the visual (design) and cost aspects (cost-effectiveness, etc.) were dominant. The tacit rule for evaluating the sound…

A prominent hypothesis holds that by speaking to infants in infant-directed speech (IDS) as opposed to adult-directed speech (ADS), parents help them learn phonetic categories. Specifically, two characteristics of IDS have been claimed to facilitate learning: "hyperarticulation," which makes the categories more "separable," and…

A weaker McGurk effect is observed in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD); weaker integration is considered to be the key to understanding how low-order atypical processing leads to their maladaptive social behaviors. However, the mechanism for this weaker McGurk effect has not been fully understood. Here, we investigated (1) whether…

Reflecting their dominance within music education, most musical instruments used in schools are of Western origin. In stark contrast, the adoption of folk instruments for the purposes of facilitating students' music-making and learning in the educational context is rarely encountered. This article reports the empirical data of a study in which a…

One of the most important recommendations in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted at the UN Summit in 2015 was "No one will be left behind". Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer pointed out that the dominant form of music education in training musicians is Romantic or Dionysian. Schafer finds this type of music education…

This study aims to investigate English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' use of context information under various noise conditions. The participants were seven Japanese undergraduate students. A noise test adopted from the Speech-Perception-in-Noise (SPIN) test (Kalikow et al., 1977) was used. Four signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions (SNR =…

The current study longitudinally examined a crucial individual difference variable -- i.e. awareness (operationalized as explicit attention and articulatory knowledge) -- in adult second language (L2) speech learning in the context of 40 Japanese learners' English /[alveolar approximant]/ pronunciation development in an EFL classroom. The…

Purpose: This study tested the hypothesis that audiovisual training benefits children more than it does adults and that it improves Japanese-speaking children's English /r/-/l/ perception to a native-like level. Method: Ten sessions of audiovisual English /r/-/l/ identification training were conducted for Japanese-speaking adults and children.…

As a case study of the introduction of efficient and effective teaching materials and methods that enhance students' technological literacy in different areas despite the relative lack of classroom hours devoted to technology education in Japanese junior high schools, a front-loaded horn speaker system was proposed as a component of multipurpose…

To examine the appropriate information disclosure method of noise as the final goal, we firstly set the goal to grasp the degree of understanding of the dB values of the sound sources among people other than acoustic experts. In this paper, first, in order to measure the degree of understanding of the dB in university students without expert…

This study investigated the influence of communication apprehension and anxiety in second-language (L2) learning on oral performance of Japanese university students in terms of F0 (fundamental frequency) analysis. The participants were English-major students (3 males and 6 females) who presented at an oral communication festival for university…

This study examines relative weighting of two acoustic cues, vowel duration and spectra, in the perception of high front vowels by Japanese learners of English. Studies found that Japanese speakers rely heavily on duration to distinguish /i?/ and [character omitted] in American English (AmE) as influenced by phonemic length in Japanese /ii/ and…

The objective of this study was to investigate relationships between caregiver-reported sensory processing abnormalities, and the physiological index of auditory over-responsiveness evaluated using acoustic startle response measures, in children with autism spectrum disorders and typical development. Mean acoustic startle response magnitudes in…

Although superior visual search skills have been repeatedly reported for individuals with autism spectrum disorder, the underlying mechanisms remain controversial. To specify the locus where individuals with autism spectrum disorder excel in visual search, we compared the performance of autism spectrum disorder adults and healthy controls in…

Background: In English- and German-speaking countries, ataxic speech is often described as showing scanning based on acoustic impressions. Although the term "scanning" is generally considered to represent abnormal speech features including prosodic excess or insufficiency, any precise acoustic analysis of ataxic speech has not been…