Soundscapes engender historical, cultural, social, and aesthetic meanings through acoustical qualities that reflect a community's lived experiences. In this article, we propose music lesson ideas that help students appreciate and embrace their sociocultural heritage--by creating, performing, and listening to soundscapes that are representative of…

Research examining the outcome of pediatric cochlear implantation consists of certain limitations, including the use of assessments that are often restricted to auditory-spoken skills, biased recruitment practices, and lack of consideration for identity development. To better understand the long-term outcome of implantation, it is vital to seek…

Although it has been established that human beings process concrete and abstract words differently, it is still a matter of debate what factors contribute to this difference. Since concrete concepts are closely tied to sensory perception, perceptual experience seems to play an important role in their processing. The present study investigated the…

Female adolescent voice change (FAVC) is characterized by objectively measurable developments in both physiological and acoustical aspects of voice. Despite these observable changes, this period of vocal development has had little representation in both scientific and pedagogical research. Furthermore, few studies have articulated the perceptions…

All language use reflects the user's social identity in systematic ways. While humans can easily adapt to this sociolinguistic variation, automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems continue to struggle with it. This dissertation makes three main contributions. The first is to provide evidence that modern state-of-the-art commercial ASR systems…

The wide use of English has given rise to the World Englishes (WE) paradigm, within which there has been a growing interest in the pedagogical implications of the varieties of English. A frequently documented rationale for the marriage between second language education and WE is that WE users should be aware of the potential problems in WE…

Over the past few decades perspectives on second language (L2) pronunciation have evolved from pessimistic appraisals of the capabilities of L2 learners and doubts about the value of instruction to a view of pronunciation teaching as an effective and important part of language pedagogy. Earlier research on the teaching of pronunciation dwelt…

Five first-hand Web page accounts of unusual sensory perceptual experiences written by persons with high-functioning autism were selected for qualitative analysis. Four core categories emerged: turbulent sensory perceptual experiences; coping mechanisms; enjoyable sensory perceptual experiences; and awareness of being different, suggesting they…

This guide for parents of children with dyslexia begins with case summaries of several children who exhibited reading and other academic problems that were later diagnosed as dyslexia. Misconceptions about dyslexia are refuted, and developmental problems in the areas of auditory perception, visual perception, and language processing are discussed.…

"The Oxford Handbook of Deaf Studies, Language, and Education, Volume 2," is an updated edition of the landmark original volume. A range of international experts present a comprehensive overview of the field of deaf studies, language, and education. This area has grown dramatically over the past forty years. From work on the linguistics…

This report presents an evaluation of a bilingual education program in which English-speaking children receive most of their school instruction in French. The paper discusses details of the program and curriculum and reports on the tests conducted to evaluate the program. Results are presented of tests examining English and French language skills,…

We are delighted to welcome you to the International Psychological Applications Conference and Trends (InPACT) 2016, taking place in Lisbon, Portugal, from 30 of April to 2 of May, 2016. Psychology, nowadays, offers a large range of scientific fields where it can be applied. The goal of understanding individuals and groups (mental functions and…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 22 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: relationships between decoding skills and reading comprehension in college students, speed of retrieval of verbal information and patterns of oral reading errors,…