The results of two experiments indicate that the two phonological properties of a word, its initial phoneme and length, strongly influence the latency to detect a target phoneme which begins the following word. Studies showing increased detection latencies following ambiguity are analyzed. (SW)

Examination of the influence of verbal working memory on sentence comprehension in 12 children with specific language impairment suggested that: (1) these children have less functional verbal working memory capacity than chronological age peers and (2) have greater difficulty managing working memory and general processing abilities than both age…

The primary purpose of the study was the improvement of reading, listening and verbal comprehension skills through the use of six weeks of compressed speech during language arts classes. (Author)

An experiment is reported which shows that with identical preceding context, the same initial phoneme targets contained in high transitional probability words were responded to significantly faster than those in low transitional probability words. The result argues for the importance of transitional probability as an independent variable in…

The effectiveness of D. Ausubel's Advance Organizer, an introduction presented before the material to be taught, was tested with 96 mildly retarded adolescents. Results of a three-way analysis of variance indicated a facilitative effect under the written presentation, especially for high-level questions and a negative effect under the oral…

This study compared verbal comprehension, verbal production, and gesture production in 40 children (ages 10-49 months) with Down Syndrome (DS) and 40 normally developing children (ages 8-17 months). DS children showed a dissociation between verbal comprehension and production but synchronous development between vocal lexical comprehension and…

Two detection experiments were conducted with short lists of synthetic speech stimuli where phoneme targets were compared to syllable targets. Results suggest that phonemes and syllables are equally basic to speech perception. (Author/RM)

How verbal information is processed and recalled appears to be influenced by the structure of the information presented (e.g., unrelated sentences vs. narratives) and the processes the listener uses to encode the information (e.g., verbatim encoding vs. gist extraction). Twenty adults, half with a history of learning disabilities (HLD) and half…

Two studies examined children's perceptual biases in extracting or identifying words from the stream of speech. In one study, evidence for the salience of stressed and final syllables was found. Young children less frequently omitted those syllables from their productions and produced unstressed and nonfinal syllables less accurately. A second…

Investigations of the effects of visual imagery and pictorial stimuli on young children's oral prose learning indicated: (1) age differences affect the ability to profit from self-generated imagery; (2) experimenter-provided cues help to generate imagery; and (3) the type of cue provided relates to the kind of information recalled. (Author/GDC)

Assessed were the effects of verbal placeholding and full verbal rehearsal (verbalizing aloud the critical components and sequence) on the direction following behavior of 14 institutionalized retarded adolescents (mean IQ 48). A control group from the same institution participated in practice sessions without the verbal rehearsal stress. Pre- and…

Explored the relative effectiveness of four modes of delivery (live, video-audio, audio, and manuscript) on content retention among Black college students. Did not find significant differences in retention among the four experimental groups. Attributes the absence of differences to the small amount retained in general. (GC)

This study investigated children's performance with the passive-transformation when both the mode of presentation and the mode of response were verbal. The study was also designed to provide a framework for the examination of theoretical issues regarding strategies in speech perception. Kindergarten and first-grade children individually heard 6…

Findings imply that while preschool children both enjoy and profit from listening to stories read to them in unelaborated fashion, they gain much more from observing and participating in the actions portrayed in the stories. (FL)

Children with language deficiencies in grades two through four received instruction in listening comprehension. One-half of the children in each grade verbalized explicit strategies prior to applying them to questions. Strategy self-verbalization led to high self-efficacy across grades and promoted performance among third and fourth graders.…