Study concludes that short-term listening is apparently an information processing skill that differs importantly from short-term memory and is related not only to a "delivery" factor but also to ability in oral communication. (JMF)

The effects of verbal and pictorial organizing material on comprehension of paragraphs was investigated with second- and fifth-graders. Results suggest that knowledge of the interrelationships among elements is important, if not essential, for the comprehension of prose material. (Author/RC)

Notes that presbycusis, hearing loss associated with aging, may be marked by a second dimension of hearing loss, a loss in vocalic sensitivity. Reports on the development of the Vocalic Sensitivity Test, which controls for the verbal elements in speech while also allowing for the vocalics to exercise their normal metacommunicative function of…

A study investigated the effect of foreign accent and speaking rate on native English speaker comprehension. Three native Chinese speakers and one native speaker of American English read passages at different speaking rates. Comprehension scores showed that an increase in speaking rate and heavily accented English decreased listener comprehension.…

Investigated the ability of six children at ages 24, 26, 28, 30, 33, and 36 months to understand the topic of talk not addressed to them. Analyzed children's intrusions into conversations between their mothers and older siblings. Results indicated that intrusions formed a considerable proportion of children's talk. (RJC)

Analysis of the effect of an authentic, unedited French radio program on student listening skills found that listening comprehension improved with increased exposure to authentic speech, suggesting that adjusting levels of speech speed, content, and form according to students' developing comprehension might not be essential to improving listening…

Investigates the degree to which listeners are sensitive to the social relations expressed in choice of a name when referring to a third person during a conversation. Concludes that the social information inherent in names is picked up by readers and encoded into memory. (HB)

Explores one aspect of the relationship between intonation and punctuation. Outlines the historical development of punctuation, and compares twentieth-century punctuation rules with what is known about the division of connected speech into intonation-groups. Suggests that, where syntactic prescription and intonational usage conflict, a return to…

Examined whether developmental differences exist in availability of inferences during listening comprehension. Presented child and adult subjects with consistent and inconsistent passages to determine outcome of expected and unexpected messages on memory. Found that children were more likely than adults to retain incorrect information in active…

Investigates whether children can demonstrate awareness of musical expression by discriminating between expressive and mechanical music fragments, performing similar songs, and describing the fragments and songs. Indicates task improvement with age, significant differences between kindergarten and fourth-grade scores in perception and description,…

The contribution of reduced speaking rate to the intelligibility of "clear" speech was evaluated by adjusting the durations of speech segments in various ways for both hard-of-hearing listeners and listeners with normal hearing. The intelligibility advantage of clear speech over conversational speech was confirmed for both groups of…

This study evaluated speech intelligibility under noise conditions of varying peaks (10, 20, and 30 decibels) in frequency response, with 26 listeners with sensorineural impaired hearing who used hearing aids and 10 listeners with normal hearing. Results indicated that the peaks affected speech intelligibility more for listeners with impaired than…

We investigated the relationship between ear advantage scores on the Fused Dichotic Words Test (FDWT), and laterality of activation in fMRI using a verb generation paradigm in fourteen children with epilepsy. The magnitude of the laterality index (LI), based on spatial extent and magnitude of activation in classical language areas (BA 44/45,…

Video games have become increasingly more popular and more technologically advanced. This one-month study used interview, observation, self-report, and reading and listening test data to demonstrate and investigate how one intermediate Japanese-as-a-foreign-language (JFL) student improved his listening comprehension and kanji character recognition…

This study examined the hypotheses that (a) the relationship between listening and reading comprehension becomes stronger after decoding mastery; (b) the difference between listening and reading decreases with increasing grade level; and (c) similar patterns of relationship and difference are obtained with narrative and expository texts. The…