Examined the processing of speech and nonspeech sounds by 23 reading-disabled children. Children were required to identify and report the order of pairs of stimuli. Children had difficulty with very brief tones and stop consonant syllables at short interstimulus intervals. (SAK)

Reports a study comparing the nonverbal decoding ability (under auditory, visual, and audio-visual conditions) of college age females with elderly females, in order to identify preliminary nonverbal differences which may be related to aging. Finds that the elderly were significantly less skilled in decoding nonverbal behaviors across all…

Hearing-impaired speechreaders focus on visual characteristics of speech sounds, termed visemes. Determination of viseme groupings requires consideration of the sound's visible characteristics and articulatory differences of speakers. Coarticulation effects that modify viseme groups include vowel-context effects on consonant viseme groupings,…

Mothers (n=26) who were incest survivors were compared with 28 mothers with no such history for 7 areas of parenting skills: role-image, objectivity, expectations, rapport, communication, limit-setting, and role-support. Significant differences were found on all seven scales, characterized by a tendency for the incest survivors to be less skillful…

This article describes the physiological mechanisms involved in three-dimensional depth perception and presents a variety of distance and depth cues and strategies for detecting and estimating curbs and steps for individuals with impaired vision. (Author/DB)

Hearing-impaired and normal hearing children in 2 age groups (5-6 years and 9-12 years) were observed for possible differences in their perception and production of intonation. Results indicated that imitation of intonation carried on nonsense syllables was not affected by age. Hearing-impaired subjects scored much lower than controls in imitating…

Four experiments examined how perception affects delayed recognition, visual pop out, and memory reactivation (priming) in six month olds. Infants discriminated cues differing in spatial arrangement or number of primitive perceptual units (textons) in a delayed recognition task and exhibited adultlike visual pop-out effects in a priming task. (MDM)

A 2-alternative forced-choice task was used to measure the ability of 18 children (ages 3 to 5) to detect varying levels of sinusoids in noise. Results showed that, on average, the children's thresholds were higher and the slopes of their psychometric functions were shallower than those of adults, though between-subjects variability was large.…

Studied 4- to 10-year-olds' familiarity judgments of peers. Found that, contrary to adults, external facial features were key. Also found that the switch to adult recognition pattern takes place after the ninth year. (ETB)

Results of a study involving 15 mentally retarded and 15 nonretarded control subjects matched for mental age suggest that some low-level aspects of person-related (and probably object-related) perception may not involve the same high-level symbolic functions typically employed in intelligence-quotient related functions. (SLD)

Compares family role dysfunction, college adjustment, chemical dependence, and family functioning among college students (n=245) from three groups: dysfunctional homes with significant substance abuse; dysfunctional homes without significant substance abuse; and nonabusing, nondysfunctional homes. Results suggest that substance abuse or dependence…

This paper examines the special considerations involved in selecting a speech perception test battery for young deaf children. The auditory-only tests consisted of closed-set word identification tasks and minimal-pairs syllable tasks. Additional tests included identification of words in sentences, open-set word recognition, and evaluation of…

Examined cerebral activation during sign language comprehension in six persons with deafness and nine hearing persons, all of whose parents were deaf. The group with deafness showed more activation than the hearing group in the right parieto-occipital region, indicating that they were more dependent on the spatial components in sign language than…

Two experiments examined children's ability to use lengths of lines on a page to show orientations of object surfaces. Found that five- and six-year olds are more reluctant to depart from actual object proportions than seven- and eight-year olds, but children in both age groups can foreshorten line lengths to indicate surfaces receding from a…

Reviews briefly how imagery is integral to knowing and thinking, and how perception and reason do indeed reside under the same blanket. Details two college writing assignments that require writers to engage in "imaginal processes" in proportion to their verbal process. (SR)