Significant differences between dyslexic children and controls were found in identification and discrimination of synthesized voiced stop consonants differing in place of articulation. Results suggest an inconsistency in the dyslexics' phonetic classification of auditory cues. A significant relationship was found between reading level and speech…

The perception of syllable-initial stop consonants as voiced or voiceless was shown to depend on prevailing rate of articulation. Reducing articulatory rate of a precursor phrase causes a greater proportion of test consonants to be identified as voiced. Timing should be regarded as intrinsic to the acoustical specifications of phonetic events.…

Effects of passive environmental conditions (quiet, radio, and television) and manipulable objects (no toys, toys, toys plus staff interaction) on stereotypic behaviors of four institutionalized mentally retarded adults with high rates of stereotypic behavior were evaluated. (Author)

Children 7, 9, 11, 13, and 15 years of age were tested on their ability to identify simultaneous and time-staggered dichotic consonant-vowel stimuli. (JBM)

Results of perceptual tests administered to 50 retarded readers and 50 average readers in third grade indicated a significant difference between the two groups on visual sequential memory for letters. (CL)

This study sought to develop the picture-interpretation strategies of fourth-grade children by providing training in the use of such verbal guidelines as "Help yourself to all the given information." The program apparently helped the children produce more inferences, but did not enhance their skills in evaluating inferences. (Author/JEG)

Separate experiments focusing on attention to multiple stimuli, psychological refractory period, and motor coordination demonstrated that emergent aspects of the whole situation must also be considered. Performance under divided attention reflected an interaction between resource limitation, single task processes, and emergent aspects of the whole…

Reports on two experiments, one performed on infants, the other on adults, designed to examine the issue of categorical perception of speech contrasts in infants in relation to linguistic processing and the innateness theory of speech perception. (AM)

This study investigates the phenomenon that listeners of English were surprisingly accurate at predicting the temporal end of a sentence when only given the part up to the "potentially last word," that is a noun before an optional prepositional phrase of varying lengths. Results of four experiments using either French or English are given. (35…

Discusses "cued shadowing," during which subjects listen to pairs of words or sentences and repeat a target word signalled by a cue. Rapid semantic and grammatical priming effects have been observed with this technique, both with word and sentence contexts and at different positions within sentence contexts, in normal children and adults, and in…

Describes the different priming procedures and experimental variables used for gaining access to the nature of the lexical representation of morphological information and summarizes the experimental data collected across different languages. Notes that responses to a target word in auditory word recognition tasks can be facilitated when the word…

A review of 10 research articles on the use of auditory prompting systems with persons with moderate to severe disabilities found a functional relationship between the use of an audio prompt system and increased task performance. Results support the use of an audio prompt system as an effective intervention. (Contains references.) (CR)

A 14-year-old student with moderate retardation rode a stationary bicycle, while rotation of the bicycle wheel operated one of three consequence conditions (television, flashing lights, or vibrator sound). Vibrator sound was the most potent reinforcing consequence. The activity led to the development of exercise behavior with a minimum amount of…

Examined the possibility that auditory stimuli with properties of adult-to-infant speech are more detectable in a noisy ambient environment than ones that resemble adult-to-adult speech. Findings suggests that properties that characterize adult-to-infant speech may compensate for young infants' low-frequency deficits and therefore facilitate the…