This study is based on Second Language Acquisition through blended learning and explores the application of new educational technologies in the development of distance education. In particular, the paper focuses on ways to enhance oral, aural, and intercultural skills through learners' engagement, develop authentic social interaction and…

By three years of age, children are skilled at assessing under which circumstances others can see things. However, nothing is known about whether they can use this knowledge to guide their own deceptive behaviour. Here we investigated 3-year-olds' ability to strategically inhibit or conceal forbidden actions that a nearby adult experimenter could…

Neonates prefer human speech to other nonlinguistic auditory stimuli. However, it remains an open question whether there are any conceptual consequences of words on object categorization in infants younger than 6 months. The current study examined the influence of words and tones on object categorization in forty-six 3- to 4-month-old infants.…

We evaluated the effects of a training package, including instructions, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback, for training staff members to conduct mand training with children. Experimenters collected data on staff performance on each step of a task analysis of mand training and on unprompted child vocal mands. Training resulted in increases in staff…

Purpose: The Speech Transmission Index (STI; Houtgast, Steeneken, & Plomp, 1980; Steeneken & Houtgast, 1980) is commonly used to quantify the adverse effects of reverberation and stationary noise on speech intelligibility for normal-hearing listeners. Duquesnoy and Plomp (1980) showed that the STI can be applied for presbycusic listeners, relating…

Using a two-way signaled active avoidance (2-AA) learning procedure, where rats were trained in a shuttle box to avoid a footshock signaled by an auditory stimulus, we tested the contributions of the lateral (LA), basal (B), and central (CE) nuclei of the amygdala to the expression of instrumental active avoidance conditioned responses (CRs).…

The process of word segmentation is flexible, with many strategies potentially available to learners. This experiment explores how segmentation cues interact, and whether successful resolution of cue competition is related to general executive functioning. Participants listened to artificial speech streams that contained both statistical and…

Literature on sound sensitivity in individuals with and without autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is reviewed in this article. Empirical evidence is examined, and physiologic and psychoemotional-behavioral perspectives are described. There is virtually no evidence of true physiological differences in auditory systems of individuals with ASD. It is…

It is well attested that 14-month-olds have difficulty learning similar sounding words (e.g., bih/dih), despite their excellent phonetic discrimination abilities. By contrast, Rost and McMurray (2009) recently demonstrated that 14-month-olds' minimal-pair learning can be improved by the presentation of words by multiple talkers. This study…

Purpose: Delayed auditory feedback is a technique that can improve fluency in stutterers, while disrupting fluency in many nonstuttering individuals. The aim of this study was to determine the neural basis for the detection of and compensation for such a delay, and the effects of increases in the delay duration. Method: Positron emission…

This study assessed a simple behavioral strategy for reducing stereotypic tongue protrusion and forward head tilting displayed by a woman and a man with severe to profound intellectual disabilities. The strategy involved (a) auditory prompting (i.e., verbal encouragements to keep the tongue in the mouth or the head upright) delivered automatically…

Remember-Know (RK) and source memory tasks were designed to elucidate processes underlying memory retrieval. As part of more complex judgments, both tests produce a measure of old-new recognition, which is typically treated as equivalent to that derived from a standard recognition task. The present study demonstrates, however, that recognition…

Background: Previous studies have highlighted that episodes of crying of children with autistic disorder (AD) were perceived as inexplicable from their parents who could not identify causative factors. These results supported the view of AD as related to a problem of expressing and sharing emotions. Moreover, no evidence has been presented on…

The perception of time is heavily influenced by attention and memory, both of which change over the lifespan. In the current study, children (8 yrs), young adults (18-25 yrs), and older adults (60-75 yrs) were tested on a duration bisection procedure using 3 and 6-s auditory and visual signals as anchor durations. During test, participants were…

Although P3 event-related potential abnormalities have been found in psychopathic individuals, it is unknown whether successful (uncaught) psychopaths and unsuccessful (caught) psychopaths show similar deficits. In this study, P3 amplitude and latency were assessed from a community sample of 121 male adults using an auditory three-stimulus oddball…