A phonetic confusion model and some procedural artifacts were eliminated as sources for individual differences in fusion rate. Results of these two experiments were consistent with the hypothesis that individual differences in fusion rate are due to differences in perceptual dependence on linguistic rules. (Editor/RK)

A multiple regression analysis of sequential effects in magnitude estimation and absolute identification is presented as an alternative to the approach used by Lockhead and his students. The new analysis indicates that sequential effects do not extend over more than one trial. (Editor)

Names of cities were shock associated and then embedded in material presented to the nonattended channel in a dichotic listening and shadowing situation. A test for conditioning followed the dichotic listening task. Comparisons are made with other studies of galvanic skin responses to unattended words. (Editor/RK)

Patients (N=110) at three different clinics were fitted binaurally with linear, in-the-canal hearing aids. In all patient groups, significant improvement in performance was observed for linear amplification and for base increase at low levels (BILL) processing when compared to unaided performance. There were no significant differences in aided…

Discusses two auditory comprehension studies that investigated the role of focus, as conveyed by a pitch accent, in the comprehension of relative clauses preceded by a complex noun phrase. Findings include focus attracts modifiers, and pitch accents for new phrases differ acoustically from pitch accents for contrastive phrases. (46 references)…

Reviews phoneme monitoring studies from 1969 to 1996 and groups them in terms of issues addressed with the task, including the contribution of the lexicon to speech perception, processing complexity, attention, contribution of prosodic information, and the basic unit of speech perception. Identifies and highlights task demands and artifactual…

Argues for the importance of phonological form in the second language (L2) classroom, proposing that a thorough grounding in L2 phonological patterns is essential for language learners. Suggests the importance of phonological information for the auditory detection of morphological form in French. (Author/VWL)

Presents a follow-up of a study of the perceptual acquisition of Thai laryngeal contrasts by native speakers of English, which found that subjects performed better on contrasts in voice than aspiration. This study further investigated possible task effects by examining the discrimination and categorization of the same stimuli in various…

Sixteen children with moderate to profound sensorineural hearing loss were trained on the production and auditory perception of sibilants over two 2-week periods. Perception performance improved significantly during training periods with a small amount of carryover to non-training contrast periods. Improvements in production performance occurred…

This article discusses combining two effective instructional methods (Classwide Peer Tutoring and a spelling strategy) to help students acquire and maintain spelling competence inside and outside of the classroom. The spelling strategy, SPELLER, is a seven-step strategy that uses visual imagery, systematic testing, and auditory reinforcement.…

A non-verbal 12-year-old boy with low functioning autism was tested on an auditory word-to-picture selection task. Picture foils were chosen to have visual features, semantic features, both, or neither in common with the correct answer. Errors were made more often to semantically than to visually related items. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

A perceptual fading technique was used to teach unilingual adult Canadian francophones to identify the voiceless and voiced linguadental fricatives of English. After just 90 minutes of training, subjects were better able to identify both the training stimuli and an untrained set of natural consonant-vowel exemplars produced by 4 different…

The study examined the developmental lag hypothesis for learning disabilities by evaluating dichotic listening ability using both free recall and directed attention conditions in 24 learning disabled (LD) adults. Findings indicated LD adults showed similar deficits in lateralized selective auditory linguistic processing as children with LD. (DB)

This study examined phonological processing in 30 less-skilled third-grade readers, 30 younger children at the same reading level, and 30 more-skilled age mates. The less-skilled readers had significantly lower accuracy scores than both age mates and younger normal readers on word span, word-pair repetition, tongue twister, and, especially,…

Three studies investigated infants' and young children's perception of the unity of musical events. Results indicated that properties specific to musical instrument families are relevant for young children's perception of musical events. Specific experience with a variety of instruments is evidently not necessary for detecting correspondences of…