This study compared the phonological awareness ability of 11 children (ages 6-8) with persistent phonological impairment to that of 11 phonologically normal children. Phonologically normal children scored higher on three of the four phonological awareness measures, with no differences on word recognition. Speech intelligibility was a significant…

Infants of five, seven, and nine months were shown two video images on monitors placed side by side. Images were accompanied by a soundtrack that matched one of the images. Results indicated that age-related changes in infants' coordination of auditory and visual depth information took place between the ages of five and nine months. (SH)

Investigates the contributions of tonal syllables, hand signs, and letter representations of tonal syllables to the development of verbal and symbolic tonal skills of first grade students. Finds no method to be significantly better than another. Concludes that tonal aptitude is the most significant predictor of tonal syllable and pitch…

This study evaluated English phrases and sentences in a minimal-pairs syllable-test format, to assess use of acoustic cues in audiovisual perception of speech by persons with severe or profound hearing loss. Of 48 items, 39 were visually confusable; 16 items identified as visually confusable were reliably identifiable when sound was added.…

This article presents a framework for modifying traditional auditory therapy techniques to address the needs of hearing-impaired children with cochlear implants. Emphasis is on activities that encourage carry-over of skills from structured to unstructured settings resembling listening in a natural environment. (DB)

Investigates two problems: (1) do learning effects accrue in accuracy or response time when computerized tests are administered in two sessions? and (2) what are the effects of tonal pattern order and contour types on average item difficulty and length of response time for children with different levels of achievement? (DSK)

Nine adults with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) and nine age- and IQ-matched adults with PWS completed standardized tests of long-term and short-term memory, visual and auditory processing, and reading and mathematics achievement. Contrary to previous findings, long-term memory in PWS subjects was strong relative to IQ and there was no evidence that…

This article critiques the theoretical basis of the Fast ForWord program, a computer-assisted language intervention program for children with language-learning impairments. It notes undocumented treatment outcomes and questions the clinical methods associated with the procedures. Fifteen cautionary statements are provided that clinicians may want…

We addressed the hypothesis that word segmentation based on statistical regularities occurs without the need of attention. Participants were presented with a stream of artificial speech in which the only cue to extract the words was the presence of statistical regularities between syllables. Half of the participants were asked to passively listen…

This study tested the segmentation hypothesis of dyslexia by measuring implicit phonological representations in reading-disabled 11- to 13-year-olds. Implicit measures included lexical gating, priming, and syllable similarity tasks designed to reduce metalinguistic demands. Children with dyslexia performed consistently worse than CA and RA…

The purpose of this review is to discuss the importance of treatment efficacy research in language comprehension in MR/DD populations. Although receptive language deficit is an integral part of most MR/DD typologies, there have been relatively few studies evaluating the effectiveness or efficacy of treatment for this condition. Recently, there has…

While the Auditory-Verbal approach has been a popular intervention option for children with hearing loss since the 1940s. few empirical studies have evaluated the communication and academic outcomes of those children who have participated in this intervention approach. The focus of this article is to discuss the standards of evidence-based…

The speech perception system must be flexible in responding to the variability in speech sounds caused by differences among speakers and by language change over the lifespan of the listener. Indeed, listeners use lexical knowledge to retune perception of novel speech (Norris, McQueen, & Cutler, 2003). In that study, Dutch listeners made…

A proximal cause of reading disabilities is a deficit in phonological processing. A consequence of this deficit is inferior performance in one or more cognitive operations that use phonological information, including phonological awareness, lexical retrieval, and verbal memory. Some assert that these phonological processing difficulties are the…

Event-related potentials (ERPs) to tone pairs and single tones were measured for 16 participants with specific language impairment (SLI) and 16 age-matched controls aged from 10 to 19 years. The tone pairs were separated by an inter-stimulus interval (ISI) of 20, 50 or 150 ms. The intraclass correlation (ICC) was computed for each participant…