A study examined the effects of conversational themes and attention-focusing strategies on conversational comprehension. The variables in the study were (1) the presentation of ambiguous versus unambiguous themes of conversations, (2) using personal versus content-oriented themes in conversations, and (3) presenting listeners with personal versus…

Four activities are suggested to develop student appreciation for the relationships between listening and the other language arts. The activities are designed to improve on present classroom instruction, which usually provides little time for formal oral language instruction. Each activity begins with some aspect of oral language training and…

A study was conducted to determine the effect of a program of listening skills on the reading comprehension of fourth grade students. After a pretest, an experimental group of 12 boys and 12 girls was selected randomly from four classrooms and a control group was selected with matched pretest scores. The experimental group was taught using…

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the efficacy of various strategies for improving the reading comprehension of readers with deficits in decoding and vocabulary skills. Ninety-six subjects (48 deficit readers and 48 average readers) of approximately the same age and intelligence were selected from a lower socioeconomic middle…

In this study, rate controlled speech is defined as speech that is reproduced in less time or in more time than the time required for its original production. The particular comprehension skills of interest were: the ability to detect main ideas; the ability to determine supporting details; and the ability to draw conclusions. These skills were…

Traditional tests of auditory discrimination require children to match successively-presented syllables in short term memory. In the normal course of events perceptual confusions occur as a mismatch between an utterance and stored linguistic data. A speech sound perception task based on matching-to-memory was constructed and administered to 80…

The main purpose of this study was to determine whether partially imposed imagery can be faciliatative in children's oral prose learning at an age where fully induced imagery is not. The results of this experiment are somewhat consistent with this speculation. While kindergarten subjects benefited only with fully imposed imagery, second grade…

This experiment was designed to test the influence of selected variables characteristic of both normal listening and listening under test conditions to determine whether test incentives negate or interact with the normal listening process. Public speaking classes at the University of Montana were asked as part of their regular classwork to rate…

Ability to follow imperatives with one to five separate directives was measured in 18 retarded (mean IQ 50) and 18 nonretarded adolescents. Recorded were the number and sequence of directions correctly followed as well as the types of errors made. The retarded adolescent demonstrated deficiencies in following two, three, and four directives, while…

This paper is concerned with the role of compressed speech in research related to auditory attention within the human information processing system. This brief review of some of the research using compressed speech shows that the primary research emphasis has been in the applied areas. It also suggests some areas where compressed speech research…

In a study of the relation between listening performance and reading performance, a standardized listening test ("Sequential Test of Educational Progress") and a reading test ("Stanford Achievement Battery of Tests") were administered to 247 sixth-grade pupils in Decatur, Alabama. The problem of the study was divided into three parts: (1)…

Research indicates that listening skills can be improved through direct and indirect instruction in listening; that reading and listening comprehension skills are closely related; that they both involve the same mental processes; and that instruction in either skill affects the other favorably. Little emphasis is placed on teaching listening…

The major purpose of this study was to investigate the potential usefulness of compressed speech as a reading improvement technique. It was hypothesized that reading comprehension, reading rate, and listening ability would show improvement when highly speeded auditory presentations of connected meaningful material were employed systematically over…

A series of experiments explored the feasibility of substituting listening for reading requirements in Army training and jobs, with special reference to marginally literate, AFQT Mental Category IV men. Results of these experiments and related earlier research are summarized. Major findings indicate that high and low aptitude men may learn certain…