A pivotal period in the development of language occurs in the second year of life, when language comprehension undergoes rapid acceleration. However, the brain bases of these advances remain speculative as there is currently no functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from healthy, typically developing toddlers at this age. We…

Listeners can explicitly categorize unfamiliar talkers by regional dialect with above-chance performance under ideal listening conditions. However, the extent to which this important source of variation affects speech processing is largely unknown. In a series of four experiments, we examined the effects of dialect variation on speech…

The purpose of this study is to investigate aspects of musical interpretation and suggest guidelines for developing performance students' interpretative processes. Since musical interpretation involves basic issues concerning the nature of music, and competing concepts of "interpretation" and its teaching, an overview of these issues is given.…

This article attempts to hold thought open in a textual space that often forecloses thought. The authors present arguments but work them through poetry, memoir, pictures, and exposition. They frame this work in particular as an improvisation around--and intervention into--more familiar practices of collective biography, narrative, and art…

Background: Down syndrome (DS) is characterized by impaired memory span, particularly auditory verbal memory span. Memory span is linked developmentally to several language capabilities, and may be a basic capacity that enables language learning. If children with DS had better memory span, they might benefit more from language intervention. The…

Little is known about the effects of listener characteristics or listening conditions on intelligibility scores. This study compared intelligibility scores of dysarthric speech achieved under a standard listening condition with those obtained in non-standard conditions and investigated the effect of listener age, gender and familiarity with…

The role of cohesion and script in note-taking for consecutive interpretation is discussed. Because note-taking is closely associated with comprehension and memory, the discussion looks first at the function of previously stored knowledge, both linguistically and culturally, which is known as script, and grammatical and lexical cohesion in…

This paper on a research project on aural learning briefly (1) describes some of the difficulties which define the problem of aural learning; (2) discusses how that problem has been attacked in the past and why the author has elected not to follow that tradition; and (3) outlines an alternative approach. Research procedures are outlined and…

The dichotic listening paradigm in relation to specific reading disability was investigated with 58 severely disabled readers and 58 above-average readers (all 9-year-old males). Comparison of scores from a Dichotic Digits Task and Dichotic Sides and Types Tasks indicated that disabled readers performed worse than controls in the overall right-ear…

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…

THE INTERRELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN LISTENING AND READING ARE DISCUSSED. SOME COMMON ELEMENTS BETWEEN THE TWO SKILLS ARE VOCABULARY, SENTENCE PATTERNS, ORGANIZATION OF IDEAS, AND ADJUSTMENT TO THE FUNCTION OF LANGUAGE. LISTENING COMPREHENSION IS POSITIVELY RELATED TO READING COMPREHENSION. READING AND LISTENING INVOLVE THE SAME MENTAL PROCESSES --…

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…

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…

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 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…