The study compared the developmental patterns of listening and reading skills of 71 visually handicapped students in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades of four residential schools for the blind. Grade level, age, intelligence, mode of reading, sex, socioeconomic status, and degree of visual impairment were treated as predictor variables. (Author)

Discusses techniques used in advertising parity products (products that do not differ from brand to brand) to attract children's attention and advocates consumer education for children to make them aware of advertising claims. (HTH)

Outlines a four step plan (Model, Assess, Prepare, and Practice) to improve students' listening attitudes and skills, primarily through teacher modeling. (Author/SJL)

The article reviews the literature on auditory perceptual impairments in children with language disorders. It is suggested that, rather than a higher order cognitive or "linguistic" deficit, the underlying deficit in childhood language disorders is a perceptual one. (Author)

Gives suggestions for surmounting the technical and linguistic problems associated with radio use in the classroom with "less-able" students. The documentary or travelogue combines the audio with visual reinforcement. Survival situations encourage listening. The modular/thematic/functional approach is also described. (PJM)

Both male and female subjects recalled more information from presentations made by male speakers than from identical presentations made by female speakers. The sex-appropriateness of the topics had no effect on a speaker's effectiveness in conveying information. (Author/MC)

The effects of verbal and pictorial organizing material on comprehension of paragraphs was investigated with second- and fifth-graders. Results suggest that knowledge of the interrelationships among elements is important, if not essential, for the comprehension of prose material. (Author/RC)

Examines whether listeners efficiently exploit sentence prosody to direct attention to words bearing sentence accent. Four studies are reported. Results suggest that less efficient mapping of prosody to semantics may be one way in which nonnative listening fails to equal native listening. (Author/VWL)

Explores the educational value of administrators creating a climate of "open listening" in their schools. Includes case study. (Contains 34 references.) (PKP)

Notes that presbycusis, hearing loss associated with aging, may be marked by a second dimension of hearing loss, a loss in vocalic sensitivity. Reports on the development of the Vocalic Sensitivity Test, which controls for the verbal elements in speech while also allowing for the vocalics to exercise their normal metacommunicative function of…

Discusses the importance of the spoken word and the tradition of nursery verse and other forms of poetry. Encourages teachers and students to never abandon the rhythm, balance, and pleasurable taste of language as it was first learned through oral chants, jingles, and rhymes of early childhood. (MG)

A study investigated the effect of foreign accent and speaking rate on native English speaker comprehension. Three native Chinese speakers and one native speaker of American English read passages at different speaking rates. Comprehension scores showed that an increase in speaking rate and heavily accented English decreased listener comprehension.…

Investigated the ability of six children at ages 24, 26, 28, 30, 33, and 36 months to understand the topic of talk not addressed to them. Analyzed children's intrusions into conversations between their mothers and older siblings. Results indicated that intrusions formed a considerable proportion of children's talk. (RJC)

The study with three adult stutterers evaluated the effects of instructions to rate and modify the naturalness of their speech and compared their self evaluations with evaluations of listeners. (Author/DB)