Hearing-impaired speechreaders use linguistic context to compensate for the poor visibility of some speech movements. Constraints on spoken language enhance speechreading performance and help compensate for the paucity of sensory data. The largest effects come from linguistic constraints imposed by sentence context--syntactic, semantic, and…

Twenty-two subjects with autism were tested on three perspective-taking tasks. Subjects were successful on two tasks that required them to make relatively direct connections between eating and hunger or visual access and knowledge. They failed a task which used stimuli of a more transient nature and less predictable reactions of the protagonists.…

Six-month-old infants recognize a cue 24 hours after training in the original context but not in a different one. It is demonstrated that this retrieval deficit could be overcome if infants are briefly and passively exposed to a novel context. Concludes that each training episode is encoded in terms of the context in which it occurs. Contains 48…

This study investigated the use of the Task Demonstration Model (TDM) with 3 groups of students (ages 16-21) with severe or moderate retardation and compared it with the Standard Prompting Hierarchy. Percent and rate of correct responses indicate that TDM can be effective in a concurrent model of group instruction. (Author/JDD)

A genre analysis of 284 essay examination prompts reveals specific discoursal characteristics that function to communicate what type of response will be considered legitimate. The finding suggests that, for test-takers to decode prompts, they must draw from the same functional/linguistic knowledge of genre that the test constructor did. (15…

Four experiments involving 42 Harvard University students and 35 subjects addressing the role of attention in phonetic perception demonstrate that attention influences the signal-to-noise ratio in the phonetic encoding of acoustic cues. Implications for understanding speech perception and general theories of the role of attention in perception are…

An experiment tested differences in story comprehension of a video-played silent sequence to one group of British native speakers of English and to three groups of nonnative speakers of English with different backgrounds. Comprehension results, measured by questions and summary writing, indicate that nonnative speakers are less able to recognize…

Data from 48 infants revealed (1) that infants aged 1;2-2;3 failed to establish a stable word-object link even in follow-in labeling and (2) that only infants aged 1;6-1;7 could identify the correct referent during discrepant labeling. During the period between 1;2-1;7 infants are becoming increasingly adept at acquiring new labels under minimal…

Drawing on the empirical literature on classroom interaction and nonverbal communication, attempts to show that latent sex discrimination in schools continues. Finds that teachers expect and encourage more participation by boys. Girls are more often interrupted and are expected to be better listeners. (DM)

Argues that, given the expanding audience of non-native readers of English and the need to translate technical writing, technical writing should be unambiguous and predictable. Explains what syntactic cues are and why technical communicators should use them. Discusses integrating this approach into established documentation processes, and provides…

A meta-analysis of 21 instructional treatments aimed at enhancing the skill of deliberately deriving word meaning from context during reading shows a medium effect size of 0.43 standard deviation units. Exploratory multilevel regression shows that clue instruction appears more effective than other instruction types or practice alone. (Author/SLD)

Four visual lexical decision experiments using the masked priming paradigm tested for effects of prime word frequency and cumulative root frequency with primes varying in degree of morphological and orthographic overlap with free root targets in French. (Author/VWL)

Begins with a review of research on learning style differences associated with autism, then examines instructional strategies of both behavioral and incidental teaching methods. Using an illustrative case study, it describes how visually cued instruction can be applied with autistic children who are visual learners. (DB)

Argues that successful tutoring depends, in part, on child tutors' ability to recognize and interpret accurately signs of misunderstanding by their tutees. Investigates age and gender differences in perceiving cues to misunderstanding. Finds that older children and females more accurately interpret signs of confusion and that females can better…

This study found that delivering data cards to three special education teacher aides prompting them to conduct daily social-greeting probes of students with severe disabilities was effective in increasing the level of probing and was accompanied by less variability, higher sustained probing rates, and more equitable probing compared to not using…