Investigates the effects of audiovisual media on preschool children's attitudes toward music presentations from "The Lion King" and "Fantasia." Finds that the listening times for music-plus-video presentations of both selections were longer and a majority of the children expressed a preference for "The Lion King" over "Fantasia." (CMK)

Although educators can do little to change students' out-of-school environments, they can use inhouse suspension time to help them behave more responsibly and become more resilient in handling daily pressures. The adult in charge should assume the role of a supportive resource, establish a personal connection with students, listen, take interest,…

A study found that, when temporal characteristics of stops in a Spanish utterance by a native English-speaker were computer-manipulated, native Spanish-speakers' perceptions of the foreignness of the speech were affected. Results imply that Spanish language instruction should include instruction to shorten stops to more Spanish-like values,…

This study compared effects of two styles of storybook reading on the interpretations of two preschool children experiencing delayed language development. One used expansions and cloze procedures; the other provided questions and modeling of appropriate answers. Children produced more answers to questions, more interpretations, and more complex…

This study examined the abilities of adult listeners to discriminate and identify temporal order of sounds presented in tonal sequence. Listeners had either normal hearing or mild to moderate sensorineural hearing losses. In general, older listeners performed more poorly than younger listeners on the discrimination and identification tasks. Order…

Three experiments investigated listeners' ability to detect disfluency in spontaneous speech. All three employed gated word recognition with judgments of disfluency for spontaneous utterances containing disfluencies and for three kinds of fluent control utterances from the same six speakers. (Author/JL)

Explores the importance of emotional expression in music performance. Performers played music to express different emotions and then listening tests were conducted in order to determine whether the intended expressions were perceived. Presents and discusses the results. (CMK)

Reports on a study that investigated the listening comprehension of 60 primary school students who were in their second year of learning English as a foreign language. Students listened to two tales that had been simplified under two different conditions: (1) with linguistic adjustments, and (2) with linguistic and interactional adjustments…

Native and experienced nonnatives listened to a text while performing a concurrent task. Half of each group was given the topic of the passage. Scores on the concurrent task were compared with baseline to index working memory (WM) consumption. Results showed greater WM consumption for nonnatives than natives when the topic was unavailable,…

Addresses the fundamental nature of improvisation in the music-learning process. Identifies practical techniques for incorporating improvisation as a part of all music classes and offers criteria for teachers and students to use while evaluating improvisations. States that the techniques offer a means for creating an environment conducive to risk…

Thirty-one City University of Hong Kong students for whom English is a second language viewed an English-language videotaped lecture, while 32 students viewed the same lecture with most of the discourse markers deleted. The students comprehended the lecture better when the discourse markers were included than when they were deleted. Contains 52…

This article suggests that the development of listening skills should extend to the "soundscape" of nonspeech acoustical information. It presents a model for effective aural processing, identifies categories of information obtained from nonverbal sound, and explores "ear-tuning" or listening exercises that use sound to glean…

Discusses the cognitive developmental understanding of empathy as role-taking, focusing on four different perspectives. Considers a theory of cognitive role-taking and issues about transformation. Addresses empathy in relation to identity formation and its contribution to self-understanding. Offers implications for educating adults for empathy and…

Discusses communication obstacles music educators encounter and considers constructivist listening as a means for music educators to assist one another with discipline and management issues. Describes activities for use in a seminar entitled "Real Life in the Music Classroom: Creating Positive Discipline and Management." (CMK)

Looks at growth in listening comprehension of 146 children from third grade to fifth grade and their fifth-grade estimate of accumulated wide reading as measured by an instrument using a checklist-with-foils logic, the Title Recognition Test. Indicates that individual differences in growth of listening comprehension from third grade to fifth grade…