Two studies investigated how components of speaking rate, articulation rate and pause rate, combine to influence processing of the silence-duration cue for the voicing distinction in medial stop consonants. Listeners adjust for both articulation rate and pause rate changes in articulation rate had more effect on phonetic judgments. (Author/RD)

Fifty-three children (ages 5-9) were individually tested on their ability to select pictures of monosyllabic words presented diotically via headphones. Tasks were presented in quiet and under three noise (distractor) conditions: white noise, speech backwards, and speech forward. Age and type of distractor significantly influenced test scores.…

Judging plausibility is argued to be a more efficient strategy than direct retrieval (finding a propositional match) to judge a statement's truth. A proposed model contrasts the strategies in terms of verbatim memory and duration. Direct retrieval is faster when verbatim traces are strong, but plausibility judgment is more efficient over time.…

An encoding algorithm uses empirically determined confusion matrices to activate units in an alphabetum and a lexicon to predict performance of word, orthographically regular nonword, or irregular nonword recognition. Performance is enhanced when decisions are based on lexical information which constrains test letter identity. Word prediction…

Different tasks were compared using the same subjects, stimuli, and experimental methodology. The results indicate that the lexical-decision task does tend to produce greater inhibition effects than the naming task. (Author/PN)

Presented children (N=96) aged 8-11 with verbal pain or nonpain stimuli contingent or noncontingent on a target response. Delivered stimuli within an aggressive or nonaggressive setting and with or without affect. Type of setting did not influence the behavior, but stimuli delivered in an affective manner did facilitate responding. (Author/RC)

Suggests the relative importance of the mediating and rhetorical roles of verbal language whch may be associated with nonverbal information in multimedia instructional materials, and looks to an interactional model such as Burke's pentad for an explanation of the hortatory nature of interactional communication. Thirteen references are listed.…

Single word and continuous association test behaviors of children (mean age 15.1 years) at high (N=207) and low (N=104) risk for schizophrenia were analyzed as part of a longitudinal prospective study. (SBH)

A study of seven adults with mild mental retardation investigated whether nonverbal behavior was under the control of covert rules and whether verbal reports of these rules were functionally equivalent to the covert rules that control nonverbal behavior. Results indicated self-instructions, when used as external instructions, produced the desired…

Children affected by dyslexia exhibit a deficit in the categorical perception of speech sounds, characterized by both poorer discrimination of between-category differences and by better discrimination of within-category differences, compared to normal readers. These categorical perception anomalies might be at the origin of dyslexia, by hampering…

In three experiments, 18-month-olds were tested in a deferred imitation paradigm. Some infants received verbal information during the demonstration and at the time of the test (full narration), and some did not (empty narration). When tested after a 4-week delay, infants given full narration exhibited superior retention relative to infants given…