Undergraduate students completed a regular class test of 35 multiple-choice items, interspersed with five humorous verbal items written in multiple-choice format or selected syndicated cartoons. A questionnaire revealed that, although student perceptions of test humor were positive, they were less positive about verbal items. (Author/CM)

Researchers used simultaneous feedback, a means of modifying behavior through verbal cues transmitted via a transistorized ear plug, to improve the teaching skills of university faculty engaged in the act of teaching. Faculty identified areas they wished to improve after viewing videotapes of their teaching. (Authors/PP)

Discusses the possibility that early linguistic experience affects infant speech perception and that this effect may be of practical consequence in later language learning. (EKN)

Examines within an experimental paradigm phonological selection and avoidance patterns of infants and discusses the role of these patterns in early lexical acquisition. (EKN)

Reports on research that (1) suggests that phonetically ambiguous pairs (ice cream/I scream) have been used inaccurately to illustrate contextual effects in word segmentation, (2) supports unitary rather than exhaustive processing, and (3) supports the use of the concepts of word frequency and listener expectations instead of top-down, multiple…

Four experiments were carried out to examine the different recall strategies employed in a diagnostic test of visual sequential memory. The principal implication of the results is that good and poor readers may not differ with respect to visual memory but in their ability to employ a verbal labeling strategy. (Author/KC)

Receiver difference indices were developed to describe comprehension of organized and disorganized spoken messages. Comprehension was measured by a multiple-choice test and data analyses allowed for the interpretation of different indices of receiver comprehension in a variety of messages conditions. (Author/MH)

The effect of blocking of stimulus items on the free recall of educable mentally retarded adolescents was examined. (Author)

Immediate echolalia (repeating what someone has just said) was studied in a series of replicated single-subject designs across six schizophrenic and five normal children (all ranging in age from 2 to 15 years). (Author/SBH)

Examines infants' sensitivity to word units in fluent speech by inserting one-second pauses either at boundaries between successive words or between syllables within words. Results indicate that, by 11 months, infants are sensitive to word boundaries, and that this sensitivity depends on more than prosodic information or prior knowledge. (65…

Twelve learning-disabled (LD) children (ages 9-11) with language impairments performed more poorly on 3 verbal metaphor tasks and a visual metaphor task than 12 LD children without language impairments, who, in turn, performed more poorly than 12 nondisabled children on all but the visual task. Context variations had no effect on performance.…

Sixteen moderately mentally retarded children, aged 9-13, were trained in sight words by manipulating pictorial stimuli (fading versus nonfading) in relationship to the word stimulus location (superimposition versus juxtaposition of picture and word), to orient the learner's attention to the word. Subjects who were trained using superimposition…

Investigates the additive memory effect of two modes of presenting information to elementary children on the retention of both images and words. Children represented more information in pictorial than in verbal form. The visual-verbal treatment group scored higher on most of both verbal and pictorial responses than the visual treatment group.…

Describes a study of three infants whose parents presented vocal models for the infants to imitate. Parents presented vocal models both with and without social praise. Infants showed systematic increases in matching after praise was introduced. Nonmatching vocalizations did not increase with introduction of praise. Findings demonstrate generalized…