Presents an overview of "constructivist" models of speech perception and information processing and reviews a variety of aural comprehension evaluation techniques which reflect those models. (PMJ)

Indicates that the direction of articulatory substitution for 13 consonants is identical to the direction of auditory perceptual substitution defined by shifts of phonological features. (Author/RL)

Reports two experiments which support the hypothesis that reaction time is faster to phonemes when the phonetic context matches the listener's expectation than when the vowel context is different. Reaction time to syllable targets is equal to phoneme, matched context targets. (PMJ)

A series of possible explanations for learning disabilities (LDS) couched in terms of information processing capabilities was tested by comparing the performance of LDS children on several types of information processing tasks with that of a control group. Subjects were 28 LDS children (10-11 years old) and 24 elementary school students of the…

Presents a language processing model that distinguishes four functional components of reading and listening: feature detection, primary recognition, secondary recognition, and rehearsal and recoding. Uses the model to describe and incorporate some recent research. (GT)

This research was designed to measure the abilities of black and white students in determining the race and status of a speaker. Forty black and white college undergraduates listened to a tape recording of 24 voices and were asked to distinguish sex, race, and status of speaker. The hypothesis that black students would be more skillful at this…

This article describes a study designed to test the basic notions of the verbo-tonal method of error correction in second language learning, a method based on an awareness of the phonological system of the speaker's native language and its influence on the phonological system of the target language. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

This article discusses the relationship in language instruction between the verbo-tonal system of phonetic correction and a structuro-global audio-visual method which takes the communication aspects of language learning into account. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Four experiments tested the hypothesis that the importance of linguistic labels for young children's conceptual organization stems from a privileged processing status of auditory input over visual input. Findings indicated that when auditory and visual stimuli were presented separately, 4-year-olds were likely to process both kinds of stimuli,…

A study implemented three different methods of presenting scientific graphs to 12 adults with visual impairments: audition, kinesthetics, or a combination of the two. Results indicate the combination of both audio and kinesthetic modalities can be a promising representation medium of common scientific graphs for people with visual impairments.…

Four computer-animated tasks were created to analyze the underlying structure of emerging phonological awareness at 3.5 years of age and to explore factors that influence children's (n=91) performance. The children were able to master tasks demanding identification, blending, and continuation of phonological units. Analysis supported two major…

Calls for greater attention to the perceptual processes involved in second language listening, and particularly to the part they play in breakdowns of understanding. Suggests employing basic auditory phonetics as a means of classifying, diagnosing, and predicting problems of lexical segmentation. (Author/VWL)

A study investigated temporal resolution of auditory perception (TRAP), verbal working memory, and speech perception in 15 children with language impairment and 99 controls. No deficits in TRAP were found in the subjects and thresholds were similar. There were significant differences in performance on speech perception and verbal working memory.…

A study investigated perception of elliptical speech in an adult cochlear implant patient. Two experiments were conducted using sets of meaningful and anomalous English sentences: one set contained correct place of articulation cues, the other was transformed into elliptical speech. The patient and controls labeled the sentences as the same.…

Comparison of 80 beginning first graders, half receiving phonics instruction and half receiving whole word instruction, found, for both groups, those above grade level in reading excelled in phonological recoding and application of grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules while those below grade level applied visual-orthographic knowledge more than…