Describes acoustical products and techniques that schools are using to keep distracting noise out of the classroom and to amplify useful classroom sound. (EV)

Culture is becoming increasingly multimodal. The most effective form of intellectual and aesthetic development should embrace both production and reception across all contexts. The goal of media education should be the ability to make critical choices regarding multimedia. (Contains 16 references.) (SK)

The study found no significant trends in the change of acoustical durations of stutter- and disfluency-free speech from readings in an adaptation series with four adapting, four nonadapting, and four nonstuttering subjects (all young adults). Findings suggest that adaptation of stuttering and other fluency-inducing conditions are a result of…

Presents experiments that use Helmholtz resonators and have been designed for a sophomore-level course in oscillations and waves. Discusses the theory of the Helmholtz resonator and resonance curves. (JRH)

A simple procedure for measuring changes in the acoustic impedance of the ear is described. The technique has several applications, including simulation using a standard coupler of changes in real ear impedance produced by the acoustic reflex, and calibration of response time of an otoadmittance meter. (Author/DB)

Five men repeated a phrase, beginning at total lung capacity and ending at residual volume. Analysis indicated that voice onset time (VOT) was longer at high lung volumes and shorter at low lung volumes. Lung volume should, therefore, be considered when using VOT as an index of laryngeal behavior in healthy and speech-disordered individuals.…

Evaluates "mean response time" (MRT), a method used in previous studies to relate physiological evidence (recordings of electromyographic activity in the cricothyroid and sternohyoid) to acoustic evidence (fundamental frequency). (Author/VWL)

Voice samples from 21 males and 23 females aged 70-80 were analyzed on 15 acoustic parameters. Compared with younger subjects, older adults had significantly different (usually poorer) vocal output on all parameters. Implications for speech and hearing therapists were derived. (Contains 26 references.) (SK)

Presents a method to teach the concept of beats as a generalized phenomenon rather than teaching it only in the context of sound. Involves using a video camera to film a computer terminal, 16-mm projector, or TV monitor. (JRH)

In this paper we examine two long-standing assumptions of the information processing perspective of perceptual-motor development, namely that: (1) the amount of noise in children's sensori-motor system decreases with increases in age up to adulthood; and (2) this age-related reduction in noise level leads to associated improvements in the accuracy…

The phenomenon of attentional capture by a unique yet irrelevant singleton distractor has typically been studied in visual search. In this article, the authors examine whether a similar phenomenon occurs in the auditory domain. Participants searched sequences of sounds for targets defined by frequency, intensity, or duration. The presence of a…

The phonological store construct of the working memory model is critically evaluated. Three experiments test the prediction that the effect of irrelevant sound and the effect of phonological similarity each survive the action of articulatory suppression but only when presentation of to-be-remembered lists is auditory, not visual. No evidence was…

The sixth-order wave equation governing the propagation of one-dimensional acoustic waves in a viscous, heat conducting gaseous medium subject to relaxation effects has been considered. It has been reduced to a system of lower order equations corresponding to the finite speeds occurring in the equation, following a method due to Whitham. The lower…

Little is known about the acoustic cues infants might use to selectively attend to one talker in the presence of background noise. This study examined the role of talker familiarity as a possible cue. Infants either heard their own mothers (maternal-voice condition) or a different infant's mother (novel-voice condition) repeating isolated words…

This study demonstrates that non-human primates can categorize the direction of the pitch change of tones in a sequence. Two "Macaca fascicularis" were trained in a positive-reinforcement behavioral paradigm in which they listened to sequences of a variable number of different acoustic items. The training of discriminating pitch direction was…