Argues that generative phonology is not predictive of phonological identification, thus preventing it from achieving descriptive adequacy and limiting its value in explaining human speech perception. The assumption that the unity of the morpheme must be expressed phonologically is rejected. (Author/EJS)

Noise is the single most omnipresent noxious contaminant in the American environment, yet little attention has been paid to its dangers and relatively small amounts of money spent to control it. Compares the effects and management of hearing impairment due to noise with those resulting from other causes. (Editor)

Adults and 4-year-old children were tested to determine whether the children were able to decode sets of familiar minimal pairs as well as adults. They listened to words spoken in a normal voice and a whisper. Indications were that the 4-year-old's perceptual mastery of English phonology is not yet complete. (SW)

An analysis of the theory of distinctive features advanced by Roman Jakobson, Gunnar Fant and Morris Halle in "Preliminaries to Speech Analysis." The notion of binarism, the criterion of distinctiveness and the definition of features are discussed. Questions leading to further research are raised. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

The study examined the performance of 19 pairs of autistic and nonautistic (but with a language delay of at least six months) children on the Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language. Results indicated no significant differences between groups or between sexes within groups in receptive language skills. (Author/DB)

A modeling experiment, conducted to determine if children benefit from observing speech not addressed to them in discovering the use of first and second pronouns, suggested that children even less than two years of age can attend to and learn from speech not addressed to them. (Author/CB)

A test of paralinguistic features of English that can be observed by listening is recommended for testing listening comprehension, especially at the advanced level, in students of English as a second language. (MSE)

Two experiments assessed the importance of sound duration for eliciting head orientation responses from newborn infants. Results suggest that newborns' head orientation response may reflect a motor program that is initiated by auditory input and then executed in a similar fashion regardless of further stimulation. (Author/AS)

This study tests the idea that visual presentation leads to higher performance on a delayed recall test than auditory presentation. It is predicted that the normal immediate free recall procedure yields a different pattern of results on a delayed test than a condition having immediate recall of each list. (CLK)

In 1974 Wood proposed a hybrid serial-parallel model to account for the within-stimulus interactions between the acoustic cue of "pitch" and the phonetic cue of "place". These experiments found Wood's research independent of his subjects' experience, the order of cue presentation, and whether the cues are presented simultaneously or sequentially.…

Considers listener expectancies based on timing redundancy in continuous speech and the interaction between the effects of segmental and suprasegmental cues during ongoing perception. (Editor/RK)

Critiqued are five reviews of research puporting to examine the effectiveness of perceptual training in the improvement of reading. (DB)

Auditory dysfunction accompanying noise-induced hearing loss was examined with 16 male Ss (18 29-years-old) who had 12 24-month histories of noise exposure and high-frequency hearing loss. (IM)

Handbooks of French phonetics disagree with the findings of phonetic research. Discussed are: differentiating between teaching pronunciation and auditory perception: the difference between acoustic and semantic hearing; and the importance of nasal regressive and progressive assimilation in contemporary spoken French. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)