Examined were the influences of three conditions of predictability on word-recognition performance by 30 normally hearing listeners. Significant differences in word recognition were observed among high-predictability phrases, low-predictability phrases, and a constant predictability-neutral carrier phrase, using three specific signal-to-babble…

Investigates the incidence of segmental and prosodic contrasts in recorded sentence materials and the use of such distinctions in the processing of utterances. The chosen materials involve sites of parsing ambiguity. Results show that in the immediate interpretation of spoken language input, intonational contrasts function as clear structural…

Suggests 12 activities for students to ask family members at the dinner table. Activities include pendulum motion, friction, harmonics, wave action, heat, and the piezoelectric effect. (MVL)

This study examined whether toddlers build a repertoire of words as integral sequences of gestures and then differentiate these sequences into their gestural and segmental components. Results demonstrate clear differences in duration and coordination of gestures between children and adults and a shift toward the patterns of adult speakers during…

Three children were observed interacting with their mothers before the onset of single words, when vocabulary consisted of 10 words, and when it consisted of 50 words. Relations between communicative functions and acoustic analysis of prosodic variables were studied. Considerable variability was found in the number of rises produced overall and…

This article reviews current knowledge in three areas: (1) characteristics of mild/moderate hearing loss; (2) the information-bearing aspects of speech; and (3) the relationship between the electroacoustic characteristics of hearing aids and the speech signal. Implications for selecting hearing aids are drawn. (Author/DB)

Describes the measurement of blood speed in blood vessels by using the Doppler effect. (WRM)

This article examines several acoustical variables, such as noise, reverberation, and speaker-listener distance, which can deleteriously affect speech perception in classrooms. The effects of these variables on speech perception abilities in children with and without hearing loss are explored and appropriate classroom acoustical criteria are…

Discusses acoustical demands in public libraries to consider during the design and construction process of new or renovated library space. Topics include intrusive noises; overly reverberant spaces; lack of speech privacy; sound transmission class; noise criteria; reverberation time and noise reduction coefficient; space planning; sound systems;…

Describes an activity in which students determine where wind chime tubes should be supported and struck to give the best tone, then find the frequency of the tubes. This activity can be used to introduce ideas on significant figures, experimental error, types of variation, peer review of results, seeking empirical relationships with data, and…

The Mother-Infant Phonetic Interaction model (MIPhI) predicts that, compared with adult directed speech (ADS), in infant directed speech (IDS) vowels will be overspecified and consonants underspecified during the infants' first 6 months. In a longitudinal natural study, six mothers' ADS and IDS were recorded on 10 occasions during the first 6…

Three experiments attempted to clarify the effect of altering the spatial presentation of irrelevant auditory information. Previous research using serial recall tasks demonstrated a left-ear disadvantage for the presentation of irrelevant sounds (Hadlington, Bridges, & Darby, 2004). Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effects of manipulating the…

There has been little or no research on Vietnamese phonological development, let alone on phonological disorders of Vietnamese-speaking children. The goal of this study is to evaluate the sound systems of monolingual Vietnamese-speaking children with phonological impairment. Independent and relational analyses of four children (ages 4;4 to 5;5)…

In speech perception, children give particular patterns of weight to different acoustic cues (their cue weighting). These patterns appear to change with increased linguistic experience. Previous speech perception research has found a positive correlation between more analytical cue weighting strategies and the ability to consciously think about…

Over half the world's population speaks a tone language, yet infant speech perception research has typically focused on consonants and vowels. Very young infants can discriminate a wide range of native and nonnative consonants and vowels, and then in a process of "perceptual reorganization" over the 1st year, discrimination of most…