Investigated three acoustical features of word boundaries between French nouns and adjectives. Found that fundamental frequency, duration, and intensity all appeared to be acoustical correlates of word boundaries. Indicated that the temporal structure of the speech material was the most important cue for the detection of the word boundaries.…

Shows that vowel duration is a cue to voicing of syllable-final consonants. Notes that the effective duration of a vowel apparently extends over all parts of the acoustic signal, including the transitions reflecting the consequences of the coarticulation of vowel and consonant. (Author/RL)

Investigates the effect of a recorded male human voice on neonate head, eye, mouth and crying behaviors. Vocal Stimulation enhanced head movement, eye opening, mouthing and crying and influenced hand sucking. Differences between breast fed and bottle fed babies were found for mouth orientation, hand sucking and crying. (RH)

Presents a music educator's guide to selecting audio equipment. Tells what to look for when choosing speakers, amplifiers, cartridges, turntables, and tapedecks. Charts are used as guides for price ranges and a glossary of terms that will be encountered in audio showrooms. (Editor/RK)

Words presented with regular acoustic onsets are not "perceptually" regular. The requirements for perceived regularity were investigated, and the "perceptual center" (P-center) of a word was defined as its psychological moment of occurrence. (Editor)

Notes that in phonetic categorization, listeners hear a range of speech sounds forming a continuum of ambiguous sounds between two endpoints and are required to identify the sounds as one or other of the endpoints. Points out that this task has been used in phonetics and in psycholinguistics to study categorical perception, selective adaptation,…

Administered phonological awareness and phoneme identification tasks to dyslexic children and chronological age (CA) and reading-level (RL) comparison groups. Found no real differences in categorical perception between dyslexic and RL groups; however, more dyslexics (7 of 25) had abnormal identification functions. Results suggest that some…

"Sine-wave speech" sentences contain only four frequency-modulated sine waves, lacking many acoustic cues present in natural speech. Adults with (n=19) and without (n=14) dyslexia were asked to reproduce orally sine-wave utterances in successive trials. Results suggest comprehension of sine-wave sentences is impaired in some adults with…

The commentary to EC 232 373 and EC 232 374 discusses whether stuttering is really what the listener perceives, the stutterer senses, or the dictionary states. It concludes that stuttering can probably be defined in appropriate contexts as any or all of these three things. (JDD)

This paper examines the case for modality specificity as a criterion for improving the specificity of diagnosing central auditory processing disorders. Demonstrating the modality-specific nature of sensory processing deficits is seen as one way to rule out nonperceptual factors as explanations for observed dysfunction. (Author)

Examines the development of a computational model of auditory grouping processes informed by psychoacoustic experimentation. The experimental theme was to quantify the contribution of grouping principles, rather than simply to demonstrate their existence. This article demonstrates the importance of avoiding prespecified procedures for grouping…

The elicitation and habituation of electrodermal orienting responses to auditory stimuli of 19 children with Down syndrome (DS) and a control group were compared. The DS children gave electrodermal orienting responses of a lower amplitude than did control subjects. No significant differences were found in either skin conductance levels or…

This article reviews auditory deprivation effects on anatomy, physiology, and behavior in animals and discusses the sequelae of otitis media with effusion (OME) in children. Focused on are central auditory processing disorders associated with early fluctuating hearing loss from OME. (DB)

This examination of the auditory perceptual abilities of 40 children, ages 4-10, and 10 adults found significant differences between the performances of the 4- to 8-year olds and of the adults. Acquisition of adultlike duration discrimination performance was demonstrated between the ages of 8 and 10 years. (Author/JDD)

This study of 14 children (ages 5-9) with a history of otitis media with effusion found that subjects had significantly reduced masking-level differences (MLD) compared to controls. Results suggest that the reduction in MLD may be related to abnormal brainstem processing. (Author/JDD)