The perceptual-linguistic stimulus distinction for auditory stimuli was examined with 35 trainable and severely retarded (age 8 to 20) and 31 nonretarded (age 3 to 5) students. Retarded and nonretarded students performed similarly on auditory-perceptual stimuli. Nonretarded students performed significantly better than did retarded students on…

Concludes that the Slingerland Screening Tests were reliable and useful in locating primary school children who were experiencing reading difficulties and were in need of individual attention. (FL)

Results as a whole did not support the hypothesis that poor readers show deficits in selective attention relative to age-matched normal readers. (RH)

Findings suggested that a deficit in auditory memory rather than cross-modal perception appears to be a factor in poor reading comprehension. (Author/DLS)

Using standard classical conditioning and concept-formation paradigms, research showed that all phones of a phoneme were considered "the same" by linguistically naive speakers. Results also supported the notion of the phoneme as a unit that functions in speech perception. (RL)

Indicates that infants are able to discriminate synthetic speech patterns varying in duration of the formant transitions. This variation provides information sufficient to signal the phonetic distinction between a stop consonant and a semivowel in adult listeners. Also makes conclusions regarding the discriminability of a given difference in…

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…

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…

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…