A high-amplitude sucking procedure, with synthesized female speech, was used to ascertain the effects of fundamental frequency, amplitude, and duration on discrimination of polysyllabic sequences. Results suggest that the exaggerated suprasegmentals of infant-directed speech may function as a perceptual catalyst, focusing the infant's attention on…

Examined the effects of rounded and unrounded vowels on the perception of the voiceless fricatives "s" and "sh" by adults and by young children who could and could not produce both sounds. Concluded that productive mastery is not critically responsible for perception of the distinction between the two phonemes or the…

Evaluates use of spelling-sound correspondences to read and spell by third-graders defined as good readers and good spellers, good readers and poor spellers, or poor readers and poor spellers. Indicates that all groups used correspondences but that children in mixed and poor groups used them less systematically and had weaker knowledge of…

Examines kindergarten and first-grade children's classifications and spellings and differences in their classifications of sounds from those of adults. In addition to these spelling, phoneme recognition, and phoneme deletion tasks, each child took the reading and spelling subtests of the Wide Range Achievement Test. (AS)

Reports results of four experiments testing whether syllable structure affects children's performance in phonemic analysis tasks and in other reading related tasks. The experiments were motivated by theories that syllables consist of an onset (initial consonant or consonant cluster) and a rime (vowel and any following consonants). (AS/Author)

Describes three experiments that examined the processing of speech by dyslexic readers. Compares their performance with that of age-matched and reading-ability-matched controls. Shows that dyslexics have difficulty with the nonlexical procedures involved in verbal repetition. (HOD)

Examines the development of word recognition skills of 80 school children (grades two-four). Good beginning readers rapidly learn to recognize high frequency words from visual input alone and simultaneously expand and consolidate spelling sound correspondences. Younger and poor readers rely more on phonological information in word decoding.…