A study consisting of two experiments attempted to further adapt the visual preference procedure for determining children's meaningful phonological perception. In the first experiment, 1-year-olds were presented with auditory stimuli (words) and screens containing paired color photographs of the object described by each word and of an unusual…

Three ten-step series of synthetic speech stimuli were constructed: /raem/ to laem/, /raem/ to /waem/, and /laem/ to /yaem/. Within each series, differences consisted of variations in onset frequency and slope of transition in the second or third formant. These stimuli were presented to 5- to 7-year-old children in identification…

The collection of eight conference papers on problems of auditory, visual, and speech handicaps begins with a review of what is known about deaf-blind children and early development. Following papers are devoted to spontaneous vocalization and babbling in aurally handicapped infants, psychological synergism (an approach to consideration of…

Two deaf children of deaf parents were studied over a period of several years for their acquisition of "-ing", "-'s"; "-s", "-d", and the particle "to." Although the children soon perceived the signed forms of these morphemes, they were slow to understand the function of the morphemes. (Author/LMO)

Examines short-term memory for spoken words ignored at the time of their presentation. Age differences in the persistence of memory was found. Suggests that relatively attention-free properties of short-term memory may change with development in childhood, and priority should be given to distinguish maturational and experiential influences on…

Provides an overview of how early identification and intervention for hearing impairment may benefit deaf infants' acquisition of symbolic language. Concludes that the role of the caregiver is central to the planning and success of early intervention programs for infants with deafness. (MDM)

This paper examines the perceptual processes that underlie normal language acquisition with relation to perceptual dysfunctions in the aphasic child. Experiments are cited which seem to indicate that auditory dyfunctions may underlie language impairment. Experimental studies of the linguistic systems of the aphasic child seem to support the theory…

This paper describes the results of two studies of auditory processing in child aphasia, and their implication for understanding deviant language development. The term "aphasia" is discussed as it is used to describe adult and child language disorders. A first experiment on the auditory functioning in aphasic and nonaphasic children suggests that…

This document "attempts to provide a representative, undogmatic, and fairly thorough coverage of selected areas of the psycholinguistic literature which are not accurately covered in existing bibliographies." Because the authors feel that psycholinguistics consists of the study of the acquisition, production, and understanding of a natural…

Stampe's (1969, 1973) hypotheses regarding innate mental phonological processes are tested against some of the extant data on speech perception. (AM)

The Speech Perception in Noise Test was administered to nine native-Mexican Spanish-speaking adults who learned English either before age 6 or after age 14 and nine monolingual American-English adults. Levels of noise at which speech was intelligible were significantly higher and the benefit from context was significantly greater for monolinguals…

Seventeen children (ages 8-10) with hearing loss were tested on four types of tasks (speech perception, phonetic awareness, recall of word strings, and comprehension of sentences with complex syntax) and results were compared to controls. Subjects showed evidence of restricted access to acoustic information in the speech signal. (Contains…

A review of laboratory research estimating effects of mild hearing impairment on infant speech perception abilities, under conditions simulating mild hearing loss in normal hearing infants, suggests that even mild alterations of auditory input during infancy may have significant developmental consequences. Results support identification,…

It has been 20 years since Bever's (1982) and Strauss and Stavy's (1982) books on U-shaped functions in human development were published. The three target articles in this issue describe several old and new U-shaped functions and new theoretical explanations for their existence. In this article, the authors will comment on two aspects of U-shaped…

We report on a prospective longitudinal research programme exploring the connection between language acquisition deficits and dyslexia. The language development profile of children at-risk for dyslexia is compared to that of age-matched controls as well as of children who have been diagnosed with specific language impairment (SLI). The experiments…