This book addresses child's language learning in a manner designed to be understandable to the nonspecialist. The major areas covered are: (1) learning one's first language; (2) the role of adults in the child's language learning; (3) discovering the structure of language: phonology; (4) discovering the structure of language: syntax; (5) learning…

This report is one of a regular series on the status and progress of speech research. Manuscript topics are categories and context in the perception of isolated steady-state vowels; tongue position in rounded and unrounded front vowel pairs; the reading behavior of dyslexics: is there a distinctive pattern?; articulatory units: segments or…

In order to improve speech perception by transposing the speech signals to lower frequencies, to determine which aspects of the information in the acoustic speech signals were influenced by transposition, and to compare two different methods of training speech perception, 44 subjects were trained to discriminate between transposed words or…

Directed to the stammerer, the text provides a course of correction based on normal speaking principles. Speech re-education is described in terms of the following: the attitude needed; faults of breathing, vocalization, and articulation; discovery of the natural voice; pace; breathing; volume and resonance; mental conception; and corrective…

This report describes in two volumes the proceedings of a conference on the perception of language held at the University of Pittsburgh in January, 1968. The objectives of the conference, to present the particular research interests of the participants and to attempt to find points of concurrence in thinking through discussion of the conference…

This study, the fifth in the series "Studies in the Phonology of Asian Languages," aims to describe those acoustic features involved in the distinction of Korean stop consonants, using the sound spectrograph and pitch extractor as research tools. The report specifically deals with voice onset time associated with weak and strong stops and the…

Communication researchers would like to know if the quality of a speaker's voice is a reliable indicator of an effective communicator and if voice quality can reveal information about the speaker's intelligence, leadership ability, and personality type. Experimental studies involving over 400 undergraduates at the University of Nebraska sought to…

This document contains 21 reports on speech research relating to the following areas: phonology, speech development, speech perception, phonetics, short-term memory of tactile stimuli, reading, linguistic and paralinguistic interchange, computer processing of EMG (electromyographic) signals, pitch determination by adaptive autocorrelation method,…

This report describes the validity and reliability studies done to standardize a preschool screening test developed for identification of articulation and language disorders. The test meets the need for a brief procedure which (1) identifies articulation and language disorders, (2) is not dialect bound and goes across cultural and regional…

Paraphrase, as it reflects the processes of remembering rather than those of forgetting, implies that language is best transmitted in one form and stored in another. The dual representation of linguistic information that is implied by paraphrase is important for storing information that has been received and for transmitting information that has…

This study explored the effects of overt and covert verbalization instructions on problem solving in high school subjects. A series of three-circle problems were administered to groups instructed to either (1) say a reason for each move they made (overt verbalization), (2) think of a reason for each move as if they were going to say it (covert…

Spanish-speaking children of Mexican descent living in California were tested on the acquisition of 18 Spanish consonants. The 120 subjects (aged 3 to 5:7 years) were equally divided into eight age groups, and the median ages (50%) and upper age limits (90%) of customary production of each consonant were determined. (Author/JDD)

Compares pronunciation guides to Russian in 15 texts and supplements intended for the English-speaking student. Transcription systems and a few other problems facing beginning students are also discussed.

Examines the effects of vowel height and place of articulation in interlanguage devoicing patterns of final voiced stop consonants (b, d, g) in words such as "cab,""bad,""bag" in the acquisition of English as a foreign language by Mandarin, Japanese, and Portuguese speakers. Results display a combinatory effect of…

The speech production of a prelingually deafened adult male was examined at 4 intervals: 1 week and again at 9 months postimplant with a single-channel cochlear implant, 14 months later with a nonfunctioning device, and 1 year following implantation with a multichannel device. Consonant accuracy and vowel accuracy changed little across conditions.…