Reviews research on prosody and segmental perception, segmentation and invariance, categorical perception of speech and nonspeech, feature detectors, scaling speech sounds to an auditory-articulatory space, acoustic-phonetic dependencies within the syllable, higher order (nonphonetic) factors in the comprehension of fluent speech, and cerebral…

The relationship between subtests of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities and the Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration to a comprehensive battery of reading measures was investigated in a sample of 77 poor readers in grades 2 through 6. (Author/PHR)

Auditory tests were administered to 30 blind, partially sighted, and sighted children. Overall, the blind and sighted were equal on most of the measured abilities. Blind children performed well on tonal memory tests. Partially sighted children performed more poorly than the other two groups. (MH)

Identifies the "missing fundamental illusion" as that which occurs when two tones are heard together and the listener hears a third tone with a pitch corresponding to the difference in their frequencies. Describes an inexpensive and valid demonstration of the missing fundamental using a British police whistle. (MJP)

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…

This paper evaluates two commercially available educational software programs ("Bailey's Book House" and "Stickybear's Reading Room") to illustrate how they might be used to train or reinforce audition skills in students who are deaf or hard of hearing. Results suggest the value of multiple uses of educational software. (DB)

Natural language conversational samples were collected from hearing-impaired preschoolers who were either using cochlear implants, tactile aids, or hearing aids over a 33-month period. Children using cochlear implants increased their overall communicativeness, their breadth of functions, and their use of intelligible speech faster than other…

Measures of IQ, verbal short-term memory, speech perception, and phonological awareness were administered to 136 3rd and 4th graders. Structural equation modeling revealed that IQ, speech perception, and verbal short-term memory each contributed unique variance to the phonological awareness construct. Results underscore the importance of speech…

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)

A study examined central auditory processing ability of 15 children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), 15 children with ADHD and learning disabilities (LD), and 15 controls. Results indicated lower central-auditory-processing ability and significant correlations between reading and ADHD and reading and…

Studies elementary students' ability to match up graphemes to phonemes within individual words. Shows that older students exhibited greater graphophonemic awareness and greater digraph knowledge than younger students. Results are interpreted to bear on Ehri's phrase theory of word reading acquisition and on connectionist models of word reading.…

Two studies investigated a brief, processing-dependent, nonword repetition task, designed to minimize biases associated with traditional language tests. Results revealed that nonword repetition distinguished between school-age children independently identified as language impaired or normally developing, suggesting its potential usefulness as a…

Analyzes the production and perception of illocutionary forms. Using a semantic neutralization procedure, the performance of children (5, 7, and 9 years old) and adults was compared in two experiments focusing on prosodic representations in production and perception tasks. (Author/JL)

Thirty children with profound hearing impairments were followed over a three-year period with a semiannual battery of speech perception tests. Testing utilized multichannel tactile vocoders in variations of tactile and/or auditory/visual conditions. Performance in the tactile plus auditory condition generally exceeded that in other conditions,…

This study analyzed the performance of 30 children (ages 9-11) with central auditory processing disorders (CAPD), to test the validity of the Auditory Continuous Performance Test in differentiating between CAPD with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Results indicated limited potential of the test in the differential…