This report is one of a regular series on the status and progress of studies on the nature of speech, instrumentation for its investigation, and practical applications. Manuscripts and extended reports cover the following topics: iconic storage, voice-timing perception, oral anesthesia, laryngeal function, electromyography of speech production, encodedness and right ear effect, interference, dichotic listening, speech and reading, reading machines for the blind, speech synthesis by rule, auditory evoked potentials, infant production and perception of speech sounds, voice onset time, perception of speech and nonspeech, lag effect, and phonetic coding in Japanese. A list of publications and reports is included. (Author/MD)