UPSTART is a federally funded i3 validation project that uses a computer-based program to develop the school readiness skills of preschool children in rural Utah. Researchers used a randomized control trial design to evaluate the impact of the program in advancing children's early literacy skills. Preschoolers in the experimental group were…

Many types of L2 phonological perception are often difficult to acquire without instruction. These difficulties with perception may also be related to intelligibility in production. Instruction on perception contrasts is more likely to be successful with the use of phonetically variable input made available through computer-assisted pronunciation…

This study investigated the effect of two distinct computer-based phonetic training procedures administered in an English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classroom with young learners. Students' perceptual awareness of the occurrence of an English schwa in an unstressed position in content words was tested in two experimental groups, which underwent…

This study examined whether audiovisual computer training without linguistic material had a remedial effect on different learning disabilities, like dyslexia and ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). This study applied a pre-test-intervention-post-test design with students (N = 62) between the ages of 7 and 19. The computer training lasted eight weeks…

A pilot study investigated the role of one response index (specifically, subject's ratings of their spelling accuracy) that was presumed to be predictive of the amount of practice needed to acquire the spelling of a word and gathered data relevant to the nature of practice needed on a word. The study was conducted to aid in the design of a…

The "Auditory Discrimination in Depth (ADD) Program[R]" (currently called the "Lindamood Phonemic Sequencing (LiPS) Program[R]") is designed to teach students skills to successfully decode words and to identify individual sounds and blends in words. Initial activities engage students in discovering the lip, tongue, and mouth…

This paper begins with a brief account of the development of automatic speech recogniton (ASR) and then proceeds to an examination of ASR systems typical of the kind now in operation. It is stressed that such systems, although highly developed, do not recognize speech in the same sense as the human being does, and that they can not deal with a…

Three experiments examined the perception of a three-way voicing contrast by monolingual speakers of English. The results demonstrate that the perceptual mechanisms used by adults in categorizing stop consonants can be modified easily with simple laboratory techniques in a short period of time. (Author/PN)

Describes how the University of Delaware's Grade Units for Interactive Dictation (GUIDO) system is used to improve instructional delivery and educational research in aural skills development. Instruction consists of musical dictation exercises and there are five programs available in two modes--drill-and-practice and heuristic (discovery).…

The ultimate goal of this project is to improve student accuracy in hearing the several interval sounds, with the subsequent hope of improving perception of the pitch factor in music. The data for this first phase include the administration of aural skills tests to 160 University of Iowa students in the fall of 1976, to the 142 subjects continuing…

A feasibility (development) course investigating Computer Assisted Instruction in instrumental music was designed and administered over an eight-week trial period to 14 clarinetists of varying ability in grades seven through ten. The course concentrated on articulation, phrasing, and rhythm. Generally, a dual program was developed. 1) an aural…

This paper describes a professional and institutional partnership formed to facilitate access to Fast ForWord, a computerized approach to receptive language and auditory processing remediation. The program works best for children aged 4-14 with such classifications as communication handicapped (receptive-expressive language impairments), dyslexia,…

Describes research in music education at Laval University in which students receive auditory training using a microprocessor-based hardware system. Topics include intervals, chord quality, scale degrees, diatonic tonal functions, rhythmic, melodic and harmonic dictation, jazz chord quality, microtones, and fundamentals. Students maintain full…

In two studies with 50 male and 50 female undergraduates, differences in learning highly interfering paired-associate discrimination tasks were compared with or without visual mediational cues and with aural cues only. Visual mediational instruction reduced interference between similar signals and facilitated their association with the correct…

After a discussion of the code-emphasis versus phonics-emphasis controversy, strategies for improving the teaching of decoding skills are presented. It is recommended (1) that only those phonic generalizations that are of high utility be taught, and revisions of phonics generalizations be made to make them even more inclusive and useful; (2) that…