Investigates the concept of animacy of 9- and 12-month-old infants by exposing them to autonomous motion with animate and inanimate objects in a series of three experiments. Three experiments were carried out. Results indicated that infants discriminate animate from inanimate objects on the basis of motion cues by the age of nine months. (MOK)

Investigates the structure of public relations roles. Factor analyzes G. Broom and G. Smith's role questionnaire in conjunction with items used in organizational boundary spanning. Extracts eight activity factors. Identifies four primary practitioner roles and one minor role. Refines previous public relations roles concepts. Shows by validation…

Examined infants' categorization using object manipulation tasks that involved objects that were models of animals, vehicles, or furniture. Objects were normal, had anomalous moving parts (such as a dog with wheels), or had different textures. Found that 14- to 22-month olds attended to the parts and structural configuration of objects, but not to…

Discriminating between unknown foreign languages, infants, young children, and adult listeners are able to make same/different-language discrimination judgments at better than chance levels. In two experiments, the same talkers were used for different pairs of languages to see if listeners could discriminate between languages they did not know.…

Suggests that predominant learning theories do not accommodate a spiritual dimension. Reconceptualizes the learning transaction as a phenomenon of perceptions realized through physical, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual input. (SK)

This study examined the feasibility of using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in auditory research by testing the reliability of scanning parameters using high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratios. Findings indicated reproducibility within and across listeners for consonant-vowel speech stimuli and reproducible results within and…

Two studies examined the hypothesis that children rely on name representations, often indexed by shape, in their semantic representations. Results suggest that, although shape plays an important role in children's early naming, other factors are also important, including the mental state of the picture's creator (whether intentional or not).…

A professor attempted to define a professorial role by surveying British literature and the views of professors in other universities. He concluded that there is no one defined and accepted route or role for professors within the United Kingdom. (EV)

This article discusses central auditory processing disorders (CAPDs) including background information, a current definition of CAPDs, test battery approaches which follow guidelines of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, and various approaches to intervention. Also noted are remaining questions and various controversies related to…

Two studies investigated how 5- to 10-year-olds integrate perceptual causality with their knowledge of the underlying causal mechanism, using two devices in which a bell would ring when a ball was dropped in, either immediately or after a delay, depending on the mechanism inside. Findings suggest a link between temporal contiguity and causality in…

Pitch perception is fundamental to melody in music and prosody in speech. Unlike many animals, the vast majority of human adults store melodic information primarily in terms of relative not absolute pitch, and readily recognize a melody whether rendered in a high or a low pitch range. We show that at 6 months infants are also primarily relative…

Real-time spectrographic displays (SDs) have been used in speech training for more than 30 years with adults and children who have severe and profound hearing impairments. Despite positive outcomes from treatment studies, concerns remain that the complex and abstract nature of spectrograms may make these speech training aids unsuitable for use…

A fly is buzzing around in the kitchen. You sneak up on it with a flyswatter, but just as you get close to it, it flies away. What makes flies and other insects so good at escaping from danger? The fact that insects have eyesight that can easily detect moving objects is one of the things that help them survive. In this month's Science Shorts,…

Three experiments investigated whether retrieval of information about different dimensions of a visual object varies as a function of the perceptual properties of those dimensions. The experiments involved two perception-based matching tasks and two retrieval-based matching tasks. A signal-to-respond methodology was used in all tasks. A stochastic…

Within music heard, there are two distinguishable factors. The first is the relation of the music to its seeming emotionality-the relation, for example, of the wedding march to its joyfulness. The second is that seeming emotionality itself-the sorrowfulness, for example, of the second movement of the Chopin Sonata. The author looks for an answer…