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This study investigated spectral differences in the phonation of vowels between a group of 21 children with velopharyngeal impairment and a paired control group of 42 subjects. The speech material was composed of the isolated vowels /a/, /i/ and /u/, a sustained vowel /a/, and four vowels included in spoken words: two nasals /in/ and /on/ in “dindon,” and two orals /a/ and /o/ in “gâteau.” A bottom-up discriminant function analysis indicated that the cepstrum coefficients and the linear-FFT were the most efficient tools in the test to classify the set of children. They were superior to the results obtained with the formant-representation of the vowels. The use of a perceptive scale (barks) did not improve the results. Discrimination over the total group showed percentages lower than those obtained when boys and girls were assessed separately. The best discriminating results were obtained with the /a/ of “gâteau” for the girls and with the isolated /i/ for the boys.

Outer hair cells of the organ of Corti play an important part in the genesis of evoked otoacoustic emissions (EOAEs), which are related to cochlear biomechanics. The aim of this study was to investigate the age factor in relation to EOAEs in 166 ears of subjects between 6 weeks and 83 years of age. The results show that when age increases, the presence of EOAEs by age group and the frequency peak in spectral analysis decrease, and EOAE threshold increases. Thus, there is an effect of age upon EOAEs, and it seems linked with alteration of cochlear biomechanics and/or hair cell loss. Such an effect has to be taken into consideration when EOAEs are used in clinical applications, and limits the use of EOAEs in older subjects.

The relationships between verbal and mathematical performances were examined in 60 children (26 girls and 34 boys, mean age = 9.1 yr, SD = 0.3) for scores on standard school tests. Scores for numerical problem solving appeared to correlate mainly with verbal performances such as text comprehension ( r = 0.65, p < .05) and knowledge of vocabulary ( r = 0.61, p < .05) among linguistic performances. Such results suggest that the dichotomy between verbal and numerical cognitive abilities, commonly involved in pedagogical approaches, is an ambiguous notion for the analysis of problem-solving performance.

Srrmmary.-A muluple-baseline design with counterdemands instructions was used to evaluate the efficacy of cognitive therapy in five depressed patients. Depression measures (LMMPI, Hamilton, and Beck Depression Inventory) showed that all the patients were improved at the end of treatment and therapeutic benefits were maintained at a l-yr. follow-up. These resula conf~rmed the beneficial effects for depressive patients of cognitive therapy with scrlogent methodological controls. Since the seminal study of Rush, Beck, Kovacs, and Hollon (1977), several researchers concluded that cognitive behavioral therapy was effective in depression (Beck, Sha~, Rush, & Emery, 1979; Blackburn & Bishop, 1981; Christie, 1981; Murphy, Simons, Wetzel, & Lustma, 1984; Shaw, 1977; Taylor & Marshall, 1977; Teasdale, Fennell, Hibbert, & Amies, 1984; Williams, 1984; Wilson, Goldin, & Charbonneau-Powis, 1983). However, no study has ever evaluated the effects of such therapy associated with negative expectancies or counterdemand instructions. If patients showed an improvement despite these expectancies, it would further confirm the efficacy of cognitive therapy. In the present smdy, French depressive out-patients were given cognitive therapy in a multiple baseline-design associated with positive and negative therapeutic instructions.