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"Marinyo" is a culture left by the Portuguese around the 15th century in Maluku. The purpose of this study was to find out to what extent students' misconceptions about the concept of sound in the "Marinyo" case in the Kepuluan Tanimbar Regency. The method used was a qualitative study in ethnography in ten villages in two sub-districts. In addition, they conducted a survey in the form of a diagnostic test in the form of questions related to the "Marinyo" case on 300 elementary school students. The findings in the field show that students experience relatively high misconceptions. It was because teachers did not accustom students to learn from natural phenomena around them and were given scientific questions to seek, find and provide answers and solutions related to these natural phenomena. The teacher was more pursuing the conditions and problems of physics in textbooks and less exploring contextual matters. Future researchers are suggested to develop physics or science teaching materials based on regional local advantages that are oriented towards understanding concepts, mental models, critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity and innovative thinking so that teachers and students can learn well so that knowledge of science becomes better.

One of the difficulties in teaching Turkish, which is a phonetically rich language, to foreigners, is that similar sounds are often confused with each other. Since even a single punctuation mark is crucial for writing and reading Turkish letters (i-i, o-ö, u-ü, c-ç, g-g, s-s, etc.), students who use the Arabic alphabet have great difficulty writing and pronouncing Turkish words correctly. The difficulties that foreigners have in spelling vowels (i-i, o-ö, u-ü) and consonants (c-ç, g-g, m-n, s-s) when learning Turkish also have a negative impact on their writing and speaking skills. Especially in essay writing classes, students often misspell words, which makes it necessary to determine and implement more effective strategies in alphabet lessons. When teaching the Turkish alphabet, it is of great importance that the teacher uses "onomatopoeia," which is considered an important feature of Turkish, to overcome this problem. In this study, the effect of onomatopoeia, the word corresponding to sounds in nature, on writing skills in Turkish classes for foreigners was investigated. This study, taken from a class of nine students at the Afyon Kocatepe University Turkish Language Teaching Centre at A1 level in the semesters of 2013-2014, was based on the analysis of three essays written by the students before and after studying onomatopoeia. The analysis of the data revealed that teaching the alphabet with onomatopoeic words was effective for the students in terms of the letters whose spellings were confused with each other and made a significant contribution to the writing skills of foreigners.

This paper argues that the teaching of art in Higher Educational Institutions is inherently paradoxical. Informed by the transgressive and interdisciplinary qualities of contemporary artistic practices, education nevertheless is often made to fit into a reductionist, outcome-oriented and individualistic discourse. Taking a weeklong workshop at the Nida Art Colony in Lithuania as a practical axis for its reflections on the fluid nature of art education, the paper discusses possibilities of extending beyond pedagogical, political, human/nonhuman and other borders and treating 'noise' and other 'interferences' as opportunities for transgression and dialogue. This workshop with students from the Vilnius Academy of Arts took place in September 2022, at a time characterised by the Russia-Ukraine war. Nida's proximity to Russia's exclave Kaliningrad, its location on the narrow Curonian Spit, and its immediate environment characterised by woods and sand dunes provide this paper with a setting for a discussion about a variety of borders: territorial borders, border pedagogies, perceived borders between human and nonhuman entities, between land and sea, and so on. Borders are described as dominant indicators of power and distinction, while educational standards and instruments of measurement often replicate similar distinctions between the known and the unfamiliar. Yet, borders can also be shifted while new connections and dialogues across real and conceptual borders can be forged in a porous process that is predisposed towards flexible scenarios characterised by the 'not-yet'. The surrounding forest and wetlands and huge drifting sand dunes in Nida become analogies for the changing structure of the workshop, silently yet overpoweringly advocating for a mutable pedagogy. Analysed through the work of various contemporary artists, this nonhuman intrusion into a pedagogical and creative experience is both undefined and vulnerable, unlike the preordained structures of attainment targets often associated with contemporary schooling.

Background: In the modern music industry, AI music generators have gained particular importance. The use of AI greatly simplifies the creation of polyphony. In addition, it can increase student motivation and interest. Aims: This study focuses on the AI-assisted creation of polyphonic music. The purpose of this study is to determine how creating polyphony through the Deep Bach model impacts the academic motivation of music university students. Materials & Methods: Achieving this goal is possible by conducting an experimental training program based on the use of the above-mentioned model. Results: The results show that students in the experimental group have higher motivation than the control group participants. Therefore, AI-based music creation has the potential to become a new trend in music education. Implications: The findings of this study can be useful for music education experts, providing empirical data on the effectiveness of AI in music education. The use of the data can ultimately improve the learning process. Future research can focus on developing alternative AI models as well as investigating their effectiveness in music education.

Multisensory-rich VR experiences, which encompass visual, auditory, and haptic stimuli, have the potential to enhance engagement, motivation, and learning. However, extensive sensory stimuli could also compromise learning through sensory overload. In museum settings, visitors who are inundated with excessive stimuli such as unrelated background music or competing visual options may not experience optimal learning. This mixed-methods study addressed this potential problem by exploring the impact of sound on learning, enjoyment, sense of presence, and the development of interest among museum attendees (N = 255) who used two different types of technology: high-immersion VR or a tablet. Results from a one-way MANOVA revealed that learning and sense of presence were unaffected by the technology used unless sound was added. Using a tablet with sound lowered the sense of presence. Participants in the VR condition with or without sound had significantly higher enjoyment scores than those in either tablet condition. The development of interest was not significantly affected by any condition, regardless of whether sound was used. The research findings have implications for implementing VR for learning in museum settings. For instance, VR can enhance a sense of presence in museum exhibits, but a sense of presence may be significantly diminished when museum visitors use tablets with sound. Additional recommendations for the use of multimodal VR in museums are provided.

The more-than-human turn in early childhood education has highlighted the relevance of children's intra-actions with their environment, as well as the multiple ways in which worlds and literacies emerge in them. The rejection of representationalism as the single source of knowledge leads to the consideration of affect, embodiment, memories, sound and movement as ways of knowing. The ways in which they manifest in a school context deserve close attention to the tiny details of literacy events. Our research presents a diffractive reading of an event in a school classroom, aiming to understand human and more-than-human intra-actions in this context, the re-configurations of time, space and matter, and the ways in which children articulate entanglements with texts and bodies. We focus on the intra-actions of a seven-year old child with a photo of his favourite videogame and the ways in which affect and memory emerge. The child's sounds and movements, the researcher, the photo and the space become entangled to re-configure time, space and matter. Our analysis provides an insight into an event often occurring in schools. We offer some clues to understand it as part of the language and literacy practices of children, and pose the necessity of reconsidering the usual concept of literacy in school.

A lack of response to voices, and a great interest for music are part of the behavioral expressions, commonly (self-)reported in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). These atypical interests for vocal and musical sounds could be attributable to different levels of acoustical noise, quantified in the harmonic-to-noise ratio (HNR). No previous study has investigated explicit auditory pleasantness in ASD comparing vocal and non-vocal sounds, in relation to acoustic noise level. The aim of this study is to objectively evaluate auditory pleasantness. 16 adults on the autism spectrum and 16 neuro-typical (NT) matched adults rated the likeability of vocal and non-vocal sounds, with varying harmonic-to-noise ratio levels. A group by category interaction in pleasantness judgements revealed that participants on the autism spectrum judged vocal sounds as less pleasant than non-vocal sounds; an effect not found for NT participants. A category by HNR level interaction revealed that participants of both groups rated sounds with a high HNR as more pleasant for non-vocal sounds. A significant group by HNR interaction revealed that people on the autism spectrum tended to judge as less pleasant sounds with high HNR and more pleasant those with low HNR than NT participants. Acoustical noise level of sounds alone does not appear to explain atypical interest for voices and greater interest in music in ASD.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the ability to discriminate yes/no questions from statements in three groups of children--bilateral cochlear implant (CI) users, nontraditional CI users with aidable hearing preoperatively in the ear to be implanted, and controls with normal hearing. Half of the nontraditional CI users had sufficient postoperative acoustic hearing in the implanted ear to use electric-acoustic stimulation, and half used a CI alone. Method: Participants heard recorded sentences that were produced either as yes/no questions or as statements by three male and three female talkers. Three raters scored each participant response as either a question or a statement. Bilateral CI users (n = 40, 4-12 years old) and normal-hearing controls (n = 10, 4-12 years old) were tested binaurally in the free field. Nontraditional CI recipients (n = 22, 6-17 years old) were tested with direct audio input to the study ear. Results: For the bilateral CI users, performance was predicted by age but not by 125-Hz acoustic thresholds; just under half (n = 17) of the participants in this group had measurable 125-Hz thresholds in their better ear. For nontraditional CI recipients, better performance was predicted by lower 125-Hz acoustic thresholds in the test ear, and there was no association with participant age. Performance approached that of the normal-hearing controls for some participants in each group. Conclusions: Results suggest that a 125-Hz acoustic hearing supports discrimination of yes/no questions and statements in pediatric CI users. Bilateral CI users with little or no acoustic hearing at 125 Hz develop the ability to perform this task, but that ability emerges later than for children with better acoustic hearing. These results underscore the importance of preserving acoustic hearing for pediatric CI users when possible.

Purpose: Verbal working memory is poorer for children with hearing loss than for peers with normal hearing (NH), even with cochlear implantation and early intervention. Poor verbal working memory can affect academic performance, especially in higher grades, making this deficit a significant problem. This study examined the stability of verbal working memory across middle childhood, tested working memory in adolescents with NH or cochlear implants (CIs), explored whether signal enhancement can improve verbal working memory, and tested two hypotheses proposed to explain the poor verbal working memory of children with hearing loss: (a) Diminished auditory experience directly affects executive functions, including working memory; (b) degraded auditory inputs inhibit children's abilities to recover the phonological structure needed for encoding verbal material into storage. Design: Fourteen-year-olds served as subjects: 55 with NH; 52 with CIs. Immediate serial recall tasks were used to assess working memory. Stimuli consisted of nonverbal, spatial stimuli and four kinds of verbal, acoustic stimuli: nonrhyming and rhyming words, and nonrhyming words with two kinds of signal enhancement: audiovisual and indexical. Analyses examined (a) stability of verbal working memory across middle childhood, (b) differences in verbal and nonverbal working memory, (c) effects of signal enhancement on recall, (d) phonological processing abilities, and (e) source of the diminished verbal working memory in adolescents with cochlear implants. Results: Verbal working memory remained stable across middle childhood. Adolescents across groups performed similarly for nonverbal stimuli, but those with CIs displayed poorer recall accuracy for verbal stimuli; signal enhancement did not improve recall. Poor phonological sensitivity largely accounted for the group effect. Conclusions: The central executive for working memory is not affected by hearing loss or cochlear implantation. Instead, the phonological deficit faced by adolescents with CIs denigrates the representation in storage and augmenting the signal does not help.

Purpose: Pitch variations (tone productions) have been reported as a measure to differentiate Cantonese-speaking children with and without childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). This study aims to examine fundamental frequency (F0) changes within syllables and the effects of syllable structure, lexical status, and syllable positions on F0 in Cantonese-speaking preschool children with and without CAS. Method: Six children with CAS, six children with non-CAS speech sound disorder plus language disorder (S&LD), 22 children with speech sound disorder only (SSD), and 63 children with typical speech-language development (TD) performed the tone sequencing task (TST). Growth curve analysis was employed to analyze and compare the F0 values within syllables with three Cantonese tones (high level, high rising, and low falling). The analysis considered the effects of syllable structure (vowel and consonant-vowel), lexical status (word and nonword), and syllable position (initial, medial, and final) on F0, as well as comparisons within and between groups. Results: Within each group, the effects of syllable structure and position on F0 values were found with different patterns. Between-group comparisons showed that the CAS group had reduced F0 contrasts. The CAS group could be differentiated from the control groups based on interactions of F0 with syllable structure and position, but not lexical status. The dissimilarity of F0 values detected between the CAS and SSD/TD groups was more prominent than that observed between the CAS and S&LD groups. Conclusions: This study demonstrated that Cantonese-speaking children with CAS had difficulty in varying F0 within syllables as compared to those without CAS, suggesting pitch variation difficulty and language-specific impairment profiles in CAS. Future investigations of objective measures for identifying Cantonese speakers with CAS and cross-linguistic investigations using growth curve analysis and the TST are suggested.

Purpose: The main objective of this study was to assess the existence of developmental effects on the performance of the Vocale Rapide dans le Bruit (VRB) speech-in-noise (SIN) identification test that was recently developed for the French language and to collect reference scores for children and adolescents. Method: Seventy-two native French speakers, aged 10-20 years, participated in the study. Each participant listened and repeated four lists of eight sentences, each containing three key words to be scored. The sentences were presented in free field at different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) using a four-talker babble noise. The SNR yielding 50% of correct repetitions of key words (SNR[subscript 50]) was recorded for each list. Results: A strong relationship between age and SNR[subscript 50] was found, better performance occurring with increasing age (average drop in SNR[subscript 50] per year: 0.34 dB). Large differences (Cohen's d [greater than or equal to] 1.2) were observed between the SNR[subscript 50] achieved by 10- to 13-year-old participants and those of adults. For participants aged 14-15 years, the difference fell just above the 5% level of significance. No effects of hearing thresholds or level of education were observed. Conclusions: The study confirms the existence of developmental effects on SIN identification performance as measured using the VRB test and provides reference data for taking into account these effects during clinical practice. Explanations as to why age effects perdure during adolescence are discussed.

Purpose: According to the interpersonal synergy model of spoken dialogue, interlocutors modify their communicative behaviors to meet the contextual demands of a given conversation. Although a growing body of research supports this postulation for linguistic behaviors (e.g., semantics, syntax), little is understood about how this model applies to speech behaviors (e.g., speech rate, pitch). The purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis that interlocutors adjust their speech behaviors across different conversational tasks with different conversational goals. Method: In this study, 28 participants each engaged in two different types of conversations (i.e., relational and informational) with two partners (i.e., Partner 1 and Partner 2), yielding a total of 112 conversations. We compared six acoustic measures of participant speech behavior across conversational task and partner. Results: Linear mixed-effects models demonstrated significant differences between speech feature measures in informational and relational conversations. Furthermore, these findings were generally robust across conversations with different partners. Conclusions: Results suggest that contextual demands influence speech behaviors. These findings provide empirical support for the interpersonal synergy model and highlight important considerations for assessing speech behaviors in individuals with communication disorders.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore potential differences in suprathreshold auditory function among native and nonnative speakers of English as a function of age. Method: Retrospective analyses were performed on three large data sets containing suprathreshold auditory tests completed by 5,572 participants who were self-identified native and nonnative speakers of English between the ages of 18-65 years, including a binaural tone detection test, a digit identification test, and a sentence recognition test. Results: The analyses show a significant interaction between increasing age and participant group on tests involving speech-based stimuli (digit strings, sentences) but not on the binaural tone detection test. For both speech tests, differences in speech recognition emerged between groups during early adulthood, and increasing age had a more negative impact on word recognition for nonnative compared to native participants. Age-related declines in performance were 2.9 times faster for digit strings and 3.3 times faster for sentences for nonnative participants compared to native participants. Conclusions: This set of analyses extends the existing literature by examining interactions between aging and self-identified native English speaker status in several auditory domains in a cohort of adults spanning young adulthood through middle age. The finding that older nonnative English speakers in this age cohort may have greater-than-expected deficits on speech-in-noise perception may have clinical implications on how these individuals should be diagnosed and treated for hearing difficulties.

It has been proposed that second language (L2) learners differ from native speakers in processing due to either influence from their native language or an inability to integrate information from multiple linguistic domains in a second language. To shed new light on the underlying mechanism of L2 processing, we used an event-related potentials (ERP) paradigm to examine the processing of sentences with "only" in English by native speakers of English and advanced Dutch learners of English. Successful processing of sentences with "only" requires rapid integration of prosodic information with semantic and syntactic information. We found that L2 listeners showed native-like processing of the acoustics of contrastive pitch accents when adjacent to "only." However, they needed more cues than L1 listeners to perform native-like in forming expectations for focus placement. Our results thus provide first ERP-based evidence for difficulty in the integration of information for focus expectation in difficult L2 constructs.

The sounds of birds form the outdoor playlist of our lives. Birds appeal to the public, in part because of the wide variety of interesting sounds they make. This popularity has led to a long history of amateur participation in ornithology, which has recently produced rapid increases in freely available online databases with hundreds of thousands of bird sounds recorded by birdwatchers. These databases provide unique opportunities for teachers to guide students through processes to learn to identify bird species by their sounds. The techniques we summarize here include combining the auditory components of recognizing different types of sounds birds make with visual components of reading sonograms, widely available visual representations of sounds.

Pulsed-wave Doppler ultrasound is a widely used technique for monitoring pregnancies. As ultrasound equipment becomes more advanced, it becomes harder to train practitioners to be proficient in the procedure as it requires the presence of an expert, access to high-tech equipment as well as several volunteering patients. Immersive environments such as mixed reality can help trainees in this regard due to their capabilities to simulate real environments and objects. In this article, we propose a mixed reality application to facilitate training in performing pulsed-wave Doppler ultrasound when acquiring a spectrogram to measure blood velocity in the umbilical cord. The application simulates Doppler spectrograms while the trainee has the possibility of adjusting parameters such as pulse repetition frequency, sampling depth, and beam-to-flow angle. This is done using a combination of an optimized user interface, 3D-printed objects tracked using image recognition and data acquisition from a gyroscope. The application was developed for Microsoft HoloLens as the archetype of mixed reality, while a 3D-printed abdomen was used to simulate a patient. The application aims to aid in both simulated and real-life ultrasound procedures. Expert feedback and user-testing results were collected to validate the purpose and use of the designed application. Design science research was followed to propose the intended application while contributing to the literature on leveraging immersive environments for medical training and practice. Based on the results of the study, it was concluded that mixed reality can be efficiently used in ultrasound training.

Purpose: The present study investigates the perception of vowel nasality in French-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs; CI group) and children with typical hearing (TH; TH group) aged 4-12 years. By investigating the vocalic nasality feature in French, the study aims to document more broadly the effects of the acoustic limitations of CI in processing segments characterized by acoustic cues that require optimal spectral resolution. The impact of various factors related to children's characteristics, such as chronological/auditory age, age of implantation, and exposure to cued speech, has been studied on performance, and the acoustic characteristics of the stimuli in perceptual tasks have also been investigated. Method: Identification and discrimination tasks involving French nasal and oral vowels were administered to two groups of children: 13 children with CIs (CI group) and 25 children with TH (TH group) divided into three age groups (4-6 years, 7-9 years, and 10-12 years). French nasal vowels were paired with their oral phonological counterpart (phonological pairing) as well as to the closest oral vowel in terms of phonetic proximity (phonetic pairing). Post hoc acoustic analyses of the stimuli were linked to the performance in perception. Results: The results indicate an effect of the auditory status on the performance in the two tasks, with the CI group performing at a lower level than the TH group. However, the scores of the children in the CI group are well above chance level, exceeding 80%. The most common errors in identification were substitutions between nasal vowels and phonetically close oral vowels as well as confusions between the phoneme /u/ and other oral vowels. Phonetic pairs showed lower discrimination performance in the CI group with great variability in the results. Age effects were observed only in TH children for nasal vowel identification, whereas in children with CIs, a positive impact of cued speech practice and early implantation was found. Differential links between performance and acoustic characteristics were found within our groups, suggesting that in children with CIs, selective use of certain acoustic features, presumed to be better transmitted by the implant, leads to better perceptual performance. Conclusions: The study's results reveal specific challenges in children with CIs when processing segments characterized by fine spectral resolution cues. However, the CI children in our study appear to effectively compensate for these difficulties by utilizing various acoustic cues assumed to be well transmitted by the implant, such as cues related to the temporal resolution of stimuli.

Purpose: This study examined speech changes induced by deep-brain stimulation (DBS) in speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD) using a set of auditory-perceptual and acoustic measures. Method: Speech recordings from nine speakers with PD and DBS were compared between DBS-On and DBS-Off conditions using auditory-perceptual and acoustic analyses. Auditory-perceptual ratings included voice quality, articulation precision, prosody, speech intelligibility, and listening effort obtained from 44 listeners. Acoustic measures were made for voicing proportion, second formant frequency slope, vowel dispersion, articulation rate, and range of fundamental frequency and intensity. Results: No significant changes were found between DBS-On and DBS-Off for the five perceptual ratings. Four of six acoustic measures revealed significant differences between the two conditions. While articulation rate and acoustic vowel dispersion increased, voicing proportion and intensity range decreased from the DBS-Off to DBS-On condition. However, a visual examination of the data indicated that the statistical significance was mostly driven by a small number of participants, while the majority did not show a consistent pattern of such changes. Conclusions: Our data, in general, indicate no-to-minimal changes in speech production ensued from DBS stimulation. The findings are discussed with a focus on large interspeaker variability in PD in terms of their speech characteristics and the potential effects of DBS on speech.

Objectives: We provide a novel application of psycholinguistic theories and methods to the field of auditory training to provide preliminary data regarding which minimal pair contrasts are more difficult for listeners with typical hearing to distinguish in real-time. Design: Using eye-tracking, participants heard a word and selected the corresponding image from a display of four: the target word, two unrelated words, and a word from one of four contrast categories (i.e., voiced-initial [e.g., "peach-beach"], voiced-final [e.g., "back-bag"], manner-initial [e.g., "talk-sock"], and manner-final [e.g., "bat-bass"]). Results: Fixations were monitored to measure how strongly words compete for recognition depending on the contrast type (voicing, manner) and location (word-initial or final). Manner contrasts competed more for recognition than did voicing contrasts, and contrasts that occurred in word-final position were harder to distinguish than word-initial position. Conclusion: These results are an important initial step toward creating an evidence-based hierarchy for auditory training for individuals who use cochlear implants.

Rhythm metrics can detect second language development of target-like speech rhythm but interpretation of the results from metrics in learners' speech is problematic because the mapping of metrics to underpinning phonological features is indirect. We investigate speech rhythm in first language (L1) Arabic / second language (L2) English, which differ in key properties contributing to the percept of rhythm: unstressed vowel reduction and syllable structure. Our production data are interpreted using additional measures, of stressed and unstressed vowels and of consonant cluster realization, alongside standard rhythm metrics; this combination facilitates disambiguation of competing interpretations of the metric results. The findings confirm the importance of using multiple rhythm metrics to study L2 speech rhythm and demonstrate how simple additional measures can guide interpretation of their results. In this study the metrics results showed that the speech produced by the L2 speakers, regardless of their length of residence in the UK, exhibited lower vocalic durational variability than the speech produced by the native Arabic and English speakers. However, closer inspection of the degree of vowel reduction by the native and nonnative groups confirms that no single metric captures the complex nature of the observed L2 rhythm patterns. Future L2 studies are advised not to draw firm conclusions about the degree of vowel reduction and consonant cluster realization in L2 speech based solely on the results of the rhythm metrics.

While augmented reality (AR) technology has shown the potential to facilitate students' hands-on activities, few studies have explored its effectiveness in acoustic topics. This paper introduces an AR-based application for learning about the Doppler effect and investigates its educational effectiveness on students' learning achievement, interest, and attitude compared to a two-dimensional (2D) learning tool. Eighty-five junior high school students participated in our study, and they were randomly assigned to two groups (AR: n = 44, 2D: n = 41). The results revealed that students in the AR group outperformed those in the 2D group in terms of their learning achievement and interest. Both groups showed positive attitude toward the Doppler class and physics learning. Moreover, students presented a high level of cognitive perception toward the AR learning tool. This study provides a case for the application of AR in acoustics learning.

Noise, although ubiquitous, is seldom considered as a factor that may impede learning. In South Africa, most learners are multilingual and learn in English, which is their second language. Most noise studies have been conducted in the Global North, where the school context differs from the Global South. In this article, using questions selected from the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, we present a quantitative evaluation of the perceptions of background noise on learning of a purposive sample of 154 Grade 10 to 12 female learners attending 2 all-girls schools, who were either learning through English as their second, or as their first language. The responses of first language and second language learners were compared using Mann-Whitney U tests with Hodges-Lehman estimates. Second language learners reported greater interference and annoyance from noise, compared to their first language peers. This may be due to the additional cognitive demands required when processing complex information in a second language. Given the high proportion of learners who are learning through a language that is not their mother tongue, we highlight the importance of a good acoustic environment to counteract the negative effects of the increased cognitive demand when processing information in a second language. Educators should consider ways to mitigate interference from noise and to improve the saliency of the acoustic signal in their classrooms.

This study uses a qualitative methodology. The objective was to examine a musical instrument for teaching the creation and acoustic characteristics of Guhu of the Zhuang ethnic group in Guangxi, China, about shape and structure to summarize raw materials, craftsmanship, and process of Guhu, then measure by acoustic instruments, conclude the acoustic characteristics of Guhu, and discuss the use and functional significance of the instrument more accurately and logically. The raw materials, tools, production points, and specific steps of Guhu are systematically recorded by interviews, observation, and personal experience. Several acoustic measurements are made to explore the acoustic characteristics of Guhu. Guhu's culture and characteristics are fully demonstrated in the core of technical practice and the theory of technical knowledge. The study results show that: the traditional production method. Overall, it has the potential to be universal and representative of acoustic characteristics. Guhu's wood, leather, and aggregate materials are all standard. Guhu's creation has an influence on its shape, structure, and acoustics. Guhu is being improved as time passes, and research into characteristics is also helping guide the development of a more standard production process and a new improvement scheme. This will result in the integration of knowledge to study techniques and methods for creating Guhu that will last indefinitely.

An introductory phonetics course provides foundational content for future clinical practice and may serve as a student's first experience within the field of Communication Sciences and Disorders. The Students as Partners framework (Cook-Sather et al., 2014) offers a model for valuing student assets and experiences in co-creating learning materials to enhance active learning and deepen understanding. Incorporating positive affective feelings around learning complex material, integrating technology, and building a mutually respectful learning community can foster inclusive practices. In this manuscript, the authors share how redesigning an introductory Phonetics and Acoustics course at a large, urban, commuter, public university led to increased student engagement, increased practice, increased collaboration, and increased generalization. This was achieved through personalized content and activities, warm-up activities that fostered success and integration, and co-created active learning activities, such as phonetic memes, spectrogram cards, phonetic pun activities, and sociolinguistic discussions of personal experiences. Thematic analysis of course evaluation data for the redesigned course revealed themes related to: student-instructor partnerships; practice opportunities and clinical application; and sense of belonging within the learning community.

The purpose of the present study was to examine: (1) the effects of audio-visual information; and (2) the role of temporal measurements associated with the perceptual ratings of fluency, accentedness, comprehensibility, pronunciation, and oral proficiency in second language (L2) speech samples of International Teaching Assistants (ITAs). American undergraduate students randomly assigned to audiovisual and audio-only (without seeing the speaker) conditions rated the two-minute speech samples of five ITAs on a seven-point scale. For acoustic analysis, several temporal measurements were used that were hypothesized to have an association with the ratings. Findings revealed that listeners without visual information judged L2 speech as less fluent and more accented although no significant difference in comprehensibility was found. L2 speakers were also judged to have better pronunciation and higher oral proficiency when the recordings were presented in video mode. The findings further indicated that among the acoustic measures examined, articulation rate was found to be associated with perceptual ratings. Implications for ITA training and language testing and assessment are discussed.

Ram Tone is a traditional play that is unique to Thailand. It is a popular folk play in all regions of Thailand and has been popular since ancient times. Ram Tone is a band dance with male and female dancers dancing in a circle, accompanied by tone, cymbaling, and Krab. The objective of the present study is to learn more about Ram Tone's literacy preservation and knowledge transmission in Mahasarakham Province, Thailand. The information is offered by knowledgeable individuals, practitioners, and general informants through qualitative research methods, including preliminary surveys, interviews, and observations. The researchers assessed the data for accuracy, evaluated the data in relation to the desired objectives, and presented the study findings using descriptive analysis. The results of this study show that the Kantharawichai District and Mahasarakham Province have acquired knowledge and built on their indigenous wisdom through the development of the Ram Tone dancing stance and educational curriculum.

This study examined the effectiveness of an ultrasound visual biofeedback (UVB) training on speech-language pathology (SLP) students' assessment of sonographic tongue configuration. This study examined the presence of a functional relation between an ultrasound visual biofeedback (UVB) training within the Participatory Adult Teaching Strategy framework and speech-language pathology (SLP) students' assessment of sonographic tongue configuration. Method: This study employed a multiple baseline, single-case design across participants and behaviors for data collection and analysis. Four graduate and three undergraduate level SLP students participated. Results: Percentage of goal obtained indicated that training was effective across participants and behaviors for teaching SLP students in the assessment of sonographic tongue shape for remediation of speech sound errors. Differences were found between undergraduate and graduate SLP students in the accuracy of assessment of sonographic tongue section configuration. Conclusions: The study establishes preliminary effectiveness of UVB training for SLP students. Although results demonstrate the effectiveness, special considerations should be applied when training graduate and undergraduate students in implementation of UVB training in order to accommodate knowledge and clinical experience differences between graduate and undergraduate students.

The development of communication, perception, sound, and rhythm (DCPSR) is a learning subject that provides stimulation, and intervention for the appreciation of sound which is done intentionally or unintentionally so that the remnants of hearing and the feeling of vibration possessed by students with hearing impairment can be used as well as possible. This study aims to describe the current conditions for the implementation of DCPSR special schools and the need for Augmented Reality (AR)-based DCPSR media. Data was collected by distributing questionnaires through a google form by accidental sampling 131 special education teachers in Indonesia and focused group focus (FGD). Instrument validity uses content validity and reliability uses interrater reliability. The data analysis technique used the descriptive-qualitative analysis method. The results showed that 18.32% of teachers did not even understand the concept of DCPSR, ??while 72.51% of teachers thought that DCPSR needed to be taught. Schools still use conventional media (54.2%), and 99.24% of teachers feel the need and need innovative DCPSR media in the form of AR-based media, especially in communication material (oral motor) 34.45%, as well as sound and rhythm perception (detection) 46.56%. The results of the analysis show that teachers who teach the deaf need the development of AR-based DCPSR media that is easy to operate and reach, such as smartphones with additional facilities for audio, images, captions, and cues. The results of the FGD showed that prioritizing the development of this AR-based media on sound discrimination material on the essential sounds around students.

This study examined how Korean EFL learners in different proficiency levels attest contrasts of L2 phonology. To this end, twenty Korean EFL learners in high and low levels of English proficiency produced words with word-final contrasts of /[esh]/ vs. /[esh]i/, /t[esh]/ vs. /t[esh]i/, and /d[ezh]/ vs. /d[ezh]i/. Acoustic analyses of lexical vs. epenthetic vowels and lexically vs. derivationally final sibilants were conducted. The results of the acoustic analyses revealed that Korean learners differentiated them at the acoustic level by employing different vowel ratios or F1 for the produced forms with a final lexical or epenthetic vowel which did not differ at the segmental level. On the other hand, the low group did not acoustically differentiate the two types of vowels after /d[ezh]/ at all. With the production of a final sibilant either lexical or derivational, Korean learners also made distinctions in terms of different frication ratios. The results of the study found L2 learners distinguish segmental contrasts acoustically, which is different from L1 speakers, and the proficiency level partially mediates this. The results implicate the existence of interlanguage phonology with its independent system.

This study aims to investigate students' awareness of the level, causes and negative effects of noise in schools through the utilization of creative drama activities. The objective of this sample application is to contribute to the development of a more tranquil and peaceful school environment. A single case study design was employed for this research, with the study group comprising 16 fourth-grade students from a primary school. Student interviews served as the primary data collection tool, supplemented by observations and video recordings. Thematic analysis was employed to analyze the data, resulting in the identification of four main themes related to noise awareness: "lack of tranquility," "noise phenomenon," "conflict exacerbation," and "creative ideas". By incorporating the Visual Arts and Science curriculum, students demonstrated important life skills such as innovative thinking, effective communication, and analytical reasoning. Additionally, this interdisciplinary approach allowed for the attainment of learning objectives within the Science curriculum's sound unit, while also addressing the "Visual Communication and Formation" domain of the Art curriculum.

Purpose: Amplitude modulations (AMs) are important for speech intelligibility, and deficits in speech intelligibility are a leading source of impairment in childhood listening difficulties (LiD). The present study aimed to explore the relationships between AM perception and speech-in-noise (SiN) comprehension in children and to determine whether deficits in AM processing contribute to childhood LiD. Evoked responses were used to parse the neural origins of AM processing. Method: Forty-one children with LiD and 44 typically developing children, ages 8-16 years, participated in the study. Behavioral AM depth thresholds were measured at 4 and 40 Hz. SiN tasks included the Listening in Spatialized Noise-Sentences Test (LiSN-S) and a coordinate response measure (CRM)- based task. Evoked responses were obtained during an AM change detection task using alternations between 4 and 40 Hz, including the N1 of the acoustic change complex, auditory steady-state response (ASSR), P300, and a late positive response (late potential [LP]). Maturational effects were explored via age correlations. Results: Age correlated with 4-Hz AM thresholds, CRM separated talker scores, and N1 amplitude. Age-normed LiSN-S scores obtained without spatial or talker cues correlated with age-corrected 4-Hz AM thresholds and area under the LP curve. CRM separated talker scores correlated with AM thresholds and area under the LP curve. Most behavioral measures of AM perception correlated with the signal-to-noise ratio and phase coherence of the 40-Hz ASSR. AM change response time also correlated with area under the LP curve. Children with LiD exhibited deficits with respect to 4-Hz thresholds, AM change accuracy, and area under the LP curve. Conclusions: The observed relationships between AM perception and SiN performance extend the evidence that modulation perception is important for understanding SiN in childhood. In line with this finding, children with LiD demonstrated poorer performance on some measures of AM perception, but their evoked responses implicated a primarily cognitive deficit.

Purpose: There is an increasing concern regarding hazardous recreational noise exposure among adolescents and young adults. Daily exposure to loud sound levels over a long period of time can increase the risk of noise-induced hearing loss. The full extent of the impact of recreational noise on hearing is not yet fully understood. The purpose of this review was to synthesize research that investigated hearing function in relation to recreational noise exposure in adolescents and young adults. Method: A systematic literature search of five databases covering the years 2000-2023 was performed. The articles included investigated audiological measurements of hearing function in relation to recreational noise exposure. Results: Four hundred sixty records were identified, of which 20 met the inclusion criteria and were included in the results. This review showed that although some recreational noise activities can be potentially harmful, there is an unclear relationship between exposure and outcome. Some findings indicated hearing threshold shifts or reduced otoacoustic emission amplitudes after recreational noise exposure, but most changes were short term and in the extended high-frequency range. Conclusions: There seemed to be inconsistencies regarding the utilization of methods of measuring exposure and outcome between studies. This might be one reason for the differing results in studies on the reported impact on hearing function from recreational noise exposure. To draw more certain conclusions about long-term effects, there is a need for longitudinal research that utilizes sound level measurements to assess low and high degrees of recreational noise exposure in relation to hearing function.

Beryl Gilroy (1924-2001) is often referred to as one of the first Black primary school headteachers in London, England. Her refusal to continue teaching in schools once she reached her fifties has not been explored in recent publications. Her interest in sound, pedagogy and therapeutic recovery can be revisited retrospectively. She strove to counter racism through the power of communication as a teacher, radio broadcaster, headteacher, therapist and published writer of memoir, novels and children's reading books. The unifying thread in this article interweaves different perspectives on why Beryl Gilroy tried to create colloquial and phonetic speech in her published writings. It is argued that perhaps this was devised to help the reader share in her own reimagining of "poignant veridicality" -- an appreciation of truth as something reached through sonic immersion in valuable and contrasting interpretations and feelings that do not always have to have rational explanations.

Multilingual speakers can find speech recognition in everyday environments like restaurants and open-plan offices particularly challenging. In a world where speaking multiple languages is increasingly common, effective clinical and educational interventions will require a better understanding of how factors like multilingual contexts and listeners' language proficiency interact with adverse listening environments. For example, word and phrase recognition is facilitated when competing voices speak different languages. Is this due to a "release from masking" from lower-level acoustic differences between languages and talkers, or higher-level cognitive and linguistic factors? To address this question, we created a "one-man bilingual cocktail party" selective attention task using English and Mandarin speech from one bilingual talker to reduce low-level acoustic cues. In Experiment 1, 58 listeners more accurately recognized English targets when distracting speech was Mandarin compared to English. Bilingual Mandarin-English listeners experienced significantly more interference and intrusions from the Mandarin distractor than did English listeners, exacerbated by challenging target-to-masker ratios. In Experiment 2, 29 Mandarin-English bilingual listeners exhibited linguistic release from masking in both languages. Bilinguals experienced greater release from masking when attending to English, confirming an influence of linguistic knowledge on the "cocktail party" paradigm that is separate from primarily energetic masking effects. Effects of higher-order language processing and expertise emerge only in the most demanding target-to-masker contexts. The "one-man bilingual cocktail party" establishes a useful tool for future investigations and characterization of communication challenges in the large and growing worldwide community of Mandarin-English bilinguals.

In recent years, the opportunities for academic libraries to engage as a partner in digital initiatives in academia have expanded significantly. The traditional focus on digitization, preservation, and dissemination of collections has developed and shifted considerably, bringing new strategies for adequately serving the changed academic needs, as well as building and utilizing different types of collections. The goal of this article is to elaborate on these strategic shifts by presenting one of Panitza Library's newest digital collections projects - the "Sound Library" of the American University in Bulgaria, thus sharing insights into the practical process.

The developmental trajectory of audiovisual speech perception in Mandarin-speaking children remains understudied. This cross-sectional study in Mandarin-speaking 3- to 4-year-old, 5- to 6-year-old, 7- to 8-year-old children, and adults from Xiamen, China (n = 87, 44 males) investigated this issue using the McGurk paradigm with three levels of auditory noise. For the identification of congruent stimuli, 3- to 4-year-olds underperformed older groups whose performances were comparable. For the perception of the incongruent stimuli, a developmental shift was observed as 3- to 4-year-olds made significantly more audio-dominant but fewer audiovisual-integrated responses to incongruent stimuli than older groups. With increasing auditory noise, the difference between children and adults widened in identifying congruent stimuli but narrowed in perceiving incongruent ones. The findings regarding noise effects agree with the statistically optimal hypothesis.

This article considers how teachers' encounters with a newly built learning space are complicit in the practices performed in that space. It builds on previous research into the relationship between learning spaces and pedagogical change by highlighting the acoustic aspects and how they were perceived by teachers in a primary school. Over two phases of the study, teachers and the principal were interviewed post occupancy to gather their perceptions and experiences of the learning environment. These interviews were analysed as evidence of practices and cross-referenced with the acoustic assessments which were conducted in each phase. The results show that, because of the salience of teachers' perceptions and experiences of the acoustic environment in their pedagogical practices, this aspect of school design needs to be more clearly considered. The study also highlights the importance of teacher's voices so that their situated pedagogical knowledge is taken into account.

The current study investigated whether the difficulty in finding group differences in prosody between speakers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and neurotypical (NT) speakers might be explained by identifying different acoustic profiles of speakers which, while still perceived as atypical, might be characterized by different acoustic qualities. We modelled the speech from a selection of speakers (N = 26), with and without ASD, as a network of nodes defined by acoustic features. We used a community-detection algorithm to identify clusters of speakers who were acoustically similar and compared these clusters with atypicality ratings by naïve and expert human raters. Results identified three clusters: one primarily composed of speakers with ASD, one of mostly NT speakers, and one comprised of an even mixture of ASD and NT speakers. The human raters were highly reliable at distinguishing speakers with and without ASD, regardless of which cluster the speaker was in. These results suggest that community-detection methods using a network approach may complement commonly-employed human ratings to improve our understanding of the intonation profiles in ASD.

There is a long-standing debate in the literature about the benefits that acoustic components of Infant Directed Speech (IDS) might have for infants' language acquisition. One of the highly contested features is vowel space expansion, which refers to the enlargement of the acoustic space between the corner vowels /i, u, a/ in IDS compared to Adult Directed Speech (ADS). Some evidence indicates that vowel space expansion in IDS facilitates infants' speech perception, thus promoting language development, whereas other studies have questioned these benefits and have proposed that any processing benefits of IDS are due to its other prosodic features such as exaggerated and variable pitch. This study aimed to tease apart the effects of vowel space expansion and prosodic exaggeration in IDS on 18-month-old infants' speech processing. Using a looking-while-listening paradigm, two between-subjects conditions were compared: Exaggerated Pitch (with exaggerated pitch height and range, but without vowel space expansion) and Expanded Vowel Space (with vowel space expansion, but no exaggeration in pitch height and range). Our results showed that infants recognized the meanings of the words more accurately in the Expanded Vowel Space compared to the Exaggerated Pitch condition. This suggests that vowel space expansion in IDS facilitates infants' lexical processing even when it does not cooccur with the prosodic exaggeration typical of IDS.

Elevated "neural noise" has been advanced as an explanation of autism and autistic sensory experiences. However, functional neuroimaging measures of neural noise may be vulnerable to contamination by recording noise. This study explored variability of electrophysiological responses to tones of different intensities in 127 autistic and 79 typically-developing children aged 2-5 years old. A rigorous data processing pipeline, including advanced visualizations of different signal sources that were maximally independent across different time lags, was used to identify and eliminate putative recording noise. Inter-trial variability was measured using median absolute deviations (MADs) of EEG amplitudes across trials and inter-trial phase coherence (ITPC). ITPC was elevated in autism in the 50 and 60 dB intensity conditions, suggesting diminished (rather than elevated) neural noise in autism, although reduced ITPC to soft 50 dB sounds was associated with increased loudness discomfort. Autistic and non-autistic participants did not differ in MADs, and indeed, the vast majority of the statistical tests examined in this study yielded no significant effects. These results appear inconsistent with the neural noise account.

Localizing sounds in noisy environments can be challenging. Here, we reproduce real-life soundscapes to investigate the effects of environmental noise on sound localization experience. We evaluated participants' performance and metacognitive assessments, including measures of sound localization effort and confidence, while also tracking their spontaneous head movements. Normal-hearing participants (N = 30) were engaged in a speech-localization task conducted in three common soundscapes that progressively increased in complexity: nature, traffic, and a cocktail party setting. To control visual information and measure behaviors, we used visual virtual reality technology. The results revealed that the complexity of the soundscape had an impact on both performance errors and metacognitive evaluations. Participants reported increased effort and reduced confidence for sound localization in more complex noise environments. On the contrary, the level of soundscape complexity did not influence the use of spontaneous exploratory head-related behaviors. We also observed that, irrespective of the noisy condition, participants who implemented a higher number of head rotations and explored a wider extent of space by rotating their heads made lower localization errors. Interestingly, we found preliminary evidence that an increase in spontaneous head movements, specifically the extent of head rotation, leads to a decrease in perceived effort and an increase in confidence at the single-trial level. These findings expand previous observations regarding sound localization in noisy environments by broadening the perspective to also include metacognitive evaluations, exploratory behaviors and their interactions.

The presented course, established 2016 as a compulsory elective for 22nd-year bachelor medical students, aimed to enhance deep learning of upper and lower limb anatomy from a clinical perspective by a maximum of student-centered activities combining hands-on skills training with team-learning. Three cohorts (in total 60 students) participated in this study. Students rotated through body painting, ultrasound, and clinical investigation supervised by faculty or an experienced clinician. Teams of 3-4 students prepared presentations on clinical anatomy and pathological conditions, which by teacher- and peer assessments on average achieved >85% (mean 17.8/20 points ± 1.06). After each activity session, the students reported their learning experience through a reflective diary. Fifty students (83%) evaluated the course by a voluntary anonymous questionnaire combining Likert-type scale and free-text questions to assess, predominantly, perception of course activities and their perceived influence on learning anatomy. Journal reports and questionnaires revealed that the students highly valued the course, and 92% (29 females, 17 males) rated group work satisfying or well-perceived. The highest appreciation achieved ultrasound followed by clinical examination and body painting, which one third proposed to integrate into the regular dissection course. All students recommended the course to their younger peers. This course was feasible to integrate in the pre-existing curriculum. Limiting factors to offer this elective course to more students are availability of clinical teachers, technical equipment, and education rooms. Being student-directed tasks, body painting and reflective diary-writing would be feasible to implement without additional faculty, which we recommend to educators for student engagement activation.

There is a significant amount of research literature on the importance of identifying and building on students' experiences and ideas for making sense of the natural world, especially when engaging in science practices. Simultaneously, approaches to creating justice-oriented science education promote the need to focus on the diverse sense-making repertoires that students, especially those from historically marginalized communities, bring to science classrooms. However, when it comes to emergent bi/multilingual students, science education has favored narrow definitions of what ways of communicating are seen as productive for figuring out natural phenomena, privileging English-based academic vocabulary. In this article, we investigate the myriad conceptual and semiotic resources that third-grade emergent bilingual students developed and used when explaining sound production. Additionally, we explore how students investigated the sounds produced by a string instrument and unpacked the how and whys that give rise to the pitch of the sounds they heard. Our analyses indicate that: (1) students created mechanistic explanations that identified how changes to the salient physical features of strings affected the pitch of the sounds; (2) students created and laminated multiple semiotic resources when sharing their observations and explanations, particularly sound symbolisms; and (3) students navigated both semiotic convergence and divergence as they worked toward conceptual convergence. Based on our findings, we argue that justice-oriented science learning environments must become spaces where emergent bilingual students can build on all their conceptual, semiotic, and cultural resources, without being policed, as they engage science practices.

Background: Recent evidence suggests that speech substantially changes in ageing. As a complex neurophysiological process, it can accurately reflect changes in the motor and cognitive systems underpinning human speech. Since healthy ageing is not always easily discriminable from early stages of dementia based on cognitive and behavioural hallmarks, speech is explored as a preclinical biomarker of pathological itineraries in old age. A greater and more specific impairment of neuromuscular activation, as well as a specific cognitive and linguistic impairment in dementia, unchain discriminating changes in speech. Yet, there is no consensus on such discriminatory speech parameters, neither on how they should be elicited and assessed. Aims: To provide a state-of-the-art on speech parameters that allow for early discrimination between healthy and pathological ageing; the aetiology of these parameters; the effect of the type of experimental stimuli on speech elicitation and the predictive power of different speech parameters; and the most promising methods for speech analysis and their clinical implications. Methods & Procedures: A scoping review methodology is used in accordance with the PRISMA model. Following a systematic search of PubMed, PsycINFO and CINAHL, 24 studies are included and analysed in the review. Main Contribution: The results of this review yield three key questions for the clinical assessment of speech in ageing. First, acoustic and temporal parameters are more sensitive to changes in pathological ageing and, of these two, temporal variables are more affected by cognitive impairment. Second, different types of stimuli can trigger speech parameters with different degree of accuracy for the discrimination of clinical groups. Tasks with higher cognitive load are more precise in eliciting higher levels of accuracy. Finally, automatic speech analysis for the discrimination of healthy and pathological ageing should be improved for both research and clinical practice. Conclusions & Implications: Speech analysis is a promising non-invasive tool for the preclinical screening of healthy and pathological ageing. The main current challenges of speech analysis in ageing are the automatization of its clinical assessment and the consideration of the speaker's cognitive background during evaluation.

Background: Poor sleep can contribute to poorer health and socioemotional outcomes. Sleep health can be influenced by a range of individual and other socioecological factors. Perceptions of neighborhood physical and social characteristics reflect broader social-level factors that may influence sleep, which have not been well studied in the Australian context. This study examined the association between perceived neighborhood characteristics and sleep in a large sample of Australians. Methods: Data were from 9,792 people aged 16 years or older, from Waves 16 and 17 of the nationally representative Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey. Associations between perceived neighborhood characteristics (neighborly interaction and support, environmental noise, physical condition, and insecurity) and self-reported sleep duration, sleep disturbance, and napping were examined using multiple logistic regression models. Results: "Neighborhood interaction and support" and "neighborhood physical condition" were not significantly associated with any sleep outcomes after adjusting for relevant covariates. However, "environmental noise" and "neighborhood insecurity" remained significantly associated with sleep duration and sleep disturbance. None of the neighborhood characteristics were associated with napping. Furthermore, associations did not significantly vary by gender. Conclusions: This study highlights the potential benefit of public health policies to address noise and safety in neighborhoods to improve sleep.

Auditory selective attention forms an important foundation of children's learning by enabling the prioritisation and encoding of relevant stimuli. It may also influence reading development, which relies on metalinguistic skills including the awareness of the sound structure of spoken language. Reports of attentional impairments and speech perception difficulties in noisy environments in dyslexic readers are also suggestive of the putative contribution of auditory attention to reading development. To date, it is unclear whether non-speech selective attention and its underlying neural mechanisms are impaired in children with dyslexia and to which extent these deficits relate to individual reading and speech perception abilities in suboptimal listening conditions. In this EEG study, we assessed non-speech sustained auditory selective attention in 106 7-to-12-year-old children with and without dyslexia. Children attended to one of two tone streams, detecting occasional sequence repeats in the attended stream, and performed a speech-in-speech perception task. Results show that when children directed their attention to one stream, inter-trial-phase-coherence at the attended rate increased in fronto-central sites; this, in turn, was associated with better target detection. Behavioural and neural indices of attention did not systematically differ as a function of dyslexia diagnosis. However, behavioural indices of attention did explain individual differences in reading fluency and speech-in-speech perception abilities: both these skills were impaired in dyslexic readers. Taken together, our results show that children with dyslexia do not show group-level auditory attention deficits but these deficits may represent a risk for developing reading impairments and problems with speech perception in complex acoustic environments.

Background: Students who are blind are integrated into public schools in many countries, yet are often excluded from full participation in science since most learning materials are visual. To create a compensatory route, an existing model-based inquiry-learning environment was adapted by means of sonification (addition of non-speech sounds that represent dynamic information). The learning environment uses agent-based models and a complex systems approach to teach the Kinetic Molecular Theory (KMT) and Gas Laws. The models are accompanied by a workbook consisting of text (printed or auditory) and images (printed or tactile). Objectives: The current research examined whether such perceptual compensation creates a comparable learning environment for learners who are blind compared with learners who are sighted using the original learning environment. The aim of the study is to expand knowledge about how the auditory channel may compensate the visual channel among individuals who are blind. Methods: Conceptual learning in science and reasoning about complex systems were assessed using pre- and post-questionnaires. To explore learners' learning progression throughout the unit, four progression analysis "windows" were selected. These were groups of adjacent or nearly adjacent items in the workbook that permitted a glimpse of learners' progression. Results: The sonified environment not only supported the learning of learners who are blind compared with the learning of learners who are sighted using visual material, but even furthered their learning with respect to diffusion, one of the more challenging concepts in KMT. It seems the types of sonified representations used in this study increased listeners' sensitivity to the micro-level interactions in a way less accessible in visual representations. Takeaways: Sonified environments can be provide learners who are blind with equitable participation by compensating and complementing the visual channel. Sonification can have implications for students who are blind as well as students who are sighted.

The Society of Music Analysis report indicated that digital music often sits uncomfortably within a curriculum where the main focus is on the non-digital. This article takes as its starting point a broad definition of digital music as both a type of music and a way that music is represented. It will examine how digital music has altered the music landscape within informal and formal educational settings, and it will explore conflicting notions of music literacy while suggesting that traditional arguments about the value of notation fluency in the digital age may be misdirected. Ultimately, it will propose a definition of 'critical music literacy' in which Western standard music notation is not the crucial consideration, with implications for the design of music curricula and for progression.