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This final report discusses the principal goals and achievements of the journal project "Language and Language Behavior Abstracts" during 1971. The objectives during this grant period were increasing income, improving the scholarly qualities of the journal, reducing operating costs where possible, and improving accessibility to scholars. Problems and progress in these areas are discussed. The appendixes include letters and announcements issued during the year to increase journal circulation and advertising. (VM)

The report presents results of both basic and applied research conducted at the Center for Research on Language and Language Behavior. Research was interdisciplinary and oriented toward the goal of contributing to the more effective learning, teaching, and use of language by persons of all ages and abilities. Studies described concerned oral word association norms for educable mentally retarded (EMR) children, relationship of paradigmatic free word associations to paired associate learning by EMRs, comprehension and imitation of sentences by mongoloid children as a function of transformational complexity, literature review of auditory integration and study of central auditory integration abilities of normal and retarded children, computer-assisted teacher training, connotative meaning of disability labels, and influence of disability labels and dialect differences on semantic differential responses of college students. (KW)

The point is made that, though foreign language teachers often have among their goals the knowledge by students of the unique patterns of thought, behavior and attitudes that characterize members of a target culture, there have been few systematic attempts to evaluate these outcomes. A general design for such a test is suggested, including three classes of items. Class A items are designed to measure the student's knowledge of how to conduct oneself in a variety of everyday situations common to the target culture; Class B items probe the student's understanding of general patterns of social interaction that are common to many specific situations; and Class C items test how successfully the student can adopt temporarily the world-view of the target culture. In general, the student must first identify the ways in which target-culture norms are being violated in a recorded episode, then describe alternate moves which would correct these violations. (Author/AMM)

This article reviews the prose literary styles used in literary Arabic in the period following the Second World War, and attempts to explain the considerable relationship between these prose styles and the developments which characterize Arabic prose in terms of form and content in this period. The work is based on a study of 36 authors representing 12 Arab geographic areas. One or more works of each author was chosen; their prose was analyzed and categorized "in precise linguistic terms using a comprehensive description of each sentence with its components as well as its vocabulary." The analyzed products were then fed into a computer from which grammatical constructions were studied. The prose writings revealed that modern Arabic prose falls into three style types: modern simple style, pure middle style, and grandiose style. Illustrations of each style are presented and discussed. (AMM)

The present final report covers the various activities of the Center for Research on Language and Language Behavior at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor during the final year of its operation before its closing on January 31, 1971. A prefatory section lists completed projects and the availability of individual reports. Included in this document are the following reports: (1) "Instructional Material for Intermediate Modern Hebrew," by E. A. Coffin and G. M. Schramm; (2) "The Role of Personality Variables in Second Language Learning," by A. Z. Guiora; (3) "Computerized Study of Syntax of Modern Literary Arabic," by E. McCarus and R. Rammuny; and (4) a report on the activities of CRLLB, 1965-1970, "The Center for Research on Language and Language Behavior: A Survey of Research," by B. Greene. The last report is followed by a listing of CRLLB progress reports, selected studies, completed doctoral dissertations, and publications. See AL 002 789-AL 002 793 for related documents. (AMM)

In the first section of this paper, the author analyzes concepts and theoretical issues found to be significant for the topics of investigation but neither sufficiently explicated nor fully incorporated into the studies to be described later. It is felt that much further work needs to be done in order to achieve such goals. In the second section, a cross-linguistic psychological analysis is described which contributes a prerequisite for the following, more complex investigations of bilingual behavior. In the third section, these investigations are reported which explore implicit and explicit response tendencies in intralingual and interlingual performance. In the fourth section, psychological difficulties in translation, especially problems of rearrangements or interlingual transformations, are investigated. (Author/AMM)

Knowledge of results (KOR) is most frequently cited as the reinforcer in self-instructional systems. The printed answer in a programmed text, for example, is supposed to reinforce the response the student emits previous to observing that answer. Some other possible reinforcers are briefly discussed in this paper before the literature on KOR in self-instruction was selectively reviewed. The review was organized as a search for evidence that KOR might appropriately be called a reinforcer. Studies comparing programs with and without feedback were examined; the weight of evidence from these global studies was that feedback did not enhance learning, as measured by immediate post-test scores or by retention tests. In at least one case there seemed to be a decrement in performance traceable to the presentation of feedback. Studies in which "schedules of reinforcement" were varied similarly failed to show effects that would be expected if KOR were acting as a reinforcer. One major study involving delay of KOR did report the effect expected when delivery of a reinforcer is delayed. Other studies on delay do not replicate this finding. Finer grained analyses of student behavior and KOR begin to reveal specific conditions under which KOR seems to be acting as a reinforcer. (Author/AMM)

This report describes initial steps taken in a research project aimed at gaining insight into the nature of effective foreign language teaching. Two systems for observing and describing classroom behavior of teachers and students were developed in this experiment. These systems were used to observe university-level French classes. Data collected from the observations are analyzed to produce profiles of typical classroom behavior and also to attempt to differentiate between behaviors of more effective and less effective teachers. The authors comment on the potential application of the systems in teacher training programs. More than 20 statistical tables are included and serve as the basis for concluding remarks. A bibliography is provided. (RL)

This guide consists of 135 lessons designed to teach English to speakers of other languages, or to teach standard English as a second dialect. Each lesson guides the kindergarten teacher through a day's activities. Each activity is identified with a heading, a brief descriptive paragraph, and an example of suggested dialogue. Lessons also list various materials such as pictures, toys, and puppets to be used during the activities. The program, presented in a linguistic sequence, emphasizes oral speech development. Children hear the language patterns modeled by the teacher and then repeat what has been said. Directions like "guide,""help," and "with the teacher's help" indicate when the teacher should model the pattern for the children. Once the children are able to control a pattern automatically through several oral repetitions, they can use the language in meaningful situations. Though the guide has been planned to cover 1 year, the time required to complete it may vary, depending on the maturational level of the children and the amount of time devoted to the lessons. (JF)

To explore the adequacy of a 50-word list, produced by item analysis of a set of 160 words in an earlier study, also by Tikofsky, tape recordings of 20 adult dysarthrics reading list were evaluated by university students who were native speakers of English and had no history of hearing loss. Results of the intelligibility study showed that the dysarthrics could be categorized according to their responses into four groups. The results also indicated that certain words presented more difficulty for some types of dysarthria than others. It was concluded that the 50 word list is an efficient and accurate means of testing dysarthrics before and after speech therapy. Tables provide biographical data on the patients, their itemized test responses, and correlations between test performance and nature of impairments; the 50-word list is also appended. (Author/JD)

The ability of 31 institutionalized trainable mentally retarded mongoloid and nonmongoloid subjects (mean IQ=27.5) to comprehend and imitate verbally presented sentences of varying levels of grammatical complexity was examined. Eight stimulus sentences were spoken for four pairs of pictures, simple declarative or kernel, negative, passive, and negative passive. Subjects were asked to select one of a pair of pictures for each sentence and then to repeat the sentences. They correctly comprehended kernel sentences significantly more often than other kinds of sentences. Among nonmongoloid subjects, imitation of sentences to which one optional transformation had been applied was significantly better than imitation of sentences modified by two potential transformations. Chronological age was significantly associated with imitation ability in nonmongoloids (p .04); IQ and imitation ability were significantly associated in mongoloids (p .05), indicating that the ability to store verbal material for immediate recall is associated with general intellectual or cognitive abilities. (Author/RJ)

The Beery Test of Visual Motor Integration was utilized in a reliability study with elementary school children. The results indicate sufficient scorer reliability and stability over time to merit its use with young children. (Author)

The development of perceptual-motor integration is an important area of study for the educational psychologist. This capacity is intimately or closely related to the development of reading and writing skills in children. This study reports a preliminary investigation of the reliability of one current test of this capacity, the Minnesota Percepto-Diagnostic Test. The sample consisted of one class of second, fourth and sixth grade children. The results indicate only a moderate level of reliability; this test should be used with caution. (Author)

The purpose of this Title VI study was to determine which pairs of lowercase alphabet letters were most frequently confused by prereading children and therefore most likely to cause difficulty in initial reading. Two sample groups were used: 50 lower-middle-class kindergarten children with a median age of 6 years and 25 upper-middle-class nursery school children with a median age of 4 years 4 months. The subjects were required to match a stimulus letter with one of two choice stimuli. A one-way analysis of variance was used for error scores. The most frequent confusions were reversal and rotation transformations. While the types of letter errors have remained approximately the same for over 40 years, the frequency of errors appears to have drastically reduced. Previous research is discussed. Tables, diagrams, and references are included. (Author/RT)

Thirty-six problem areas relating to college foreign language instruction are identified in this paper. Most of these problems can be grouped in five major categories--(1) high school preparation and college entrance requirements and placement procedures, (2) faculty training, qualifications, and interests, (3) research needs and the lag between the development of theory and its practical application, (4) poor coordination of classroom, language laboratory, and teaching materials as well as insufficient integration of cultural concepts, and (5) unrealistic objectives pertaining to student attitudes, undergraduate and graduate school requirements, priority disagreements, program articulation, and concomitant growth of student bodies and faculty. Also mentioned are changes needed in innovative and evaluative practices, the deterioration in college of language skills acquired in high school, and the problems involved with age and language learning. (AF)

To collect word association norms, 100 educable mentally handicapped boys (chronological ages 11 to 16, mental ages 7 to 11.5) responded to 25 nouns from the Mein and O'Connor list of words most commonly used by retarded children. The subjects were individually tested by stimuli typed on cards. The responses of all 100 subjects to the 25 stimulus words were tabulated. Alphabetical listings are provided of the stimuli; following each stimulus are the responses and their corresponding frequencies; the number of subjects failing to respond is also indicated. (JD)

Studies (2) of auditory memory performance are reported. Children were asked to recall material which permitted different language habits to be used (structural, and meaningful). Lower socio-economic status (LSES) Negro children performed more like their middle socio-economic status white (MSES) counterparts on non-contingent strings. When structure could be used to aid in recall, MSES performed better than LSES children. LSES children in the first and second grades gained more during the year between studies than did the MSES first and second grade children. Third grade LSES children did not show the same performance gains. (Author)

It was predicted that two variables would influence recognition memory for complex visual stimuli: association values, and the realistic-abstract dimension, or "objectivity". The stimuli were 12 reproductions of realistic paintings (clearly representing real world objects), six of high association value and six of low; and 12 abstract pictures, also evenly divided into high and low association groups. After .5 sec. exposures of each of the 12 realistic (abstract) pictures, subjects attempted to identify the 12 among an array of 60 similar pictures. The overall effects of both objectivity and association value were significant. In addition, a significant difference was found between high and low association abstract, but not between high and low association realistic pictures. The results are discussed in terms of a two-channel encoding model using both imaginal and verbal mediators, with the former being both more basic and more independent. (Author)

In the last few years, a rhetoric of inquiry has emerged to complement the rhetoric of the finished word. New interest in the "pre-writing" activities--e.g., audience analysis, concept formation, and the discovery of judgments which order and give meaning to experience--has manifested itself both in research into the nature of these activities and in the development of heuristic procedures to carry out these activities more efficiently. However, recent research has ignored the motivation for engaging in pre-writing activities. The very earliest stages of the writing process actually begin as the writer discovers that he is psychologically uncomfortable about some violation to his image of the world and wished to resolve the difficulty. He then analyzes and articulates the opposing components of his image, describes its origins, and specifies, in the form of a question, what he believes will resolve the inconsistency or eliminate the problem which is, at the outset, unknown to him. Because problems are important incentives to action, writing instruction should teach not only the nature and articulation of problems, but also should sharpen the student's awareness of his own cognitive life and encourage him to believe that events in it are appropriate subjects for investigation. (JB)

The English Oral Language Lessons were developed by the Foreign Language Innovative Curricula Studies (FLICS) of the University of Michigan. The lessons were designed for pre-school children of Mexican American migrant workers with an emphasis on the structure of English sentences rather than on vocabulary. The study was constructed to test the effectiveness of the FLICS lessons. Two experimental groups of 9 subjects each received the FLICS lessons and were compared with a control group of 8 similar children who were in a nursery school program. The results indicated that both experimental groups performed significantly better than the control group and that the FLICS program did benefit the migrant children in terms of their language performance. Also, the study supported the conclusion that a short-term language training program could bring about changes in language performance of culturally disadvantaged children. (DK)

This study was designed to test the hypothesis that the recall of verbal material (critical material) accompanying semantically well integrated (SWI) sentences will be superior to the recall of verbal material accompanying semantically poorly integrated (SPI) sentences. This hypothesis was based upon the conclusion derived from previous research that SWI sentences were stored more efficiently than SPI sentences. With the assistance of norms of sequential associative dependencies in active declarative sentences, complex sentences were constructed which contained two underlying sentences: a matrix sentence and an embedded sentence. Under the SWI condition, one of the underlying sentences was an SWI string, while under the SPI condition one was an SPI string. The critical material (identical for both levels of semantic integration) was contained in the second underlying sentence. The location of the critical material (the matrix or the underlying sentence) was varied. A standard study-test (written recall) procedure was used in a 2 x 2 factorial design with five trials and lists consisting of ten sentences each. The results indicated superior recall for both the SWI and the critical material, and were interpreted in terms of a storage hypothesis. (Author/DO)

In an attempt to apply recent developments in transformational grammar to Latin syntax, this report analyzes first English, then Latin sentences for both deep and surface structures through transformational and phrase structure grammar methods. Auxiliary nodes, problems of Latin verb complimentation, and the gerund and gerundive constructions are the syntactical problems in Latin considered. (AF)

Forty first-grade and 40 seventh-grade children were assigned at random to four groups of 20 each (two at each age level) and were administered four study-test trials involving oral presentation and oral recall of a list of four sentences of the form article-adjective-noun-verb-adverb. Half of the subjects at each level of age were given semantically well integrated (SWI) sentences to learn, while the other half were given semantically poorly integrated (SPI) sentences to learn. The sentences were constructed with the assistance of college associative sentence norms, on the assumption that such norms are a reflection of mature semantic competence. For all measures of recall, the SWI sentences were recalled better than the SPI sentences regardless of age of the subjects. In addition, there was evidence that the words in SWI sentences were recoded into larger chunks for storage than the words in SPI sentences and that age tended to increase chunking for both SWI and SPI sentences. As anticipated, the only evidence for phrase-chunking was found in the group of seventh graders that was exposed to SPI sentences. (Author/DO)

The technique of "voiceprint identification" has been invested with a myth of infallibility, largely by means of a specious analogy with fingerprints. The refusal of its chief proponent to submit to a properly controlled test of his ability, coupled with the inability of observers in independent studies to get comparably low error rates, is sufficient basis for skepticism. There is reason furthermore to doubt whether spectrograms could ever form a valid basis for absolute identification. The present study replicated "The 'Voiceprint' Game" with even more stringent constraints on selection and arrangement of spectrograms representing three undisguised tokens of the same word or phrase by each of three adult male native speakers of North Midland American English. The results show that (1) most of the similarity between any two spectrograms of the same word is "linguistic," arising from that particular word's being spoken in the same or similar dialect and context; and (2) differences between the spectrograms of the same word spoken by two different speakers of similar dialects are "small" in comparison to within-speaker variations for that word. The "Voiceprinter" is more properly likened to the "lie detector" in that stable guidelines for interpreting its graphic records appear permanently beyond reach. (Author/AMM)

In the three studies reported here, an attempt was made to determine whether adult native speakers of English can agree on the choice of phonetic labels for visually presented geometric figures. It was the purpose of these studies to obtain evidence in support of the "phonetic symbolism" hypothesis. An initial study and two replications were performed with eight adults who spoke only English serving as subjects in each experiment. The subjects agreed about the relationship between vowel sounds and the size of figure regardless of shape. The sound [a] (as in "father") was more often chosen for large figures while [i] (as in "beat") was more often chosen for small. A less striking but discernible trend was observed for the labelling of figures with vowel sounds. It was tentatively concluded that, for English speakers, there does exist unrecognized yet consistent bases for relating sounds and visual stimuli. (Authors/JD)

The present study tested the hypothesis that the ability to speak a second language authentically or like a native speaker was related to an individual's sensitivity to cues in interpersonal situations--his empathic capacity. A test of empathy consisting of silent film clips shown at various speeds was shown to subjects who were asked to indicate each observed change in facial expression. A group of 28 subjects took this and additional control tests. Following these tests the subjects learned basic conversations in Japanese in four one-hour sessions. Their pronunciation was then rated by native Japanese speakers on general authenticity and on specific phonetic details for five spontaneous sentences and five sentences repeated after the instructor. The results indicated differences in speaking skills which were related to two clusters of variables representing independent personality characteristics. An empathy dimension was defined by four variables (tolerance to anxiety, intelligence, involvement in emotional experiences, and perception of emotional expression) and was related to correct pronunciation of specific details in spontaneous sentences (r = +.72). An intuition dimension consisting of three variables was significantly related to general authenticity of pronunciation of repeated sentences (r = +.72). Each cluster was shown to be a significant predictor of skill in second language pronunciation. (Authors/JD)

Forty-four undergraduates were assigned to two groups of 22 subjects each. The high association (HA) group was given booklets that contained a series of associatively related (free association norms) contrastive adjectives, one pair to a page, while the low association (LA) group was given booklets containing pairs of associatively unrelated adjectives. The task was to use each of the adjective pairs in a sentence with no restrictions placed on the content or syntactic structure of the sentences produced. It was anticipated that the semantic structure of the HA adjectives would lead subjects to use them to modify the same noun less often than LA adjectives, but to use them to modify the same noun in multiple occurrences of the noun (with contrasting referents) more frequently than LA adjectives. The data were analyzed for these measures and for one other, the tendency to use the adjectives to modify completely different nouns. The results tended to support the hypotheses. (Author/DO)

This course is designed to teach the non-Arabic speaker to read printed Arabic, to write Arabic with "a pleasing hand," to distinguish accurately the phonological contrasts of modern literary Arabic, and to pronounce it in a manner easily comprehensible to Arabs. Dialogs and proverbs are included for reading practice; grammatical structures are not dealt with. The course may serve as an introduction to, or be used concurrently with, a basic course. Typical lessons present a set of letters related in form, plus certain auxiliary signs. For each letter or sign there are three sections: (1) its pronunciation value, with explanations and drills if it differs from or is lacking in English; (2) the various shapes of this letter in its printed form and drills in reading it; and (3) the written forms of the letter, also with practice drills. At the end of each unit there are review drills for the unit as a whole. The material is presented usually one small feature at a time, and the student proceeds at his own rate. Pronunciation features are recorded on tape as well as described phonetically. Answers to oral drills are on tape; written answers are given in the left margin of the following page. For information on the tapes, write to the authors at the Center for Research on Language and Language Behavior, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48108. (AMM)

This paper reviews Philip Lieberman's "Intonation, Perception, and Language," (Research Monograph No. 38) Cambridge, Massachusetts, M.I.T. Press, 1967. The review is also scheduled to appear in the "Journal of Linguistics." (JD)

The author feels that there is no reason to suppose that adults are less capable than children in learning a second language, given adequate opportunity and motivation. In terms of amount learned in comparable time, the adult is about five times as efficient as the child. This is what would be expected of any other kind of intellectual or rational activity, and that is what second language learning ought to be--an intellectually interesting process. Two types of differences between languages are discussed here--differences in the surface representation of quasi-universal "deep" features, and differences in the "deep" conceptualizations of general human experience (the latter constituting "linguistic relativity"). Linguistic relativity, while a problem for the adult learner, is also a source of interest, and interest in language itself is one source of motivation for the mature student. The student learning a language in the field must be encouraged to develop initiative, curiosity, empathy, and an awareness of what to look for in the new language. This paper will be published in "The Modern Language Journal," v53, n5, 1969. It was also presented at the 1968 Annual Membership Conference of the Council on International Educational Exchange, New York, November 14-15, 1968. (Author/JD)

The purpose of this paper is to relate past research on communicability of verbal behavior in schizophrenics to current psycholinguistic theory. The paper reviews the taxonomic methods (segmentation and classification) which have characterized past research on schizophrenic verbal behavior. It is concluded that although interesting results have been reported, specification of that aspect of schizophrenic language behavior which causes it to be labeled "aberrant" or "pathological" is still lacking. A more generalizable alternative than those previously suggested in the literature is proposed as the basis for interpreting schizophrenic speech. It is assumed that new developments in psycholinguistic theory will provide needed insights into the nature of the schizophrenic language disorder. (Author/DO)

The subjects in this study, 18 fifth- and sixth-grade students from a middle-class area, were asked to listen to a tape recording with excerpts of conversations by speakers of three dialects: middle-class white, lower-class white, and lower-class Negro. Subjects were asked to rate the personality of each speaker by voice cues alone. In addition, the children listened to the tape again in order to determine race and probable occupation. It was predicted and confirmed that this technique would elicit stereotypes based on the dialects. The middle-class white speakers were judged significantly higher than the lower-class white speakers, who in turn were rated significantly higher than the lower-class Negro speakers. Thus, it was found that children of 10 and 11 years of age are indeed aware of the social significance of language differences. (Author/JD)

Pitch-synchronous, time-domain operation on digitized waveforms of human speech produces artificial changes in prosodic parameters, especially fundamental frequency and rhythm. Pitch of voiced segments is raised or lowered by an algorithm which truncates or "pads," respectively, each pitch period in the stored vector by an appropriate amount. Durations are altered by reduplicating or deleting pitch periods as necessary. Speech output, though of telephone quality, is more natural and intelligible than most fully synthetic speech. Potential applications are varied and far-reaching. (Author/DO)

Twenty-eight subjects were presented with computer generated grammatically deviant strings and asked to carry out two tasks on each of two experimental days. Task 1 was a forced-choice experiment in which 50 pairs of strings were presented aurally to each subject and he had to select that member of the pair which he felt was the best approximation to a good English sentence. In Task 2, subjects were required to read and rank each string on a scale running from 1 (completely unacceptable) to 5 (completely acceptable). A different order of stimulus presentation was employed on each experimental day; 14 subjects were assigned to one order on the first day and received the other order on the second day. Results show that subjects tend to prefer the same statement over orders and that rank and preference are highly correlated. There are considerable differences in preference among the 50 pairs of stimulus items. Analysis of the data suggests that this task yields information relevant to the linguistic and in particular the syntactic competence of subjects when applied to grammatically deviant strings. Subjects appear to be trying to cope with the statements by comparing them to acceptable syntactic and/or semantic patterns. (Author/DO)

A self-instructional device for conditioning accurate prosody in second-language learning is described in this article. The Speech Auto-Instructional Device (SAID) is electro-mechanical and performs three functions: SAID (1) presents to the student tape-recorded pattern sentences that are considered standards in prosodic performance; (2) processes the student's imitation and instantaneously evaluates its acceptability on the basis of pitch, loudness, and tempo; and (3) displays the degree to which the imitation is unacceptable and demonstrates how modifications are to be made for correction. Discussion of the rationale for the SAID system includes comments on other approaches to prosody instruction. Detailed information on SAID's functional operation is provided. (RL)

An experiment was conducted to investigate the linguistic concept of a hierarchy of syllable structures. Subjects were asked to identify different types of consonant clusters in initial, medial, and final positions in words. Little psycholinguistic evidence was discovered to support the hierarchical ordering described in the linguistic literature. However, the results of this experiment must be classified as tentative rather than definitive. (Author/FWB)

Two groups of English speakers received either auditory or articulatory instruction in learning to produce exotic sounds. Performance on production and discrimination tests indicated a striking superiority for the subjects who received systematic training in the production of exotic sounds as opposed to those subjects who received only discrimination training in listening to these sounds. The results of this study suggest that what is effective in the teaching of sound production and discrimination is the systematic development by small steps from known articulatory postures and movements to new and unknown ones. The possession of a scientific knowledge of articulatory phonetics by the teacher was shown to be extremely successful in leading students to the correct production of foreign sounds and thereafter to facilitate the discrimination of these sounds. The latter finding was taken as support for some carry-over from productive competence to auditory discriminatory competence. (Author/FWB)

The role and training of an educational consultant who is to become an "agent for innovation" is the subject of this report. He is seen largely as guiding and evaluating externally generated innovations in language programs and aiding the generation of innovation from within the school in the same subject area. Emphasis on design and articulation of the curriculum is to be directed toward an objective statement in behavioral terms of the instructional goals. Chapters discuss a foundations conference where basic problems were discussed, contrasts between the consultant and existing personnel in the system, curriculum design, course outline, evaluation procedures, selection of candidates for consultant training, problems identified by teachers, and a strategy of innovation. Two related papers, a list of the foundations conference participants, and a bibliography on innovative materials are included. (RL)

An experimental group of 22 preschool children from Inkster, Michigan, participated in an April 1967 to August 1967 prekindergarten enrichment program for low socioeconomic children. The program classes were unstructured and permissive. A contrast group of 33 children was also chosen. Both groups of children participated in a preschool program which began in September 1967. The contrast group would also be ready to enter kindergarten in the fall of 1968, but they had not participated in a preschool program prior to September 1967. The children in both groups were administered the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) in November 1967. The test results indicated that both groups were functioning below age norms. Another finding was that the contrast group performed significantly better than the experimental group on the total ITPA. The contrast group did significantly better on two of the subtests: visual decoding and visual-motor-sequential. The explanation for this result would seem to be the existence of systematic sample bias. The boys scored consistently higher than the girls on the subtests, an unusual finding explained perhaps in part by the fact that a male teacher was present in the program. Statistical tables and a bibliography are included. (WD)

A total of 102 children (17 from each of the kindergarten, first, and second grades and of two disparate socioeconomic backgrounds) were administered a series of tasks involving verbal recall. The purpose of this testing was to compare the verbal recall ability of children of different ages and socioeconomic status. The verbal material was read to the child. At the completion of each item, the child was asked to recall the verbal material in the order given. Task I consisted of CVC trigrams. Task 2 consisted of nouns. Tasks 3 and 4 consisted of sentences, meaningless and meaningful, respectively. The language skills necessary to perform the tasks increased, theoretically, from Task 1 to Task 4. The hypotheses that children remember more verbal units as language habits can be more fully utilized and that older children remember more units than younger children on the higher level tasks and that there is an interaction between socioeconomic status and performance on the tasks were not confirmed. A prediction of a cumulative deficit between socioeconomic groups with increasing age was rejected. (WD)

This is the first half of a two-part study of psychopedagogical problems in the language laboratory. A study of technical problems will follow. Major attention is directed to divisions of work (unities, elements, and phases), deferred comparison, deferred master control, audio-active feedback, the acquisition of new auditive processes, elimination of internal conduction, and returns in the audio-active processes. Other subjects treated include modes, error, teacher intervention, master control in different laboratories, teacher role (in laboratory and class), normal auditive perception, and neutralization of internal conduction by the audio-active process. Factors of audition, discrimination, auto-audition, and production are considered in the learning of foreign languages. (AF)

Methods to evaluate central hearing deficiencies and to localize brain damage are reviewed beginning with Bocca who showed that patients with temporal lobe tumors made significantly lower discrimination scores in the ear opposite the tumor when speech signals were distorted. Tests were devised to attempt to pinpoint brain damage on the basis of auditory tests; Jerger found that both temporal lobe tumors and brain-stem damage could lead to the same results on the tests. Bocca suggested delivering different signals to the two ears to assess the integration or binaural summation of the central neural system. Matzker suggested two individually meaningless sounds presented simultaneously, one to each ear; a normal system would apparently integrate sounds better. Studies by Bocca, Jerger, Sanchez-Longo, Forster, Matzker, Harris, and Hayashi indicated that subjects with organic symptoms showed poorer integration than subjects without these symptoms; however, it was not clear where binaural integration took place. Conclusions were that Matzker's procedure is probably inadequate as a general test to localize brain damage. More research is indicated as the technique shows promise for studying an organism's binaural integration abilities. (RP)

A study was conducted to delineate the qualitative differences in the language abilities of two disadvantaged groups and one advantaged group of kindergarten and first grade children who were tested on the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities. (As part of a larger study, the present report deals only with a part of the pretest phase.) Scores were compared, and an analysis of profile similarities showed that groups were most similar on subtests requiring sequential habits. The greatest performance discrepancies among the groups occurred on the analogs, vocabulary, and grammar subtests. Results indicate that strong syntactic habits are characteristic of higher-level functioning and that sequential language habits are characteristic of more primitive levels of language ability. Two hypotheses are proposed in explanation of the study results: (1) performance on sequential tests is dependent on the relatively fixed capacity of a subject's short-term memory, while other subtests require the ability to "structure" learning which is relatively more dependent upon experience; and (2) since the educationally-deprived children have not developed the higher-level facility with their language, they are relatively free from hypotheses about learning tasks. (MS)

THIS PAPER WRITTEN IN FRENCH, PRESENTS A HYPOTHESIS CONCERNING THE DECODING OF SPEECH IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING. THE THEORETICAL BACKGROUND OF THE DISCUSSION CONSISTS OF WIDELY ACCEPTED LINGUISTIC CONCEPTS SUCH AS THE PHONEME, DISTINCTIVE FEATURES, NEUTRALIZATION, LINGUISTIC LEVELS, FORM AND SUBSTANCE, EXPRESSION AND CONTENT, SOUNDS, PHONEMES, MORPHEMES, LEXEMES, SEMEMES, AND ALSO THE MONEME. IDENTIFICATION, OR DECODING, PROCEEDS BY SUCCESSIVE ELIMINATIONS--PHONEMES BEING IDENTIFIED BY ELIMINATION BEGINNING WITH THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURES. AT ALL LEVELS, CONTEXT MODIFIES THE ORDER OF ELIMINATION BY LIMITING POSSIBILITIES OF OCCURRENCE OF UNITS, AND EVEN NATIVE SPEAKERS MAKE ERRORS IN DISCRIMINATION WHEN DEPRIVED OF CONTEXT. FOR THE FOREIGN LISTENER, THE DECODING PROCESS USED IS THAT OF HIS NATIVE LANGUAGE. THE CONDITIONS OF TEACHING ARE SUCH THAT HE HAS NEITHER THE SAME LINEARITY NOR THE SAME LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS AS THE NATIVE SPEAKER. THIS RESEARCH REPORT IS ONE OF SEVERAL WHICH HAVE BEEN SUBMITTED TO THE OFFICE OF EDUCATION AS "STUDIES IN LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE BEHAVIOR, PROGRESS REPORT V," SEPTEMBER 1, 1967. AN ABRIDGED VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE, UNDER THE TITLE "DISCRIMINATION AUDITIVE ET APPRENTISSAGE DES LANGUES," WILL APPEAR IN "PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE BEHAVIOR," E. M. ZALE, EDITOR, NEW YORK, APPLETON-CENTURY-CROFTS. (FB)

One component of a new theory of rhetoric based on the principles of tagmemic linguistics is a discovery procedure for solving ill-defined problems. To be useful in rhetoric, the procedure must be applicable to widely differing kinds of problematic data. Its range of application, however, has only begun to be explored. Particularly important to its use in the classroom is its ability to aid in the solution of problems of literary analysis. One such problem, the discovery and statement of "theme," can be solved by means of three complementary lines of inquiry which constitute part of the tagmemic procedure. Analyses of the sequential and categorical systems in a literary text provide the basis for discovery of a third system--a network of intersecting categories which constitutes a statement of theme. Other systemic problems lend themselves to this approach. (Author/DO)

Synthetic speech stimuli which varied along a continum defined in terms of the relative onset time of the first formant and which are characteristically associated with the phonemes /do/ and /to/ were presented to two groups of subjects for labelling. The stimuli presented to each group were identical except for a one-step shift on the stimulus continuum. It was found that the response probabilities over the stimuli common to the two stimulus sets were essentially identical for the two groups. Subjects did not evidence a shift in labelling judgments concomitant with a shift on the stimulus continuum. Such a shift would occur if subjects were simply partitioning the continuum psychophysically. It is concluded that categorical perception was observed and that the stimulus-shift paradigm may be a new technique for isolating the categorical perception effect. (Author/DO)

Empathy, or the immediate emotional apprehension of the affective experience of another person, plays an important role in the developmental acquisition of a first language. It is hypothesized that a capacity for empathy contributes to the mastery of the pronunciation of a second language. An operational redefinition of empathic skill as the ability of an individual to perceive and respond to minimal cues in interpersonal interaction has led to the development of an objective measuring instrument. Subjects inspect a human face presented on a film segment that can be projected at varying speeds. Subjects' key-press responses are scored both for overall sensitivity to changes and for accuracy. To illustrate the use of this test, the design of a current research project is described: empathy test scores are being compared with ratings of pronunciation authenticity and at the same time with scores on the Thematic Apperception Test pictures as well as on tests of intelligence, visual acuity, ability to detect changes in complex patterns, and categorizing style. Incomplete results tend to confirm the hypothesized relation of empathy to second-language pronunciation authenticity. Results strengthen the case for applying clinical concepts to experimental research. (See related document ED 017 898.) (Author/DO)

The effect of within- and between-phrase normative controlled association and phrase structure upon word integration in sentence recall was studied in two experiments. The two experiments differed only with respect to the type of two-phrase sentence used. In both experiments, one group of subjects was given four study-test trials on a list of four sentences containing associatively related words, while another group received a list containing associatively unrelated words. On the assumption that an integrated unit is one in which adjacent words are recalled together, the probability of a word-to-word transitional error (TE) was used as a measure of the tendency to integrate the words within the sentences into larger units. In both experiments, the results suggested that the words in low association (LA) sentences are recoded into phrase units, but that the words in high association (HA) sentences are recoded into units that transcend the phrase boundary. The results indicated further that the probability of a TE at the phrase boundary strength across the phrase boundary increases. In addition, the probability of a TE within phrases was higher for LA sentences in Experiment II than for HA sentences. However, in Experiment I, association did not influence TE probability within phrases. (Author/DO)

Forty eight undergraduates were assigned to two groups of 24 subjects each. The high association (HA) group was given booklets that contained a series of nouns associatively related according to free association norms, one pair to a page; the low association (LA) group was given booklets containing pairs of associatively unrelated nouns. The syntactic features of the nouns of the HA and LA pairs were identical. The task was to make up a sentence using each of the noun pairs, with no restrictions placed on the content or syntactic structure of the sentence productions. Since HA and LA pairs of the type used here differ in semantic and contextual featural overlap, it was anticipated that they would also differ in the syntactic relationships within which their members would appear in the sentence productions. The results supported the hypothesis. (Author/DO)

This document comprises two studies. In the first, 108 undergraduates were assigned to nine groups of 12 subjects each in a 3 x 3 factorial design. One factor was prompt word (subject noun, main verb, or object noun) and the other was sentence type (active, passive, or relative. Sentence type was included in the study in order to vary the position of the prompt words. Each subject received two exposures for learning to a list of 12 sentences, homogeneous with respect to type, followed by an unpaced prompted recall task in which they were given either the subject nouns, the main verb, or the object nouns. None of the results of this study was found to be significant. An analysis of the procedure, however, revealed a possible confounding variable. A second experiment attempted to eliminate this variable by pacing the recall task. Forty eight subjects were assigned to four groups of 12 each in a 2 x 2 factorial design. One factor was prompt word (subject noun versus object noun) and the other was sentence type (active versus passive). Procedures were the same as for the first experiment, except that the prompted recall task was paced. The results indicated no effect of either prompt word or sentence type on sentence recall or ottal word recall. (See related document ED 016 203.) (Author/DO)