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A questionnaire assessing knowledge of hearing and hearing loss, and planned hearing conservation practices, was collected from 71 high school students before and after an educational hearing conservation program (HCP) consisting of a film, a lecture and a handout. An average increase of 16.7% correct responses from pre- to postexposure to the HCP was found. Moreover, substantial percentages of respondents stated that they now plan to use hearing protection devices and procedures, when appropriate, and about 80% stated they found the HCP helpful to them.

The Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) and the Token Test (TT) were administered to 24 5- and 6-yr-olds. There was a significant positive correlation between performance on the TT and only 2 of the 12 subtests of the ITPA: Grammatic Closure (p less than .05) and Sound Blending (p less than .05). TT scores did not correlate significantly with any of the ITPA subtests at the representational level of language. These findings support the conclusion of Williams and Marks (J. Speech Hear. Res., 1972, 15, 323ff) on the lack of validity of tests of receptive auditory comprehension which employ simultaneous presentation of stimuli through visual and auditory modalities and the arbitrary selection of one of the channels (auditory) as the primary process being measured. Implications for clinical use of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and the TT were discussed and suggestions made for future research.

Normal-hearing volunteers (N:30, aged 19-28 yrs) yielded intelligibility scores for W-22 word lists and CID sentences at 40 db re each S's SRT, and judgments on a 7-pt scale ("very pleasant"----"very unpleasant") for Sentence 3 of Fairbanks' "Rainbow Passage". Normal and time-altered speeds (60%: compression; 140%: expansion) were compared between the widely-used but obsolescent Lexicon Varispeech (VSp) unit vs the commercially available Variable Speech Control Model A-7 which incorporates a time-sampling technique similar to the VSp. With both VSp and VSC, intelligibility was nearly perfect at all three speeds, and thus both appear equally suitable for intelligibility studies, but at the 60% and 140% speeds the signal clarity was significantly preferable for the VSp system (p less than .01 in both cases), by .6 of a scale interval at 60% and 1.8 interval at 140%. Furthermore, the VSC does not operate beyond the 60-140% range, as occasionally may be desirable in research on the effects of time alteration on speech reception.

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if listener comprehension is differentially affected by two different techniques of time alteration: the sampling method and the harmonic compression method. The Nelson-Denny Reading Test, consisting of 8 selections of scientific and literary content appropriate for college students with respect to interest and level of difficulty, was presented to 3 groups of 40 Ss each; each group was given the tape-recorded test after processing at one of the 3 speech rates, normal, half normal, or twice normal rate. Of the 8 selections on this test, 4 were processed by sampling using a VARISPEECH-I compressor/expander, and 4 were processed by harmonic compression using a Lockheed LM-312 Pitch Normalizer. There were of course some differences in listener comprehension as a function of rate, but within each of the rate conditions there were no significant differences as a function of method of time alteration. With the type of speech material used here, and within these rate conditions, these time alteration methods can be used interchangeably in such research.