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If one listens to a meaningless syllable that is repeated over and over, he will hear it undergo a variety of changes. These changes are extremely systematic in character and can be described phonetically in terms of reorganizations of the phones constituting the syllable and changes in a restricted set of distinctive features. When a new syllable is presented to a subject after he has listened to a particular syllable that was repeated, he will misreport the new (test) syllable. His misperception of the test syllable is related to the changes occurring in the representation of the original repeated syllable just prior to the presentation of the test syllable.

Warren (1961) reported that if one listens to a particular speech sound that is repeated over-and-over it will soon be heard as a different speech sound, a phenomenon that he has called the “verbal transformation effect.” 12 Ss participated in an experiment which demonstrated that a syllable one repeats aloud to himself will remain perceptually stable; nevertheless, if one then listens to a tape-recording of his own repetitions of the syllable, then he will hear it undergo transformations. Apparently, during the self-production of a speech sound, the perceptual mechanisms involved in its reception are alerted for that particular linguistic entity and as a consequence perceptual stability is maintained.

The durational accuracy with which subjects can speak syntactically structured strings of words was compared with their accuracy in speaking word lists. These measurements underscored the great temporal precision of the human articulatory mechanism which appears to be the most precisely controlled movement system of the human body. Evidence is presented that when a syntactically structured message is being spoken, the centrally programmed innervational units involved in its articulatory implementation are greater in size and complexity than when a word list is being spoken.

24 Ss denied sight of their hands during exposure to visual displacement induced by prism spectacles showed compensatory aftereffects if and only if a discordance between the visual and proprioceptive directions of targets existed during the exposure period.

Three experiments supported our hypothesis that, when a message to be spoken is syntactically structured, the organizational units in its production are larger than single words. Exp. 1 showed that Ss ( N = 12) are able to shadow sentences more accurately than word lists, a difference that is accentuated at higher rates of presentation (1 vs 6 words/sec.). Exp. 2 indicated that Ss ( N = 6) who had memorized both sentences and word lists could always speak the sentences more rapidly than the word lists, thereby eliminating the possibility that a perceptual effect determined the outcome of Exp. 1. In Exp. 3, the performance of “close shadowers” ( N = 6) who can shadow messages with latencies of approximately 250 msec. was also facilitated by syntactic structure.

Patients with penetrating wounds of the left cerebral hemisphere have abnormal fusion thresholds for dichotically presented clicks even if tested 20 years after the trauma. At temporal separations at which normal listeners report two clicks, these patients report hearing a single click. This diminished temporal resolving power of patients with left posterior cerebral lesions is most pronounced in those who are deemed dysphasic.

One aspect of the comprehension of speech is the assignment of a phonetic representation to the sounds being heard. However, if a person listens to a meaningless syllable that is continually repeated, over time he will hear the syllable undergo a variety of changes. These changes are very systematic in character and represent alterations in the phonetic coding assigned to an unchanging sound stimulus. When the restricted nature of the changes that occur is analyzed phonetically, these changes are found to invlove a reorganization of the phones constituting the syllables and changes in a small number of distinctive features.

The induction of an error between a subject's true orientation and his registered orientation in relation to gravity results in auditory mislocaliza-tions of a similar size and time course. The presence of visual cues prevents the development of errors in the interpretation of posture and, accordingly, prevents the development of errors in auditory localization as well. These observations are interpreted as evidence for a spatial reference system responsible for the maintenance of auditory and visual direction constancy. They demonstrate that where a subject hears a sound is dependent not only on the auditory cues at his ears but also on his registered orientatinn in relation to the gravitational force. vector.

Subjects heard sentences in one ear during which a brief shock was administered before, in or after the division between two clauses. The galvanic skin response (GSR) to shocks objectively at the end of a clause was larger than the response to shocks at the beginning of a clause. This effect of syntax on GSR was larger for subjects who heard the speech in the right ear. An independent effect was that the GSR to shocks at the end of a clause decreased as a function of clause length; responses to shocks at the beginning of a clause were relatively unaffected by the length of the preceding clause in our stimulus materials.

Two studies of the subjective location of clicks in spoken sentences indicate: (1) within-clause phrase structure boundaries do not significantly affect the segmentation of spoken sentences; (2) divisions between underlying structure sentences determine segmentation even in the absence of corresponding explicit clause divisions in the surface phrase structure. These results support a model of speech processing according to which listeners actively segment and organize spoken sequences into potential underlying syntactic structures.

Ambigous sentences and a disambiguating context sentence were dichotically presented to subjects who were instructed to attend to the channel over which the ambiguous sentences were presented. Subjects were required to paraphrase the sentence in the attended channel immediately upon its presentation. The disambiguating material (in the unattended channel) was presented at a level 5 to 10 db less intense than the attended channel; in post-test reports subjects were unable to produce any information about the content of the unattended channel. Nonetheless, for four types of ambiguity tested, the bias contexts significantly influenced the interpretation of the ambiguous sentences. This result is taken to indicate both that there is structural analysis of the material in the unattended channel and that, during their input, multiple readings are computed for ambiguous sentences.

The purpose of this study was to achieve a slow motion perspective of normal language development by studying retarded children of different mental ages. Results from a variety of language tasks were used to develop transformational grammars which described the language behavior of each child as a self-contained system. Developmental trends were noted by comparing grammars of different complexity. The grammars of the retarded children are subsets of an adult grammar. They are very general, non-specific, and lack context sensitivity at the phrase-structure as well as the transformational level. The grammars of the retardates with higher mental ages begin to take on the specificity and wide range of applicability so characteristic of the adult grammar.

This paper describes a digital simulation model of a hypothetical business system and discusses problems pertinent to the construction and use of the model. Constructed in the course of a management control systems research project, the model exemplifies many problems of control and management of a large system, emphasizing information flow, its control, and its use in decision procedures. The model's modular nature permits a variety of experimental uses. The broad scope of the modeled system posed implementation problems which were resolved by the development of a general simulation capability, called SIMPAC, whose main features are described. Management Technology, ISSN 0542-4917, was published as a separate journal from 1960 to 1964. In 1965 it was merged into Management Science.

The auditory perception of distance may be altered by systematically transforming the time and intensity ratios of the auditory cues at a subject's ears. Two auditory ‘illusions’ of depth, opposite in sign, were generated, by attenuating in one case and masking with white noise in the other, the signal in one ear from an ‘auditory pendulum’. The change in perceived depth of the acoustic pendulum with attenuation of one ear was analogous to the Pulfrich phenomenon in vision. These auditory experiments suggested two additional ways of generating visual Pulfrich effects that were then demonstrated.

Displacement of the visual world by means of prismatic spectacles leads to errors in both auditory and visual localization. During the course of adaptation to the visual rearrangement the auditory and visual errors diminish. Concomitant changes occur in the relations of the eyes and head to the trunk. When adaptation is complete a subject considers his head to be aligned with his trunk when it is actually deviated in the same direction and by the amount of the visual displacement. These postural changes are an important component of the compensation for visual rearrangement that occurs in adaptation situations permitting free movement of the entire body.

Abnormal changes in sound localization occur during rearrangement of the visual environment and during exposure to optokinetic stimulation. In both of these situations the errors of auditory localization result from non-veridical changes in the registration of body posture.

Goodwin et al. [2] demonstrated that when a subject's forearm is restrained, vibration of the tendons of his biceps or triceps muscle produces illusory motion of his forearm. We have found that subjects seated in a totally dark room can track with pursuit eye movements the illusory motion of their forearms induced by muscle vibration. It can be concluded that muscle afferent information can be utilized to control the direction of regard.

This report describes several aspects of the language function of Scoville's patient, H.M., who suffers from a severe amnesic syndrome ( Milner et al. [2]). Although H.M.'s ability to detect various kinds of linguistic ambiguity appears essentially normal, his performance on a linguistic task involving the ongoing perceptual segmentation of speech is not. Often H.M. was unable to perform properly the speech task and the nature of his errors reveals that the constituent structure clause constitutes the functional unit in his short-term memory for linguistic material.

Humans are less accurate in pointing to visual targets when denied sight of the arm than when permitted visual guidance of their movements. Nevertheless, 10 Ss showed improved accuracy in open-loop visual pointing following an exposure period in which they received tactile and kinesthetic feedback about the location of visual targets. 10 Ss who made the same number of pointing movements to the visual targets but who received neither tactile and kinesthetic nor visual feedback about their accuracy failed to show any improvement. The improved accuracy of Ss who received tactile and kinesthetic feedback cannot be attributed solely to “knowledge of results” and stereotyped movement patterns, because during the test and exposure periods they were continually varying the physical parameters of their movements.

Vestibular side effects including visual and postural illusions, nystagmus, and motion sickness were elicited using a vibrator applied to different regions of the head. Although a commercially available vibrator (60 Hz, 120 pulses/sec) can elicit side effects, its use was enhanced by varying the vibration frequency and optimizing the stimulus conditions for perception of illusions and elicitation of motion sickness. Both horizontal and vertical nystagmus were elicited, the latter inconsistently. A strong apparent movement (and displacement) of a dimly lighted target that resembled the oculogyral illusion and apparent self-motion were consistently elicited. Motion sickness was readily elicited in some subjects but in other subjects even stimulation during rotation failed. The findings indicate that the use of vibratory stimulation should be exploited to determine whether, in addition to its use in the laboratory as a research device, it has a place in the clinic as a means of evaluating canalicular function. (Modified author abstract)

Studies of auditory localization revealed that where a subject hears a sound is dependent on both his perceived head position and the auditory cues at his ears. If an error is induced between his true and registered head posture, then errors in his auditory localizations of corresponding size and time course result. The presence of visual information prevents the development of postural errors and, consequently, prevents the development of errors in auditory localization, too. These observations are related to the oculogravic illusion and are interpreted as one aspect of the functioning of a spatial reference system involved in the maintenance of the constancies of auditory and visual detection.

Summary A device is described that is a useful tool for studying the conditions under which adaptation to visual rearrangement occurs. This device has provisions for creating independent discordances among the visual, proprioceptive, and auditory directions of external targets. It also has provisions for automatically recording pointing responses to these targets during pre- and postexposure measurement conditions.

We describe observations of the class 3+ flare of August 28, 1966, made at the Mount Wilson Observatory. This great proton flare followed the sequence: (1) Precursor flare; (2) Filament eruption; (3) Beginning in penumbra of large spot; (4) Rapid elongation in two strands; (5) Great spray and surface wave; (6) Rapid separation of two strands to maximum brightness; and (7) Slow spread of brightness and decay. The soft X-ray burst coincides with stages 3–6, decaying through stage 7; the hard (> 80 keV) burst coincides, but decays more rapidly. Considering a demi-cylinder of emitting material, the soft X-rays are explained by a 4-million-degree plasma, or at least a large flux of electrons with that amount of energy. Given this flux, the microwave burst is explained by synchrotron emission with the low frequency cut-off due to coronal absorption. The class-2 flare of August 30, 1966, is also discussed.

Determination of the relative order of a sequence of alternated V and CV syllables is prevented by the perceptual splitting of the sequence into two distinct perceptual groupings such that vowels are heard in one spatial locus and the consonants in another. This “splitting” occurs for both monaural and binaural presentations.

The present experiment investigates the possibility that performance on the dichotic listening task is systematically influenced by variables unrelated to the linguistic or auditory character of the stimuli employed. Subjects sat in a lighted room with head position fixed and listened to a standard dichotic CV tape. Binocular Risley prisms were used to displace the subjects' visual environment either 13° to the left, 13° to the right, or not at all. A right ear advantage was obtained in the no‐displacement condition (percentage of correct responses contributed by the right ear—POC—was 55.5%). This advantage was decreased in the left‐displacement condition (POC = 51.8%) and was increased in the right‐displacement condition (POC = 57.1%). This result indicates that subjects' performance on the dichotic listening task may reflect a number of psychological and physiological factors, in addition to a possible cortical hemispheric specialization for language. Among the factors considered are attention (of an involuntary sort) and spatial orientation mechanisms normally involved in sound localization and binaural fusion.