Suchergebnisse

In this article we report experimental findings concerning a simple technique that greatly improves the amount people can remember after listening to an audiotape. The technique involves the insertion of self-assessment questions which target key information. The procedure is outlined, along with recommendations on its implementation.

We report two experiments investigating the comprehension of speeded speech. In the first experiment it is shown that acceleration of speech has no effect on the comprehension of text spoken by a male speaker but causes substantial reduction in the comprehension of a female voice. The second experiment shows that the comprehension of the female voice at high speed can be significantly improved if the speech is processed through a commercially available compression device.

This article explores potential areas for improving the production and use of tape recorded textbooks. The first section reports a survey of volunteer narrators. It shows that they sometimes record books beyond their expertise and would welcome more guidance, feedback and support in their task. Implications for future policy are discussed. The second section examines the dafficultaes encountered by visually handicapped students who study from tape recorded text books. It establishes the students' own priorities for improvement and some possible means of achieving these are considered.

This study explores three formats for the presentation of tangible line graphs to visually handicapped people, using the capsule-paper production process. The formats are L/no-grid (standard x and y axes/data curves on smooth background), box/no-grid (duplicated axes enclose graph space on all four sides/smooth background), and box/grid (duplicated axes/data curves superimposed on grid). Subjects answered questions concerning the coordinate value of points, the difference in coordinate value between two points, and configurational aspects of the data. Questions that involved determining coordinate values were answered most accurately from the box/grid format, followed by the box/no-grid, and, lastly, the L/no-grid. Response times did not differ. A different pattern emerged with questions concerning configurational aspects of the graph. With these there was no difference in accuracy between the formats, but the L/no-grid format led to faster responding than the box/no-grid, which in turn was faster than the box/grid. The practical implications of these data are considered.