The purpose of this report is to profile the changes in phonological skills produced by a group of 12 children between the ages of 24 and 36 months. Conversational samples obtained from the subjects at 3-month intervals were analysed for phonetic content, prevalent error patterns, syllable shapes and consonant clusters produced. In addition, per cent of consonants correct (PCC) and mean length of utterance (MLU) information is also reported.

Background: Vetiver is a key ingredient for the perfume industry nowadays. However, with the constant and rapid changes of personal tastes, this appeal could vanish and this sector could decline quite quickly. New dissemination paths need to be found to tap this valuable resource. Methods: In this way, its potential use in cosmetics either as an active ingredient per se (with cosmeceutical significance or presenting antimicrobial activity) has hence been explored in vitro. Results: In this contribution, we demonstrated that vetiver essential oil displays no particularly significant and innovative cosmetic potential value in formulations apart from its scent already largely exploited. However, evaluated against twenty bacterial strains and two Candida species using the in vitro microbroth dilution method, vetiver oil demonstrated notably some outstanding activities against Gram-positive strains and against one Candida glabrata strain. Conclusions: Based on these findings, vetiver essential oil appears to be an appropriate aspirant for the development of an antimicrobial agent for medicinal purposes and for the development of a cosmetic ingredient used for its scent and displaying antimicrobial activity as an added value.

Ability of eight good and eight poor readers (in Grade 1, ages ranging from 6.7 to 7.4 yr.) to discriminate phonemic contrasts presented in 50% time-compressed sentential stimuli (Subtest 13 of the Carrow-Auditory Visual Abilities Test) was measured. Good readers exhibited a significantly higher over-all mean performance than poor readers on the time-compressed task. Effects of time-compression on the perception of manner, place, voicing and frequency contrasts showed a similar pattern of errors for both groups of readers. Implications of the effects of auditory discrimination on reading abilities are discussed.

Eight articulatory disordered children were studied to compare the occurrence of phonological processes using three elicitation methods, including single-word productions, imitated sentences, and continuous speech sampling. A total of 11 phonological processes were shown by the subjects, with only the process of gliding indicative of significantly different rates of occurrence among the three procedures. These subjects were relatively consistent in their use of phonological processes under different speaking conditions.

This study measured the ability of 16 aged listeners, normal for their age (age range, 63 to 84 yr.) to discriminate phonemic contrasts in sentential stimuli (Subtest 13 of the Carrow-Auditory Visual Abilities Test) presented at 50% time-compression rate. A series of linear regression analyses were performed in which each independent variable was regressed against the continuous variable of age. Over-all performance on the time-compressed task significantly decreased as a function of age. Also discrimination of place of articulation and mid- to high-frequency contrasts was significantly and negatively related to age. In general, such findings suggest that the course of aging continuously imposes degrading effects on speech-processing that are related to discrimination of place feature contrasts.