Children's comprehension of time-compressed speech: effect of speaker's familiarity

An experiment was conducted with 42 third grade children from a parochial school system in a large metropolitan area. 21 classmates whose teacher served as the speaker for this experiment comprised the experimental group. A matched group of 21 classmates from another third grade classroom formed the control group. Each subject individually listened to a 940-word narrative passage that had been compressed at a rate of 45% or 275 words per minute. 10 questions about the material presented in the final three-fourths of the passage were asked of the subjects. The difference between the mean number of correct responses produced by the experimental group (5.5) and the control group (4.9) was not statistically significant. The results indicate that familiarity with the speaker does not facilitate 8-yr.-olds' comprehension of time-compressed speech.