Binaural Sound to Enhance Listening Comprehension in Language Tests The use of new digital formats in language learning and testing improves both the learning and acquisition skills development process of language tests. The process of listening comprehension is considered one of the most complex in the field of Computer Aided Learning Language (CALL) because it relates to multimodal learning channels and brain sound perception in an unfamiliar communication environment (the foreign language) for the learner. This article stresses the possibilities of using binaural sound in the design and implementation of tests as well as the cognitive issues that might be involved in the process of learning and assessment of a foreign language.

Transcranial alternating current stimulation in the theta band but not in the delta band modulates the comprehension of naturalistic speech in noise Abstract   Auditory cortical activity entrains to speech rhythms and has been proposed as a mechanism for online speech processing. In particular, neural activity in the theta frequency band (4xe2x80x938xc2xa0xe2x80x8bHz) tracks the onset of syllables which may aid the parsing of a speech stream. Similarly, cortical activity in the delta band (1xe2x80x934xc2xa0xe2x80x8bHz) entrains to the onset of words in natural speech and has been found to encode both syntactic as well as semantic information. Such neural entrainment to speech rhythms is not merely an epiphenomenon of other neural processes, but plays a functional role in speech processing: modulating the neural entrainment through transcranial alternating current stimulation influences the speechrelated neural activity and modulates the comprehension of degraded speech. However, the distinct functional contributions of the delta and of the thetaband entrainment to the modulation of speech comprehension have not yet been investigated. Here we use transcranial alternating current stimulation with waveforms derived from the speech envelope and filtered in the delta and theta frequency bands to alter cortical entrainment in both bands separately. We find that transcranial alternating current stimulation in the theta band but not in the delta band impacts speech comprehension. Moreover, we find that transcranial alternating current stimulation with the thetaband portion of the speech envelope can improve speechinnoise comprehension beyond sham stimulation. Our results show a distinct contribution of the theta but not of the deltaband stimulation to the modulation of speech comprehension. In addition, our findings open up a potential avenue of enhancing the comprehension of speech in noise.