Language facility. The ability to segment and analyze speech accurately and
automatically into appropriate units is very important when listening to spoken language. For
example, when trying to understand a foreign language, a person uses so much attention trying to
identify words and phrases that the message and meaning get lost. The reason for loss of the
message when one cannot segment automatically is that the amount of attention each individual
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has for information processing at any given moment is limited. For listening comprehension to
occur, various cognitive tasks must take place in a brief period of time; and they all require
attention. Some of the processes use small amounts of attention while others require larger
amounts. The most effective way to utilize attention, since the amount of attention kept by a
listener is limited, would be to allocate the smallest amount of attention possible to the various
cognitive tasks. Little attention is needed when the tasks are simple and can be easily
accomplished. If the segmenting can be done automatically and accurately, the limited attention
capacity of the listener is not too heavily burdened. Whatever attention capacity remains after the
segmenting tasks have been completed can be used for other tasks necessary for actually
understanding the message (