The study investigated the listening ability of 13 visually impaired college students. Ss were pretested on a listening skills test and then exposed to each of three modes of speech presentation (normal speech, accelerated speech, and compressed speech) in a counterbalance order. It was postulated that a differential effect in performance would result from the three speech presentation modes, with both the accelerated and compressed speech modes being superior in comparison with the normal mode. Results showed a consistent and significant trend toward better performance on the accelerated over the normal mode, and on the compressed over both the accelerated and normal modes. Findings suggested that human sensory and perceptual systems are capable of enhanced and accelerated information processing functions, and that the brain and nervous system may operate in a standard manner much of the time, but it is able to deal with incoming information in a more sophisticated and efficient way when necessary. (Author/SB)