It has been observed that some American students develop disorders of communication when learning a foreign language by the audiolingual method. Such disorders take various forms - "word deafness," articulatory defects and deviations in vocal quality. A project to study these phenomena began in 1959 at Purdue University. One study examined the relation between auditory discrimination abilities and learning French. Ninety-one students studying French for the first time were tested in successive semesters. Mimicry tests and sound discrimination tests were administered, and their relationship to learning French pronunciation analyzed. A second phase studied prediction of academic achievement in first-semester college German. Intellectual and non-intellectual data were used to predict success in German courses and use of a battery of variables gave accurate predictions at B, C, and D grade levels of success and for possible class placement. Abstracts of several articles and theses on the psychology of learning are included. They discuss effects of changes in presentation, differences in auditory discrimination values and characteristics and varying word associative latency on recall, memory and serial learning. (CHK)