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Biomedical subjects

C M Temple

Publications and source records attributed to C M Temple.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

Academic discipline, handedness and immune disorders.

Much debate has surrounded the relative contribution of genetic inheritance and environment to human intelligence. In addition, fetal hormones may influence brain development and affect the qualitative nature of intellectual skills. Geschwind and Behan, Proc. Natn. Acad. Sci. 79, 5097-5100, 1982, have suggested that such hormones may also influence both the development of handedness and the development of the immune system. Members of the faculty of the University of Oxford participated in a survey investigating field of study; handedness and immune disorders. Even amongst right-handers, mathematical academics are significantly more susceptible to rare immune disorders and four times likely as verbal academics, to have suffered from a language related problem in childhood. In contrast to previous suggestions, the incidence of left-handedness is not found to be high amongst pure mathematicians but is significantly higher amongst scientists using mathematical applications.

Adult

Reading in callosal agenesis.

It has been suggested that deficits in explicit phonological processing are causal in developmental dyslexia. Deficits in such skills have been reported in developmental phonological dyslexia, though not in developmental surface dyslexia. The reading performance of two children with callosal agenesis, who have been previously shown to have impairments on rhyming tasks, are reported. Neither child is dyslexic in the traditional sense, since word reading levels are appropriate for age. However, both children have impaired development of the phonological reading route despite normal lexical skills. The pattern of their reading is therefore comparable to developmental phonological dyslexia. Problems in explicit phonological processing may be causal in the failure to establish an efficient phonological reading route but this is insufficient to create difficulty with word recognition itself. The corpus callosum may be essential for the normal development of a phonological reading route.

Agenesis of Corpus Callosum

Ten pen men: rhyming skills in two children with callosal agenesis.

Cases of callosal agenesis provide unique opportunities to investigate the normal role of the corpus callosum in the development of cognitive functions, including language. The only language impairment which has been consistently observed in three acallosal patients is on the retrieval of words from rhyming cues. Two new cases of callosal agenesis in children of normal intelligence are presented. Their performance on a variety of rhyming tasks involving both production and recognition of rhyme is reported. Both children display deficits and possible explanations are discussed.

Adolescent

Developmental dyslexia and dysgraphia persistence in middle age.

J.R. is a middle-aged man whose developmental dyslexia and dysgraphia have persisted in a problematic fashion for the 30 years since he left school. He is a phonological dyslexic. Whereas surface dyslexics operate on reading units that are too small, Mr. R operates on units that are too large. Spelling exhibits both regularity and lexicality effects. These seemingly contradictory results are consistent with a two-route model of spelling in which each route is functioning with approximately 50% efficiency. Performance on paralinguistic rhyming tasks is poor and shows no recovery in comparison to younger developmental phonological dyslexics. Difficulties with higher-order sound segmentation, analysis, or organization may underly the lifelong literacy problems.

Agraphia

Red is read but eye is blue: a case study of developmental dyslexia and follow-up report.

Recently, analogies have been drawn between the developmental and acquired dyslexias, but there has been no unequivocal report of developmental deep dyslexia. The case is reported here of a 9-year-old child whose reading performance resembles deep dyslexia in several ways. The incidence of errors with a semantic component is shown to be significantly above chance. The pattern of errors is discussed in relation to recent data on error patterns in normal beginning readers. Text reading, spelling, naming, and repetition are described. In contrast to previous case reports, follow-up data are presented which chart the qualitative changes in performance over time despite relatively little quantitative change. The child described has several specific handicaps. Developmental deep dyslexia may not be a prevalent subtype because the multiple impairments necessary to produce the disorder seldom co-occur and may tend to preclude reading development altogether.

Child

A further study of language function in callosal agenesis.

A subset of the tests of language ability administered by M. Dennis (1981, Brain and Language, 12, 33-53) was given to two adult acallosal patients. One of the patients studied showed widespread language deficits not restricted to the syntactic-pragmatic core as in Dennis' patient. The other showed a very specific deficit which does not encompass syntactic-pragmatic skills. The data does not support the view that the corpus callosum is necessary for the normal development of specific language functions.

Adolescent

Anomia for animals in a child.

The occurrence of anomia which particularly affected the category of animals is described in a 12-year-old boy. This difficulty cannot be accounted for by frequency or familiarity and is unaffected by whether the stimulus is a line drawing, photograph or model. The deficit does not represent development lag, as normal children of the same naming age differ qualitatively. The results, which include a one year follow-up, are discussed in relation to unitary versus multiple semantic systems. The disorder includes a disturbance of memory arising during the developmental period. It is suggested that items which are involved in daily actions can be more easily remembered than those which are identified by sensory features alone, and that the preserved learning of motor skills in acquired amnesia may be of relevance.

Animal Population Groups

Reading with partial phonology: developmental phonological dyslexia.

Recent psycholinguistic investigations have advanced our understanding of the acquired dyslexias. Developmental analogues have been described to some of these disorders. A new case of developmental phonological dyslexia is described here. A.H. is an intelligent 10-year-old boy with no neurological abnormality. Reading and spelling are below age level. A.H. is poorer at reading words than nonwords. The majority of his errors are paralexias: visual, derivations, or visuosemantic. Spelling-to-sound regularity does not affect the ability to read aloud. A.H.'s reading performance is significantly impaired when words are presented typed in reverse order, thereby prohibiting global strategies. Spelling of nonwords is no better than reading of nonwords. Only one-fifth of spelling errors are phonologically valid. A.H. has imperfect development of both the phonological route to reading and the phonological route to spelling.

Child