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PubMed1988

Language production in Parkinson's disease: acoustic and linguistic considerations.

The hypokinetic dysarthria of Parkinson's disease (PD) has been described extensively. In contrast, patterns of hesitation and the language structure in spontaneous speech of the PD patient have not been investigated, although several studies have shown language-related abnormalities in word naming, word generation, and verbal recall. In the present study, 10 male Parkinson's patients and 10 normal male speakers were compared in a reading and spontaneous speaking paradigm for acoustic and linguistic features. Among acoustic measures, fundamental frequency and relative intensity differentiated PD from control subjects, consistent with reported features of hypokinetic dysarthria. The striking observations among linguistic measures differentiating PD from control subjects were an increase in the number of (a) silent hesitations per minute, (b) abnormally long silent hesitations, (c) words per silent hesitation, (d) open class phrases, and (e) optional open phrases per speech sample, and a decrease in the number of modalizations and interjections. An increase in the number of filled hesitations occurring per minute, as well as a decrease in syntactic complexity separated moderate from mild Parkinson's patients. Our interpretation of the data favors the hypothesis that changes in the structure of spontaneous language production with increasing severity of dysarthria reflect PD patients' adaptation to their disease.

Dysarthria↗
PubMed1990

Predicate-argument structure as a link between linguistic and nonlinguistic representations.

We present a study wherein a severe Broca's aphasic patient was trained to learn symbols representing both pure transitive and dative predicates--predicates differing in argument structure--in a visually based artificial language (c-ViC). We found a decrease in performance when two symbols, rather than one, were used to depict these "verbs." However, this decrease in performance was more pronounced for symbols representing pure transitive verbs--those that allow only one argument structure--than for symbols representing dative verbs--those that allow two different argument structures. Also, dative "verbs" yielded better performance when they were inserted in more complex, three-argument "sentences" than when they were inserted in two-argument "sentences." The opposite pattern was found for pure transitives. These results are discussed in terms of our claim that argument structure serves as a point of connection between linguistic information and non-linguistic visual information and in terms of the possibility that argument structure entries are shaped by the form in which visual information is parsed.

Aged↗
PubMed1991

Cerebral lateralization in linguistic and nonlinguistic perception: analysis of cognitive styles in the auditory modality.

Twenty-two normal subjects (9 left-handers, 13 right-handers) and five dyslexic patients (3 right-handers, and 2 left-handers) were characterized by physiologic hemisphere dominance. The latter was determined by the response of the middle cerebral artery (MCA) blood flow velocity, measured using the transcranial Doppler (TCD) technique, to hypoventilation (hypercapnia). Using bilateral almost simultaneous TCD measurements of mean blood flow velocity in the MCA, lateralization was determined in response to linguistic and nonlinguistic paradigms. In relation to the linguistic paradigm, left-handers, showed lateralization to the physiologic nondominant hemisphere, while right-handers showed lateralization to the physiologic dominant hemisphere; dyslexic patients show trends opposite to those in normals.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Dissociation between linguistic and nonlinguistic gestural systems: a case for compositionality.

This paper addresses the issue of the separability of disorders of sign language from disorders of gesture and pantomime. The study of a left-lesioned deaf signer presents one of the most striking examples to date of the cleavage between linguistic signs and manual pantomime. The left-hemisphere lesion produced a marked sign language aphasia disrupting both the production and the comprehension of sign language. However, in sharp contrast to the breakdown of sign language, the ability to communicate in nonlinguistic gesture was remarkably spared. This case has important implications for our understanding of the neural mediation of language and gesture. We argue that the differences observed in the fractionation of linguistic versus nonlinguistic gesture reflect differing degrees of compositionality of systems underlying language and gesture. The compositionality hypothesis receives support for the existence of phonemic paraphasias in sign language production, illustrating structural dissolution which is absent in the production of pantomimic gesture. Understanding the neural encoding of compositional motoric systems may lead to a principled anatomical account of the neural separability of language and gesture. This case provides a powerful indication of the left hemisphere's specialization for language-specific functions.

Aphasia↗
PubMed1996

Linguistic interaction: the active role of parents in speech therapy for cleft palate patients.

As speech and language intervention becomes more naturalistic, it seems obvious that language and other developmental competencies are, in a strong way, a function of the quality and quantity of relationships in which the child evolves. This paper compares two different speech therapy groups of cleft palate children. Children included in the first group received therapy alone with the speech pathologist, whereas children from the second group received speech therapy accompanied by their mothers. The purpose was to evaluate and provide the mothers with interaction modes for facilitating communication. Both groups were evaluated before and after the therapy period in order to measure the advance of each group. The patients accompanied by their mothers showed a significantly higher linguistic advance as compared to patients receiving therapy without their mothers. The results in this study support the statement that linguistic development in the cleft palate child is strongly related to adult-child mode of interaction.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1992

Imported sequences in the mitochondrial yeast genome identified by nucleotide linguistics.

In addition to universally appearing mitochondrial (mt) genes, origins of replication and transcription start regions typical of all mt genome variants of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the mt genomes of some of the strains contain variable sequences. These sequences are apparently largely dispensable. They are mainly composed of group-I and -II introns and intergenic open reading frames (ORFs). Many of the introns contain ORFs, some of which were shown by genetic and biochemical means to be involved in splicing and transposition of the mt introns. Some of the optional sequences are hypothesized to be mobile genetic elements. Nucleotide (nt) sequences of the mt genome of S. cerevisiae were examined by analyzing occurrences of oligodeoxyribonucleotide (oligo) 'words'. This linguistic technique had been found to be sensitive to both function and origin of the sequence [Pietrokovski et al., J. Biomol. Struct. Dyn. 7 (1990) 1251-1268]. A clear difference is found between the oligo vocabularies of the optional and basic yeast mt sequences. The difference is mainly located in protein coding segments of the optional sequences which contain conserved amino acid motifs, characteristic of intronic and intergenic ORFs. The use of nt linguistics to detect the sequence dissimilarity and its causes in yeast mitochondria provides fast and straightforward results, identifying the intronic and intergenic ORFs as DNA sequences of foreign, non-mt origin.

Amino Acid Sequence↗
PubMed2006

Using linguistic analysis to explore medicine counter assistants' communication during consultations for nonprescription medicines.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to undertake linguistic analysis of consultations between medicine counter assistants (MCAs) and customers for the supply of nonprescription medicines. METHODS: The linguistic corpus comprised 168 recorded and transcribed consultations. Utterances were tagged as information eliciting, information or advice giving and other. The analysis focused on triads, beginning and ending with an MCA utterance (MCA(1)-->customer's response-->MCA(2)). The use of the mnemonic, WWHAM (Who for, What symptoms, How long, Any medicine tried, other Medication taken) was also analysed. RESULTS: A total of 505 triads were identified. Of the 773 utterances, 61% were information eliciting, 13% were information giving, 14% were advice giving and 11% were "other" or unclassifiable. No consultation involved WWHAM in its entirety. CONCLUSION: MCAs do not appear to have been made sufficiently aware of the ways in which their exchanges with customers during consultations for nonprescription medicines are crucially different from natural conversation. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: In order to help customers decide upon an appropriate nonprescription medicine, the MCA has the role of both informing and advising. Training should focus on informing and advising as distinct functions, and the potential problems caused by combining them.

Communication↗
PubMed2002

The scope of linguistic generalizations: evidence from Hebrew word formation.

Does the productive use of language stem from the manipulation of mental variables (e.g. "noun", "any consonant")? If linguistic constraints appeal to variables, rather than instances (e.g. "dog", "m"), then they should generalize to any representable novel instance, including instances that fall beyond the phonological space of a language. We test this prediction by investigating a constraint on the structure of Hebrew roots. Hebrew frequently exhibits geminates (e.g. ss) in its roots, but it strictly constraints their location: geminates are frequent at the end of the root (e.g. mss), but rare at its beginning (e.g. ssm). Symbolic accounts capture the ban on root-initial geminates as *XXY, where X and Y are variables that stand for any two distinct consonants. If the constraint on root structure appeals to the identity of abstract variables, then speakers should be able to extend it to root geminates with foreign phonemes, including phonemes with foreign feature values. We present findings from three experiments supporting this prediction. These results suggest that a complete account of linguistic processing must incorporate mechanisms for generalization outside the representational space of trained items. Mentally-represented variables would allow speakers to make such generalizations.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

A test of central coherence theory: linguistic processing in high-functioning adults with autism or Asperger syndrome: is local coherence impaired?

Central coherence theory (Frith, U., 1989. Autism: Explaining the Enigma. Blackwell, Oxford.) is addressed by exploring linguistic processing in normally intelligent adults with either autism or Asperger syndrome, to test whether local coherence is impaired. Local coherence is the ability to make contextually meaningful connections between linguistic information in short-term or working memory. Experiment 1 demonstrated that individuals with an autism spectrum condition were less likely to use the sentence context spontaneously to provide the context-appropriate pronunciation of a homograph. Experiment 2 presented scenarios which had a situation and outcome which only cohered if a bridging inference was drawn. The clinical groups were less likely to select the most coherent (bridging) inference from competing alternatives. Experiment 3 demonstrated that individuals with an autism spectrum condition were less able to use context to interpret an auditorily presented ambiguous sentence. The findings from Experiments 2 and 3 suggest that individuals with autism or Asperger syndrome have a difficulty in achieving local coherence, while the evidence from Experiment 1 suggests a preference not to strive for coherence. Taken together, these results suggest that individuals with an autism spectrum condition are impaired in achieving local coherence, and they have a preference not to strive for coherence unless instructed to do so, or unless they make a conscious decision to do so. Moreover, the three experiments correlate with one another, which suggests that central coherence may be a unitary force in these different tasks. Of the two clinical groups, the autism group had the greater difficulty in achieving coherence. Possible explanations for the clinical groups' difficulty are explored.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1979

A dichotic index of laterality that scores linguistic errors.

The measure of cerebral laterality most commonly used in dichotic listening to detect ear advantages does not take errors into consideration. Experimental data were used to compare the laterality coefficient measure commonly used with a new method which scores error responses using linguistic rules. This new method produced significant results when applied to data for which the traditional measure found no significant effects. This suggests that on dichotic tasks where only one response is required, the traditional method of computing ear asymmetry by excluding errors may overlook a significant amount of information in these responses, information which is recoverable with the linguistically based scoring system.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Encoding of frequency of occurrence by aphasia patients: attentional or linguistic deficit?

Frequency-encoding performance of aphasic patients and control subjects was studied in order to test Grober's (1984) hypothesis that aphasic patients are not deficient in the encoding of frequency of events. Experiment 1 compared patients and controls on four types of list: spoken words, visual words, images of objects, and abstract figures. Experiment 2 varied semantic and phonological similarity among the words in one list. Both experiments found differences between the groups, and differences between conditions. The deterioration in patients tended to be greater for linguistic than for nonlinguistic material (experiment 1), and was strongly enhanced by semantic similarity (experiment 2). Results are better explained by a linguistic deficit than by an attentional capacity account of aphasia.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Communicating with culturally and linguistically diverse patients in an acute care setting: nurses' experiences.

Communication with culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) patients has been shown to be difficult. This study describes nurses' experiences of communicating with CLD patients in an acute care setting. A purposive sample of registered nurses and certified midwives (n=23) were interviewed. Main findings were: interpreters, bilingual health workers and combinations of different strategies were used to communicate with CLD patients; some nurses showed empathy, respect and a willingness to make an effort in the communication process with others showing an ethnocentric orientation. Main recommendations were: prioritising access to appropriate linguistic services, providing nurses with support from health care workers, e.g., bilingual health care workers who are able to provide more in-depth information, increasing nurses' understanding of legal issues within patient encounters, supporting nurses to translate their awareness of cultural diversity into acceptance of, appreciation for and commitment to CLD patients and their families.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed1989

Psychological linguistics: implications for a theory of initial development and a method for research.

Presented here are an hypothesis of language development and a description of a method for studying language, both based on Kantor's psychological linguistics. According to our hypothesis, language develops in four stages. In the first, which spans the first 9 to 15 months, random movements evolve into body management, manual, and locomotor skills that enable an infant to engage in play activities, among other things, with the mother and others. Simple gestural communication soon follows. Random babbling progresses beyond the sounds that are more universal in the language to the family's particular pattern of intonations and inflections, and receptive speech begins, that is, the infant learns to react to simple verbal-vocal requests. During the second stage, which coincides with the child's second year, vocalizations evolve into "idiosyncratic expressions" and rough approximations of heard sound patterns. Language is now holophrastic--one-word utterances--mostly of the mediative variety. During the third stage, which extends to about 30 months of age, language skills are described as first-approximation referential interactions: they are longer and more detailed, include some narrative interchanges, and refer to past and future events. Typically the child now talks to him or herself, or engages in expressive referential interactions. In the fourth stage, when the child reaches the age of 52 months or so, second-approximation speech begins. By now the vocal apparatus is sufficiently developed to enable a child to make most of the vowel sounds, and the enhanced language skills set the occasion for more frequent linguistic interchanges. He or she also begins to respond to symbols and other representations of objects and events. In other words, he or she begins to engage in symbolizing behavior. Language obviously continues to develop beyond the fourth stage. Social conditions outside of the family further affect language style and generate specialized forms of speech, notably the jargon of a particular occupation or hobby. The method for studying language interactions involves, through the use of TV tapes, a description of the behavior of a speaker and the listener, the referent, and the setting conditions. The behavior of a speaker is analyzed in terms of the frequency with which he or she begins a language interchange, the average length of the initiation, the modality (verbal-vocal, gestural, or both) and the accompanying behavior. It is also analyzed for content, including time frame, actuality, and persons, animals, objects, activities, and others. Noted, too, are the feeling reactions regarding the referents.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Child↗
PubMed2000

Linguistic processing in high-functioning adults with autism or Asperger's syndrome. Is global coherence impaired?

BACKGROUND: Linguistic processing was explored in normally intelligent adults with either autism or Asperger's syndrome, to test if global coherence was impaired. Global coherence is the ability to establish causal connections and interrelate local chunks into higher-order chunks so that most linguistic elements are linked together thematically. Since individuals with autism are hypothesized to have weak central coherence then one would predict that the clinical groups would have difficulty integrating information globally so as to derive full meaning. METHODS: Two experiments were designed to test global coherence. Experiment 1 investigated whether individuals on the autism spectrum condition could arrange sentences coherently. Experiment 2 investigated whether they were less able to use context to make a global inference. RESULTS: The clinical groups were less able to arrange sentences coherently and use context to make a global inference. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that individuals on the autism spectrum have impaired global coherence. Arranging sentences and making global inferences correlated highly, suggesting that central coherence may be a unitary force in these different tasks. Of the two clinical groups, the autism group had the greater deficit. The effect that such a deficit would have on one's daily life is discussed, along with possible explanations for the clinical groups' greater difficulty, and suggestions for future research.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

Early acquisition of verbs in Korean: a cross-linguistic study.

This cross-linguistic study investigates children's early lexical development in English and Korean, and compares caregivers' linguistic input in the two languages. In Study 1, the lexical development of nine Korean children was followed from 1;2 to 1;10 by monthly visits and maternal reports. These Korean data were compared to previously collected English longitudinal data. We find that: (1) Korean children as young as 1;3 use verbs productively with appropriate inflections. (2) Seven of the nine children show a verb spurt at around 1;7; for six of these children the verb spurt occurs before the noun spurt. No such early verb spurt is found in the English data. Unlike in English, both verbs and nouns in Korean are dominant categories from the single-word stage. (3) Korean children express language-specific distinctions of locative actions with verbs. Study 2, a crosslinguistic study of caregivers' input in English and Korean, shows that Korean mothers provide more action verbs but fewer object nouns than American mothers. Also, Korean mothers engage in activity-oriented discourse significantly more than American mothers. Our study suggests that verbs are accessible to children from the beginning, and that they may be acquired early in children who are encouraged to do so by their language-specific grammar and input.

Child Language↗
PubMed2000

The Hebrew Communicative Development Inventory: language specific properties and cross-linguistic generalizations.

Cultural, linguistic, and developmental evidence was taken into consideration in constructing the HCDI, a Hebrew adaptation of the MCDI. The HCDI was then administered to a stratified sample of Israeli mothers of 253 toddlers aged 1;6 to 2;0 (M = 1;8.18). Hebrew results are presented and compared with scores from the original MCDI sample (Fenson, Dale, Reznick, Bates, Thal & Pethick, 1994). The HCDI is a reliable and sensitive measure of lexical development and emergent grammar, capturing wide variability among Israeli toddlers. In comparison with English, the relation between vocabulary size and age, as well as the shape of the growth curves for nouns, predicate terms, and closed class words relative to size of lexicon, were strikingly similar. These results indicate that conclusions concerning cross-linguistic similarities can be best documented by using parallel methods of measurement. The HCDI results support the claim that early lexical development in Hebrew and in English follow remarkably similar development patterns, despite the typological differences between the two target languages.

Child Development↗
PubMed1989

Language use in intergroup contexts: the linguistic intergroup bias.

Three experiments examine how the type of language used to describe in-group and out-group behaviors contributes to the transmission and persistence of social stereotypes. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that people encode and communicate desirable in-group and undesirable out-group behaviors more abstractly than undesirable in-group and desirable out-group behaviors. Experiment 1 provided strong support for this hypothesis using a fixed-response scale format controlling for the level of abstractness developed from Semin and Fiedler's (1988a) linguistic category model. Experiment 2 yielded the same results with a free-response format. Experiment 3 demonstrated the important role that abstract versus concrete communication plays in the perpetuation of stereotypes. The implications of these findings and the use of the linguistic category model are discussed for the examination of the self-perpetuating cycle of stereotypes in communication processes.

Aggression↗
PubMed1997

Motivated language use in intergroup contexts: need-for-closure effects on the linguistic intergroup bias.

Two experiments examined the impact of the motivation for cognitive closure on the abstractness of linguistic communications in intergroup contexts. Participants described positive and negative behaviors attributed to either an in-group or an out-group member. Individuals high (vs. low) in need for closure exhibited greater linguistic abstraction when describing positive behaviors of in-group members and negative behaviors of out-group members. These differences disappeared for descriptions of negative behaviors of out-group members. The discussion relates these results to the interface of motivation, language, and social cognition.

Adult↗