SEARCH · Search PubMed

Results for “LINGUISTICS”

Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.

SourceResearch connectionFrom yearThrough year

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 379 records · Page 21Linked to original sources

PubMed2006

The influence of linguistic experience on the cognitive processing of pitch in speech and nonspeech sounds.

In the present experiment, the authors tested Mandarin and English listeners on a range of auditory tasks to investigate whether long-term linguistic experience influences the cognitive processing of nonspeech sounds. As expected, Mandarin listeners identified Mandarin tones significantly more accurately than English listeners; however, performance did not differ across the listener groups on a pitch discrimination task requiring fine-grained discrimination of simple nonspeech sounds. The crucial finding was that cross-language differences emerged on a nonspeech pitch contour identification task: The Mandarin listeners more often misidentified flat and falling pitch contours than the English listeners in a manner that could be related to specific features of the sound structure of Mandarin, which suggests that the effect of linguistic experience extends to nonspeech processing under certain stimulus and task conditions.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Linguistic attention control: attention shifting governed by grammaticized elements of language.

In 2 experiments, the authors investigated attention control for tasks involving the processing of grammaticized linguistic stimuli (function words) contextualized in sentence fragments. Attention control was operationalized as shift costs obtained with adult speakers of English in an alternating-runs experimental design (R. D. Rogers & S. Monsell, 1995). Experiment 1 yielded significant attention shift costs between tasks involving judgments about the meanings of grammatical function words. The authors used a 3-stage experimental design (G. Wylie & A. Allport, 2000), and the emerging pattern of results implicated task set reconfiguration and not task set inertia in these shift costs. Experiment 2 further demonstrated that shift costs were lower when the tasks involved shared attentional resources (processing the same grammatical dimension) versus unshared resources (different grammatical dimensions). The authors discuss the results from a cognitive linguistic perspective and for their implications for the view that language itself can serve a special attention-directing function.

Attention↗

PubMed2004

The effects of auditory and visual linguistic distractors on target localization.

In this experiment, a Stroop-like paradigm was used to investigate the ability to attend to visuospatial cues while ignoring distracting stimuli in the auditory or visual modality. In Part 1, the authors investigated whether linguistic cue words (i.e., RIGHT, LEFT, DOWN, and UP) would induce endogenous shifts of attention to visual targets. In Part 2, a relevant distractor stimulus was introduced in a different modality from the endogenous cues to investigate effects of interference. Twenty-five right-handed students served as participants. Auditory and visual linguistic cues were effective in inducing shifts of visual attention when cues were presented alone. Furthermore, introducing a distractor stimulus decreased the efficacy of these cues differently depending on modality, suggesting that language processing and visuospatial attention may share neuronal resources. Implications for unimodal and supramodal mechanisms of selective attention and relevant neuronal networks are discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

A closer look at transcription intelligibility for speakers with dysarthria: evaluation of scoring paradigms and linguistic errors made by listeners.

PURPOSE: This study addressed the effects of 3 different paradigms for scoring orthographic transcriptions of dysarthric speech on intelligibility scores. The study also examined whether there were differences in transcription accuracy among words from different linguistic classes. METHOD: Speech samples were collected from 12 speakers with dysarthria of varying severity. Twelve different listeners made orthographic transcriptions of each speaker, for a total of 144 listeners. Transcriptions were scored using 3 different paradigms: total word phonemic match, informational word phonemic match, and informational word semantic match. Transcriptions were also coded into 3 linguistic categories: content words, modifiers, and functors. The number of words that each listener transcribed correctly within each category was tallied. RESULTS: There were significant differences among the 3 scoring paradigms. However, the magnitude of differences was relatively small. In addition, listeners transcribed functor words more accurately than content words or modifiers. They also transcribed free morphemes more accurately than bound morphemes. CONCLUSIONS: The specific scoring paradigm that clinicians employ for measuring speech intelligibility appears to be relatively inconsequential as long as consistent procedures are used. Analyses of the kinds of words that listeners transcribe correctly suggest that interventions focusing on listener processing strategies should be considered for enhancing intelligibility of speakers with chronic dysarthria.

Adult↗

PubMed1983

Linguistic processing and reaction time differences in stutterers and nonstutterers.

Linguistic processing by the left and right cerebral hemispheres was investigated in 10 adult male stutters and 10 matched nonstutterers. Subjects performed a lexical decision task in which nonword and real-word stimuli were presented tachistoscopically to the right and left visual hemifields. Vocal and manual reaction times to real words were measured to assess hemispheric participation in processing linguistic information and to determine differences between response modes. The stuttering group exhibited a left visual field efficiency or right hemisphere preference for this task and were slower in both vocal and manual reaction times. Ramifications for hemispheric processing theories and laryngeal dysfunction hypotheses are discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1985

Effects of linguistic and extralinguistic context on semantic and syntactic processing in aphasia.

This study assessed whether the comprehension of specific lexical items (a semantic judgment) and reversible passive sentences (a syntactic judgment) would be facilitated by preceding them with either linguistic or extralinguistic context. Twenty aphasic subjects were compared for their ability to comprehend semantic and syntactic components of target sentences presented in isolation and when the sentences were preceded by either a single sentence or a picture that predicted the target information. The results revealed that the subjects who demonstrated low comprehension skills on standard tests of auditory comprehension performed better when the target information was preceded by the contextual information than when it was presented in isolation. A similar effect was not seen for those subjects with higher level auditory comprehension skills. These results support the effective use of linguistic and extralinguistic context by some aphasic subjects during the decoding of literal meanings.

Aphasia↗

PubMed1995

Speaking rate, articulatory speed, and linguistic processing in children and adolescents with severe traumatic brain injury.

Two studies were conducted to examine speaking rate following traumatic brain injury (TBI) in childhood and adolescence. Study 1 focused on longitudinal changes in speaking rate in 9 subjects with severe TBI and their age-matched control subjects. Physical measurements of speaking rate (in syllables/sec) were made from spontaneous speech samples obtained from each subject during three sampling sessions over a 13-month period. Although the average speaking rate of the group with TBI was slower than that of the control group at all three sampling sessions, an examination of the data from individual subject pairs revealed markedly slower speaking rates in only 5 of the 9 subjects with TBI at the final sampling session. The perceptual significance of slowed speaking rates in these 5 subjects was confirmed through subjective ratings by naive listeners. In Study 2, the contributions of two potential causes of slowed speaking rate were explored: reduced articulatory speed and increased pausing believed to be associated with linguistic processing difficulties. It is hypothesized that articulatory speed and linguistic processing speed may contribute independently to slowed speaking rates more than 1 year after TBI.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1996

Effects of length and linguistic complexity on temporal acoustic measures in apraxia of speech.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of varying length and linguistic utterance types on temporal acoustic characteristics of the imitative speech of apraxic speakers. Vowel duration and two between-word segment durations were examined during the production of three response types: words, word-strings, and sentences. Three length conditions were studied in words, two length conditions for word-strings, and three length conditions for sentences, yielding eight experimental conditions. Apraxic speakers exhibited significantly longer vowel and between-word segment durations than control speakers in all conditions. Apraxic speakers consistently produced longer vowel and between-word segment durations in sentence contexts than in word contexts. Further, intrasubject and intersubject variability for between-word segment durations were substantially greater for the apraxic speakers in sentences compared to word conditions, whereas control speakers exhibited greater homogeneity in sentence production. The differences in duration and variability in sentence production versus word or word-string production imply different mechanisms for executing motor programs for varying linguistic stimuli.

Adult↗

PubMed1998

Acquisition of linguistic and cognitive skills by children with cleft palate.

This study compared the early cognitive and linguistic development of young children with cleft palate (N = 28) to that of noncleft children (N = 29). Measures included the Mental scale of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, the Minnesota Child Development Inventory, Mean Length of Utterance, and words acquired by 24 months. Children with cleft palate, although well within the normal range, performed significantly below the children in the control group on the Mental Scale of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, some subscales of the Minnesota Child Development Inventory, and words acquired by 24 months. Differences observed in the cognitive development of children with and without cleft palate were verbal as opposed to nonverbal (i.e., linguistic in nature) and were related to hearing status at 12 months and velopharyngeal adequacy.

Child Development↗

PubMed1997

[The importance of differential analysis of formal thought disorders in confusion psychosis and cataphasia. Incoherence of thematic choice and incoherence with logical and linguistic errors].

Formal thought disorders are usually regarded as a central symptom of schizophrenic psychoses, but nevertheless as diagnostically non-specific. Karl Leonhard, therefore, differentiated in his classification of endogenous psychoses between a whole lot of diagnostically specific types of formal thought disorders. He described two psychoses, of which formal thought disorder is the main psychopathological feature, i.e. confusion psychosis and cataphasia. By means of an analysis of tape-recorded utterances of patients with such psychoses we demonstrate the phenomenological differentiation of the distinct types of thought disorder in these psychoses. In confusion psychosis the disturbance concerns the thematic organisation and target-oriented direction of the train of thought. Characteristically, an "incoherence of thematic choice" results, reflecting a disturbance on the level of organisation of discourse. The concepts, ideas and themes itself are organised in a logically correct manner and are comprehensible. The thought disorder in cataphasia, however, shows severe logical faults in the connection of concepts and ideas, as a result of which single themes and ideas become a logical and incomprehensible. Moreover, cataphasic thought disorder goes beyond the level of discourse organisation and extends to disturbances of linguistic functions including mistakes on a semantical and syntactic level. These observations correspond well with the widely accepted assumption of a modular organisation of cognitive and linguistic processes. The thought disorder in prognostically unfavourable cataphasia concerns "basal" logical, semantic and syntactic systems, which remain uninfluenced in the prognostically favourable confusion psychosis. In the latter, therefore, the disorder is restricted to the higher functions of organisation of discourse.

Humans↗

PubMed2005

Identification of Australians from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in national health data collections.

In multicultural Australia, comprehensive and up-to-date information on ethnicity and health is essential to guide policy and service development in the health sector. Data collected for purposes other than research are a potentially important source of information. This study explored the extent to which indicators of cultural and linguistic diversity are currently included in national health and welfare service data collections, and the data standards employed. We identified and reviewed 44 relevant bodies of work: 7 national data dictionaries, 15 national data sets, 10 national health data collections and 12 national surveys. Each of the large data dictionaries (health, community services and housing assistance) contained several ethnicity-related variables. Immigrant Australians were identified (usually by country of birth, sometimes by language, and occasionally by period of residence or year of arrival) in all the major national health and community data sets, health data collections and surveys. Australian Bureau of Statistics standards and classifications relating to cultural and linguistic diversity were widely used. Researchers, health policy makers and planners should fully exploit these secondary data sources, as well as undertaking or commissioning primary research.

Australia↗

PubMed1990

Zones of sharp genetic change in Europe are also linguistic boundaries.

A newly elaborated method, "Wombling," for detecting regions of abrupt change in biological variables was applied to 63 human allele frequencies in Europe. Of the 33 gene-frequency boundaries discovered in this way, 31 are coincident with linguistic boundaries marking contiguous regions of different language families, languages, or dialects. The remaining two boundaries (through Iceland and Greece) separate descendants of different ethnic or geographical provenance but lack modern linguistic correlates. These findings support a model of genetic differentiation in Europe in which the genetic structure of the population is determined mainly by gene flow and admixture, rather than by adaptation to varying environmental conditions. Of the 33 boundaries, 27 reflect diverse population origins at often distant locations. Language affiliation of European populations plays a major role in maintaining and probably causing genetic differences.

Alleles↗

PubMed1997

A fuzzy linguistic model for the prediction of carpal tunnel syndrome risks in an occupational environment.

This research presents the development and evaluation of a fuzzy linguistic model designated to predict the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) in an occupational setting. CTS has become one of the largest problems facing ergonomists and the medical community because it is developing in epidemic proportions within the occupational environment. In addition, practitioners are interested in identifying accurate methods for evaluating the risk of CTS in an occupational setting. It is hypothesized that many factors impact an individual's likelihood of developing CTS and the eventual development of CTS. This disparity in the occurrence of CTS for workers with similar backgrounds and work activities has confused researchers and has been a stumbling block in the development of a model for widespread use in evaluating the development of CTS. Thus this research is an attempt to develop a method that can be used to predict the likelihood of CTS risk in a variety of environments. The intent is that this model will be applied eventually in an occupational setting, thus model development was focused on a method that provided a usable interface and the desired system inputs can also be obtained without the benefit of a medical practitioner. The methodology involves knowledge acquisition to identify and categorize a holistic set of risk factors that include task-related, personal, and organizational categories. The determination of relative factor importance was accomplished using analytic hierarchy processing (AHP) analysis. Finally a mathematical representation of the CTS risk was accomplished by utilizing fuzzy set theory in order to quantify linguistic input parameters. An evaluation of the model including determination of sensitivity and specificity is conducted and the results of the model indicate that the results are fairly accurate and this method has the potential for widespread use. A significant aspect of this research is the comparison of this technique to other methods for assessing presence of CTS. The results of this evaluation technique are compared with more traditional methods for assessing the presence of CTS.

Adult↗

PubMed1996

High-level linguistic disturbances subsequent to childhood closed head injury.

High-level language functioning was assessed in a group of 11 children with severe closed head injury (CHI). Performance was examined on measures of figurative language, oral expression, inferencing, and interpretation of ambiguous sentences, and was compared with that of a control group matched for age, gender, and handedness. The children with CHI demonstrated inferior performance on the oral expression, ambiguous sentences, and figurative language tests; however, performance on the inferencing task appeared intact. These findings are discussed with respect to the underlying nature of the observed impairments. Both linguistic and cognitive factors are considered. It is concluded that a complex interaction of cognitive and linguistic impairments experienced by children with CHI may underlie the performance deficits identified in the current study.

Child↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Spatial patterns of anthropometric variation in India with reference to geographic, climatic, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.

BACKGROUND: Anthropometric variation can be fruitfully utilized to investigate microevolutionary processes. Anthropometric variations in the Indian subcontinent based on stature and three indices (Cephalic Index, Nasal Index, and Total Facial Index) are highly variable and discriminative among populations across geographical regions. AIMS: Anthropometric variation in stature, Cephalic Index (CI), Nasal Index (NI) and Total Facial Index (TFI) were investigated with respect to ethnic, linguistic, geographical and climatic affiliation, across the Indian subcontinent. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Published data on anthropometric variations of 531 populations from the Indian subcontinent were analysed using discriminant analysis and spatial autocorrelation analysis. RESULTS: Discriminant analysis of the four anthropometric variables shows that stature and NI are good discriminators for populations of different languages. Stature, NI and CI discriminate well among populations of diverse ethnic origin and climatic conditions in different regions. TFI is not a good discriminator for populations of diverse ethnic, linguistic and climatic attributes. Spatial autocorrelation analysis showed significant departure from randomness, suggesting geographic structuring. The Moran's I estimate is positive and statistically significant for the four variables at low distances but exhibits significant negative association at higher values. CONCLUSION: The results suggest geographical clines for the four anthropometric variables and indicate the influence of population structure on the studied variables.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed2001

Linguistic and motor abilities of low-birthweight children as assessed by parents and teachers at 8 years of age.

UNLABELLED: Linguistic and motor abilities among low-birthweight 8-y-old children in the northern Finland Birth Cohort for 1985-1986 (n = 9322) were studied using parental and teacher evaluations. The parents of 8370 (90%) and teachers of 8525 (92%) children returned a mailed questionnaire concerning the children's speech, language, learning and motor abilities. Low-birthweight (LBW, < 2500 g) children (n = 279) appeared to have experienced more difficulties than normal-birthweight (NBW, > or = 2500 g) children (n = 8091). The parents evaluated the LBW boys to be the poorest in linguistic and motor skills compared with the other boys or any of the groups of girls. They are therefore presumably at risk of having problems at school, which was confirmed by the teachers' reports. There was also a clear relationship between speech/linguistic and motor disabilities. CONCLUSION: Multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that the lower birthweight and some sociodemographic factors, for example the mother's age being between 20 and 24 y, having more than four children in the family, a reconstructed family, as well as hearing impairment and male gender were the most important determinants of poor speech and language abilities at 8 y of age, with and without adjustment for neonatal risk factors (asphyxia, convulsions, respiratory distress syndrome, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, patent ductus arteriosus). Smallness for gestational age was also a risk factor for poor speech and language skills. Preterm birth was associated with poor skills only after adjustment for the neonatal risk factor. The parental and teacher evaluations were concordant concerning the LBW children's outcome.

Age Factors↗

PubMed2004

The influence of linguistic labels on source-monitoring decisions.

Three studies explored the extent to which people use various object features, including linguistic label, shape, and category membership, to make decisions about the source of their memories. To isolate the influence of each feature, we used items that were related in the following four ways: as synonyms, as similar in shape and category membership, as homographs, or as unrelated. Participants read sentences and either saw or imagined a picture of the critical word's referent. Experiment 1 showed that participants committed more source errors for synonyms (e.g., rabbit and bunny) than for objects that were conceptually and perceptually similar (e.g., doughnut and bagel), which produced more errors than unrelated items. However, there was no effect of label, as people did not have more errors for homographs (e.g., baseball bat and flying bat) than unrelated items. In Experiment 2, presenting the critical word at study was not sufficient to lead people to use an item's label to make source decisions. However, Experiment 3 showed more source errors for homographs than unrelated pairs when semantic context was minimised at study, suggesting that people can use linguistic labels to make source decisions when other information is unavailable.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Mother-child interactions in Canada and Italy: linguistic responsiveness to late-talking toddlers.

The aim was to examine cross-cultural variation in linguistic responsiveness to young children in 10 English-speaking mother-child dyads and 10 Italian-speaking mother-child dyads. All 20 children were late talkers who possessed delays in expressive vocabulary development but age-appropriate cognitive and receptive language skills. Dyads were filmed in 15-minute free play contexts, which were transcribed and coded for measures of maternal linguistic input (e.g. rate, MLU, labels, expansions) and child language productivity (e.g. utterances, different words used). The results revealed that the Italian mothers used more utterances, spoke more quickly and used a more diverse vocabulary than the Canadian mothers. The Italian children mirrored their mothers and also used more utterances and a more diverse vocabulary than the Canadian children. Mothers in both groups used similar percentages of responsive labels and expansions. However, Italian mothers responded to fewer of their children's vocalizations, using a smaller percentage of imitations and interpretations than the Canadian mothers. Correlations between maternal input and children's language productivity revealed that contingent language measures (e.g. imitations, interpretations, expansions) were related to high levels of productivity in children in both cultural groups. The results support the use of language interventions based on increasing maternal responsiveness for these children at the one-word stage of language development. They also point to differences that may be culturally based. For example, Italian mothers use faster rates of interaction and appear to have higher expectations for their children's verbal participation in interaction. This is reflected in higher rates of language production from their children, even though children in both cultural groups have similar vocabulary sizes.

Adult↗