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PubMed2006

Tense and agreement morphemes in the speech of children with specific language impairment during intervention: phase 2.

PURPOSE: The goals of this investigation were to determine whether treatment assists children with specific language impairment (SLI) in the use of grammatical morphemes that mark tense and agreement and whether treatment gains influence the children's use of other, untreated morphemes. METHOD: Twenty-five children with SLI participated in 96 intervention sessions designed to facilitate the children's use of third-person singular -s or auxiliary is/are/was. RESULTS: The children showed significantly larger gains on the target forms than on control forms (e.g., past tense -ed) that were monitored but not included in intervention. Along with possible treatment-related generalization across morpheme types, there was also evidence of one morpheme type influencing another when neither was the target of intervention. CONCLUSIONS: Although the results provide clear evidence for intervention effects, it appeared as if maturational factors also played a role. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for treatment and for characterizing development in SLI.

Child Language↗

PubMed1986

Evaluation of a simile recognition treatment program for hearing-impaired students.

The investigation incorporated a changing criterion design to demonstrate the effectiveness of a treatment program designed to increase recognition of similes by two hearing-impaired students. Results indicated that the treatment program increased the students' ability to correctly match similes and descriptive passages. Implications for practitioners and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed1989

Facilitating word-finding skills of language-impaired children.

Two language-impaired children and their controls participated in a preliminary study designed to examine the effects of treatment on word-finding skills. The 2 children participated in activities designed to improve the elaboration and/or retrieval of the training words, whereas their controls received a therapeutic regimen that did not target word-finding skills. Treatment effects were apparent, with the greatest gains associated with activities focusing on both elaboration and retrieval. Although the findings were promising, several procedural details complicated interpretation of the data.

Child↗

PubMed1995

Redirects: a strategy to increase peer initiations.

Preschoolers' verbal abilities influence their verbal interactions with play partners. Previous research has suggested that preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLI) are more likely to initiate conversations with adults than with peers, as compared to their typically developing peers. This study investigated a teacher-implemented procedure, redirects, as a means to facilitate initiations to peers. A redirect occurs when a child initiates to the teacher, and the teacher then suggests the child initiate to a peer, thereby redirecting the child from an adult to a peer. Four preschool boys with SLI participated in the study. The teacher training was successful in increasing the teacher's ability to redirect the children's initiations. The children consistently responded to redirects by initiating to peers, and most redirected initiations received conversational responses from peers. Generalization effects to spontaneous peer initiations following the intervention period were demonstrated for 2 of the boys.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed2001

Aphasia in acute stroke and relation to outcome.

OBJECTIVES: The natural course of aphasia in unselected, consecutive stroke patients is not well established. We investigated morbidity, mortality and recovery for different types of aphasia in consecutive unselected aphasic patients with acute stroke. Setting and subjects. In 119 aphasic patients, the type and degree of aphasia were assessed acutely and at 3, 6 and 18 months after stroke onset, using Reinvang's 'Grunntest for afasi' and Amsterdam-Nijmegen-Everyday-Language-Test. RESULTS: About one-third of patients with acute stroke had presented with aphasia. Mortality among the aphasic patients during the 18-month follow-up was twice that in non-aphasics (36 vs. 16%). Presence of atrial fibrillation was associated with poorer prognosis. At 18 months, 24% of the 119 aphasic patients had recovered completely, 43% still had significant aphasia, and 21% had died. The proportion with global aphasia decreased from almost 25% acutely to a few per cent after 18 months, that with Wernicke's aphasia from 25% to less than 10%, whereas conduction aphasia increased from 13 to 23% during follow-up. Among those with initial mild aphasia, 70% recovered completely. Great improvement was observed in patients with initial low degree of speech function. Younger patients recovered to a greater extent than older patients. CONCLUSION: The high long-term mortality among aphasics may be seen as an indirect sign of advanced cardiovascular disease. A combination of different and adjusted aphasia tests provided the possibility to assess almost all acute aphasic patients. Irrespective of type and degree of aphasia, great improvements were seen in almost all aphasic patients. Even patients with severe speech impairment have a considerable potential for recovery, particularly in the first 3 months after stroke.

Aged↗

PubMed1979

Deficits in psychologic and classroom performance of children with elevated dentine lead levels.

To measure the neuropsychologic effects of unidentified childhood exposure to lead, the performance of 58 children with high and 100 with low dentine lead levels was compared. Children with lead levels scored significantly less well on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (Revised) than those with low lead levels. This difference was also apparent on verbal subtests, on three other measures of auditory or speech processing and on a measure of attention. Analysis of variance showed that none of these differences could be explained by any of the 39 other variables studied. Also evaluated by a teachers' questionnaire was the classroom behavior of all children (2146 in number) whose teeth were analyzed. The frequency of non-adaptive classroom behavior increased in a dose-related fashion to dentine lead level. Lead exposure, at doses below those producing symptoms severe enough to be diagnosed clinically, appears to be associated with neuropsychologic deficits that may interfere with classroom performance.

Attention↗

PubMed2001

Differentiation of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder subtypes: application of a neuropsychological model of attention.

This study represents a neuropsychological attempt to differentiate subtypes of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Participants (N = 80) were grouped by gender and ADHD subtype-Predominantly Inattentive (ADHD-I) versus Combined (ADHD-C)-resulting in four age-matched groups. Statistical analysis revealed significant differences in performance on selective attention tasks for those with ADHD-I and those with ADHD-C. Relative to their counterparts without hyperactivity, participants with ADHD-C earned disproportionately lower scores on tasks associated with executive control. Both subgroups with ADHD-I and ADHD-C demonstrated significant difficulty on some tasks assessing complex mental operations relative to age-standardized normative data. Discriminant analysis revealed that a combination of five neuropsychological measures discriminated between the ADHD-I and ADHD-C subgroups with 80% accuracy. Results provide support for the notion of the Predominantly Inattentive and Combined subtype classifications as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Further, findings from this study lend preliminary support for the utility of a neurophysiologically sensitive model of attention in the differentiation of these subtypes.

Attention↗

PubMed2003

A double dissociation between the meanings of action verbs and locative prepositions.

Abstract We describe two patients who manifested opposite patterns of performance on test batteries that evaluated production, comprehension, and semantic analysis of action verbs on the one hand (e.g. smile, wave, run ) and locative prepositions on the other (e.g. in, on, over ). JP failed all of the verb tests but passed all of the preposition tests, suggesting impaired knowledge of the meanings of action verbs but intact knowledge of the meanings of locative prepositions. In contrast, RR exhibited the reverse dissociation: he passed many of the verb tests but failed all of the preposition tests, suggesting mostly intact knowledge of the meanings of action verbs but impaired knowledge of the meanings of locative prepositions. This behavioral double dissociation reflects the fact that the two categories of words differ along several conceptual parameters. To a large extent, the patients exhibited a neuroanatomical double dissociation as well, since JP's lesion is predominantly in the left frontal operculum whereas RR's is predominantly in the left inferior parietal lobe and the posterior superior temporal region. This constitutes preliminary evidence that the meanings of action verbs and locative prepositions are represented by partially independent neural networks in the brain.

Aged↗

PubMed1986

Normative data on the Boston Naming Test for a group of normal older adults.

The 60-item Boston Naming Test was administered to a group of 78 normal, bright, and independently living older adults in five age groupings from 59 to 80+ in an attempt to generate normative data for an older population. Results indicated that naming abilities decline only slightly with advancing age (r = -.33), although consistent with prior research, more variation in performance was found in the higher age groups.

Aged↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Syntactic complexity and elderly adults' prose recall.

Elderly adults in their 70s and 80s and middle-aged adults in their 40s and 50s recalled a series of paragraphs made up of single-clause sentences and sentences with right-branching or left-branching embedded or subordinate clauses. Overall, the middle-aged adults recalled 65% of the propositions regardless of syntactic form. While the elderly adults recalled 43% of the propositions from the single-clause sentences, they recalled 60% of the propositions from the right-branching clauses but only 22% of the propositions from the left-branching clauses. These results, in conjunction with prior research on elderly adults' production and imitation of complex syntactic constructions, demonstrate age-related changes in syntactic processing.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Adult age differences in the attentional capacity demands of letter matching.

The attentional demands of letter matching were assessed using a secondary task technique with three adult subject groups. The mean ages were: Group 1 = 19.9 years, Group 2 = 58.7 years, Group 3 = 68.9 years. The primary task was letter matching on the basis of physical identity (PI) or name identity (NI); the secondary task was speeded response to a tone. Relative to baseline (single-task) tone RTs, subjects at all ages responded more slowly in the dual-task condition to tones on name-match trials than on physical-match trials. Also, the proportional difference in tone RT between baseline and dual-task trials was significantly larger for Group 3 than Group 1, but this analysis did not reveal a larger age difference for NI than PI matching. However, a second analysis revealed that absolute differences in tone RT between baseline and dual-task trials increased with age, and the magnitude of this effect was larger for NI than PI matching. The implications of the findings for theories of age differences in attentional capacity, and for issues in the measurement of attentional demands, are discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Does social problem solving differ from other types of problem solving during the adult years?

One hundred thirteen individuals, ages 18-81, were presented with a test of social problem solving, a test of practical problem solving, the Twenty Questions task (a test of traditional problem solving), the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale--Revised Vocabulary subtest (a measure of crystallized intelligence), and Raven's Progressive Matrices (a measure of fluid intelligence). The effects of age, sex, education, and intellectual abilities on problem-solving performance were examined. Social problem solving was positively related to higher education and higher Vocabulary scores, but it was not related to age. Social problem solving and practical problem solving were significantly related to each other and to scores on the Vocabulary subtest, whereas traditional problem solving was significantly related to scores on Raven's Progressive Matrices. These results suggest that different types of problem solving are differentially related to other intellectual abilities and to age.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

High scores on the Western Aphasia Battery correlate with good functional communication skills (as measured with the Communicative Effectiveness Index) in aphasic stroke patients.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the correlation between an impairment-level and a functional-level assessment scale of aphasia. DESIGN: Prospective, longitudinal study. SETTING: A stroke rehabilitation unit. SUBJECTS: Sixty-seven aphasic acute stroke patients who were undergoing a multi-disciplinary rehabilitation programme, including conventional speech and language therapy (SLT). INTERVENTION: Patients were assessed on study entry and 4, 8, 12 and 24 weeks after the start of SLT. The language impairment was assessed with the Western Aphasia Battery (WAB) and the communicative functional limitation associated with aphasia was measured with the Communicative Effectiveness Index (CETI).Results. There was a statistically significant correlation between the two scales for all assessment periods (Pearson's r=0.71; P<0.01). CONCLUSION: The study suggests that in the acute and subacute stages of stroke the scores of WAB and CETI can be surmised from one another.

Acute Disease↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Different school placements following language unit attendance: which factors affect language outcome?

The study compared the outcomes of two groups of children who were attending language unit provision at 7 years of age. Of 242 children in the original study, 62 (28%) transferred to mainstream school placements at age 8 years. These children were then closely matched to children still attending language unit provision at this age using measures of non-verbal IQ, expression and comprehension. These two groups of children were compared on outcome at 11 years in the areas of language skill, non-verbal IQ and social behaviour. Teacher/speech-language therapist opinions of placement were also examined as factors affecting outcome. Results show that children who moved to mainstream provision at 8 years were more likely to be attending mainstream at 11 years, although the majority received extra support. No further differences were evident in outcome according to placement type. However, there was a main effect of teacher/therapist opinion on outcome--children whose teachers were not entirely happy with the 8-year placement performed more poorly at 11 years on language measures. There were no differences on any other measures. The findings suggest that follow-on placements for children attending language units need to be more closely in line with teacher's opinions and that more flexibility needs to be evident in school placement policy in order that appropriate educational settings can be arranged.

Child↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Imitative production of regular past tense -ed by English-speaking children with specific language impairment.

BACKGROUND: Language intervention procedures often involve the speech-language pathologist highlighting or making more salient forms that are problematic for the child with a language impairment. According to limited processing accounts of specific language impairment (SLI), one way to increase the saliency of a form is to manipulate its sentence position. AIMS: The placement of verbs with past tense regular -ed, a morpheme documented to be significantly difficult to acquire for English-speaking children with SLI, was manipulated. Specifically, the accurate production of verbs with regular past tense -ed in the final position of sentences was evaluated in comparison with verbs with regular past tense -ed in the internal sentence position. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Ten English-speaking children with SLI (mean age 5;2) who were variable in the production of the regular past tense -ed morpheme participated in the study. A sentence imitation task that consisted of sentences with the past tense -ed in the sentence internal position, the sentence final position and foil sentences was presented. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Overall, the data suggest that in an imitative context, errors of omission occurred only when regular past tense -ed occurred in the sentence internal position compared with the sentence final position. CONCLUSIONS: The results are consistent with the SA explanation for omitted tense marking in children with SLI and do not support the Extended Optional Infinitive Account. Assessment and intervention of past tense -ed may be improved by manipulating the sentence position of this morpheme.

Child↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Characteristics of children attending language units in England: a national study of 7-year-olds.

The present investigation examined the characteristics of 7-year-old children attending language units in England. The study involved 242 participants who represented a randomized sample of all 7-year-old children spending 50% of more of the school week in a language unit. Results are discussed in terms of the following questions: what is the non-verbal ability of children attending language units?; do children attending language units fit the discrepancy criteria between verbal and non-verbal ability diagnostic of specific language impairment (SLI)?; and what types of language difficulties do children with SLI attending language units have?

Child↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Relevance theory and pragmatic impairment.

This paper summarizes aspects of relevance theory that are useful for exploring impairment of pragmatic comprehension in children. It explores data from three children with pragmatic language difficulties within this framework. Relevance theory is seen to provide a means of explaining why, in a given context, a particular utterance is problematic. It thus enables one to move on from mere description of problematic behaviours towards their explanation. The theory provides a clearer delineation between the explicit and the implicit, and hence between semantics and pragmatics. This enables one to place certain difficulties more firmly within semantics and others within pragmatics. Relevance, and its maximization in communication, are squarely placed within human cognition, which suggests a close connection between pragmatic and cognitive (dis)functioning. Relevance theory thus emerges as a powerful tool in the exploration and understanding of pragmatic language difficulties in children and offers therapeutically valuable insight into the nature of interactions involving individuals with such impairments.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Practice effect and test-retest reliability of attentional and executive tests in middle-aged to elderly subjects.

There is a lack of data about the practice effect and test-retest reliability (TRR) on many attentional and executive tests in neuropsychology. In this study, 37 subjects aged 52 to 80 were tested three times with an inter-assessment interval of 14 days. The battery included the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, the Stroop interference test, the Letter-Number Sequencing test, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III (WAIS-III), the Ruff 2 and 7 Selective Attention Test, the Tower of London, the Verbal Fluency test, and simple, choice, and sequential reaction time tests. The results showed that tasks were generally subject to a practice effect, except for those with alternate forms. In all tests, there were a number of scores demonstrating good TRR, but others, although largely used in clinical practice, failed to reach acceptable TRR standards. Usually, time derived scores were associated with the best TRR.

Aged↗