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PubMed1997

Language acquisition: the acquisition of linguistic structure in normal and special populations.

This review examines how language learners master the formal structure of their language. Three possible routes to the acquisition and mastery of linguistic structure are investigated: (a) the use of prosodic and phonological information, which is imperfectly correlated with syntactic units and linguistic classes; (b) the use of function words to syntactically classify co-occurring words and phrases, and the effect of location of function-word processing on structural mastery; and (c) the use of morphology internal to lexical items to determine language structure, and the productive recombination of these subunits in new items. Evidence supporting these three routes comes from normal language acquirers and from several special populations, including learners given impoverished input, learners with Williams syndrome, specific language-impaired learners, learners with Down syndrome, and late learners of first and second languages. Further evidence for the three routes comes from artificial language acquisition experiments and computer simulations.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Validity of different linguistic versions of the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale in an international multicentre Alzheimer's disease trial.

Owing to the involvement of Italian Centres in a multicentre, German-Italian therapeutical trial with Alzheimer's dementia patients, to be assessed with the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale (ADAS), it was decided that the Italian centres would use an Italian version of the scale, derived from that used by the German centres. However, the lists of words for exploring verbal memory are not merely translated from the German version, but are composed of selective Italian words chosen according to linguistic criteria. This Italian version was validated following the same procedure adopted for validating the German version. We submitted this Italian version to an interrater reliability, test-retest reliability, concurrent validity, internal consistency and sensitivity evaluation, using demented patients. Based on the results of these tests this Italian version of the ADAS proved valid and reliable. Moreover, the results were strikingly comparable to those from the validation of the German version. Our work supports the validity, reliability and transnational comparability of national versions of the ADAS constructed following definite linguistic criteria.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

A report of cognitive, academic, and linguistic profiles for college students with and without learning disabilities.

A comparison of cognitive, academic, and linguistic profiles for 74 college students with learning disabilities and 37 college students without learning disabilities resulted in significant differences in achievement for reading, writing, listening, and speaking. No significant differences were found for gender or the presence of a Verbal-Performance split in cognitive ability. Instruments for measuring academic and linguistic skills were similar in their ability to classify students with and without learning disabilities. These findings support the importance of using measures of multidimensional attributes, including language, for making decisions concerning the criteria for learning disabilities.

Achievement↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Linguistic models of F0 use, physiological models of F0 control, and the issue of "mean response time".

This paper evaluates "mean response time" (MRT), a method used in previous studies to relate physiological evidence (recordings of electromyographic activity in the cricothyroid and sternohyoid) to acoustic evidence (fundamental frequency). Rather than averaging over tokens before correlating these signals, we calculated the best response time (RT) for each token, and evaluated the pattern of variability across utterances. Furthermore, rather than correlating over whole utterances, we correlated electromyographic activity (EMG) to fundamental frequency (F0) only over intervals defined in terms of linguistically significant events in the F0 trace, identified using a linguistically motivated model of English intonation. Steep changes in the F0 tended to have better correlation coefficients than shallow ones, which we relate to the physiological model by noting the complex of components contributing to both signal types. Also, the distribution of lead times was easier to interpret when the two tones delimiting the analysis domain had some tight temporal relationship specified by the intonational phonology. Finally, lead times tended to vary as a function of what preceded the target rise or fall. In short, averaging over signals before analysis obscures patterns of variation in the data which may lead to new insights and to new directions for research.

Electromyography↗
PubMed2006

Designing culturally and linguistically appropriate health interventions: the "Life Is Precious" Hmong breast cancer study.

Cancer is the number one cause of death for Asian American women, yet they have the lowest rates of cancer screening. Contributing factors, particularly for Hmong women, include the lack of culturally and linguistically appropriate educational interventions. This study aimed to develop a culturally and linguistically appropriate intervention to improve the breast cancer screening rates among Hmong women in Fresno and San Diego, California. Intervention elements included the development of a flipchart, brochure, and video that presented basic breast health and screening information, along with the targeting of not only women but men to support their wives' breast cancer screenings. Analyses of pre- and post workshop surveys showed increases in knowledge and more positive attitudes among all participants, behavioral intentions for clinical breast examinations and mammograms among women, and support for such exams and possible cancer treatment among men. Implications for further research and practice are discussed.

Asian↗
PubMed1994

Linguistics, human communication and psychiatry.

BACKGROUND: Psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics have extended our understanding of the abnormal communication seen in psychosis, as well as that of people with autism and Asperger's syndrome. Psycholinguistics has the potential to increase the explanatory power of cognitive and neuropsychological approaches to psychosis and new methods of assessment and therapy are now being developed, based on linguistic theory. METHOD: A MEDLINE literature search was used. RESULTS: Of 205 relevant articles identified, 65 were selected for review. CONCLUSIONS: Greater familiarity with linguistic theory could improve psychiatrists' assessment skills and their understanding of the relevance of human communication to the new cognitive models of psychosis.

Brain Damage, Chronic↗
PubMed1998

Linguistic processing during repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation.

To determine if linguistic processing could be selectively disrupted with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), rTMS was performed during a picture-word verification task. Seven right-handed subjects were trained in two conditions: picture-word verification, which required the subject to verify whether the picture of an object matched the subtitle name on the same page, and frame verification, which required subjects to verify whether there was a rectangular frame around the combined object picture and subtitle. Half of the trials were performed during rTMS. The effects of rTMS on performance were evaluated at the following four scalp positions: left anterior (the area where rTMS produced speech arrest), a mirror site on the right, and two positions in the left and right parietal region. Stimulation over the left deltoid muscle served as a control. Subjects had less difficulty in making picture-word matching decisions during unstimulated compared with stimulated trials at the left anterior and posterior positions. No significant difference in accuracy was detected in the frame verification condition, but response times in the frame verification condition were longer with stimulation at the left anterior position. Because rTMS of the dominant hemisphere affected linguistic processing independent of speech motor output, we confirm that rTMS may be used to investigate language and other cognitive functions.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

(Re-) constructing pre-linguistic interpersonal processes to promote language development in young children with deviant or delayed communication skills.

BACKGROUND: Approaches to intervention with young children with delayed or deviant communication skills have tended to focus directly on the production and comprehension of linguistic forms. Research in developmental psychology, however, has highlighted the role of joint attention and action within a mutually negotiated frame in early communicative development. AIMS: An approach to intervention was developed which uses graded participation in such 'formats' to promote language development in 3- to 5-year-olds with significant delays or deviance in communication skills. This study was designed to evaluate this in comparison with a more conventional approach. SAMPLE: The sample comprised twenty 3- to 5-year-olds attending a diagnostic nursery or a speech and language support centre attached to a mainstream primary school. METHOD: In the intervention, developmentally ordered sequences of exchange games provided predictable ruled-based and structured joint contexts of action, within which verbal and non-verbal exchanges between an adult and child could be meaningfully used. In the control condition, participants received more conventional intervention focusing more directly on language per se. Level of participation in dyadic play was assessed in terms both of role and cognitive complexity, and for the present study language development was assessed using the verbal subtests of the WPPSI. The study entailed both a between- and a within-subjects design. RESULTS: Cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons confirmed that this form of intervention was significantly more effective than the control condition in increasing children's level of participation in social game formats and in promoting their language development; moreover, these were significantly correlated. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that the development of language skills can be promoted more effectively through (re-) constructing the interpersonal framework of pre-linguistic communicative development than through conventional intervention focusing directly upon language per se.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Fuzzy linguistic model for evaluating the risk of neonatal death.

OBJECTIVE: To introduce a fuzzy linguistic model for evaluating the risk of neonatal death. METHODS: The study is based on the fuzziness of the variables newborn birth weight and gestational age at delivery. The inference used was Mamdani's method. Neonatologists were interviewed to estimate the risk of neonatal death under certain conditions and to allow comparing their opinions and the model values. RESULTS: The results were compared with experts' opinions and the Fuzzy model was able to capture the expert knowledge with a strong correlation (r=0.96). CONCLUSIONS: The linguistic model was able to estimate the risk of neonatal death when compared to experts' performance.

Birth Weight↗
PubMed2004

Speech outcome following treatment in cross-linguistic cleft palate studies: methodological implications.

OBJECTIVE: In cross-linguistic studies of cleft palate speech outcome following treatment, treatment is the independent variable, speech outcome is the dependent variable, and the speakers' language background is a background variable, like sex, age, and cleft type, which must be eliminated. This article focuses on language as a background variable and how it should be treated. The methodological problems are illustrated through a presentation of two cross-linguistic speech outcome studies. CONCLUSION: When speakers of different language background are included in cleft palate studies of speech outcome following treatment, speech outcome data should be based on speech units that are phonetically identical across languages. This affects the make-up of the speech material used in the study. In practice, the requirement of phonetically identical speech units may not be totally met, and detailed information regarding the interaction between the cleft condition and speech sound production is still required to fully understand how the validity of data is affected if this requirement is not met.

Cleft Palate↗
PubMed1975

Field articulation and linguistic structures.

The relation of field articulation to sensitivity to linguistic structures was explored. Subjects (23 males and 23 females) were given the rod-and-frame test and then made true-false judgments of sentences varying in grammatical and semantic complexity. While increased complexity did increase the difficulty of true-false judgments of sentences, the latencies of these judgments were unrelated to the scores on the rod-and-frame test. These results were discussed in terms of the generality of previous studies reporting a relationship between field articulation and linguistic abilities.

Female↗
PubMed1982

Alterations in resolution of linguistic ambiguity after cerebral injury in man.

The present experiment examined the ability of subjects with penetrating brain injuries to resolve different forms of linguistic ambiguity. Most subjects with penetrating head wounds of the left cerebral hemisphere (n = 11) had impaired ability to detect linguistic ambiguity even when tested 20 yr. after injury. This decrement in performance was present for all types of ambiguity and was most pronounced in subjects who were dysphasic post-injury (n = 7). A similar pattern was shown by patients with bilateral cortical penetration (n = 11), especially those who were dysarthric or dysphasic (n = 5) immediately after injury. Performance on phonetic and underlying constituent structure ambiguities was more severely affected than performance on lexical, derived constituent structure, and particle-preposition ambiguities. By contrast, patients with right-penetrating cortical lesions (n = 18) performed nearly as well as the normal control subjects (n = 12).

Adult↗
PubMed1994

Effects of a common linguistic misrepresentation on judgments about the relationship between height and weight.

Researchers have debated whether laypeople can detect covariation and have tried to identify conditions that might facilitate or retard this ability. Language, especially linguistic representation of variables, seems important to consider since misrepresentation appears to be relatively common in linguistic exchanges. In the present theory-based experiment, 16 subjects were asked to make judgments about the relationship between height and either weight (heavy or light) or bodyfat (fat or thin). Data provided evidence of a powerful illusory association, that is, if tall, then thin; if short, then fat, and there was no compelling evidence to suggest that subjects understood the relationship between height and weight.

Body Height↗
PubMed1995

Early intervention for hearing impairment: differences in the timing of communicative and linguistic development.

This paper reports in-depth case study material which illuminates the impact of early aiding on the rate of acquisition of communicative and linguistic behaviours of a small group of severely and profoundly deaf infants (average better ear impairment of 101 dB) aided between 3 and 6 months of age. A comparison is made of each infant's development of gestural and vocal productions between the ages of 6 and 21 months. Data derive from video- and audio-recorded social interaction between deaf and hearing infants and their principal caregivers taken across three contexts. The effects of earlier identification, amplification and fluctuations in early auditory stimulation, on the deaf infants' acquisition of communicative, symbolic and linguistic skills are discussed.

Age Factors↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Linguistic and cognitive deficits associated with cerebellar mutism.

Cerebellar mutism is a period of transient loss of speech following posterior fossa surgery, usually in children under 15 years of age. To date, cases presented in the literature have addressed primarily the motor speech aspect of the phenomenon, with little documentation relative to higher-level linguistic and cognitive functioning of these children. Recent research, however, is increasingly documenting evidence of cerebellar involvement in language and cognition. This paper describes four children, three of whom presented with a period of mutism following posterior fossa surgery, and one who did not exhibit mutism. All children, however, demonstrated a similar profile of significant high-level linguistic and cognitive deficit on formal speech-language and neuropsychological measures. Documented cases to date are reviewed and compared to these subjects. Literature documenting the role of the cerebellum in language and cognition is summarized and compared to evidence of residual deficits associated with cerebellar mutism as demonstrated by the children in this study.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Linguistic competence in paediatric closed head injury.

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the effects of age at onset of traumatic brain injury on the linguistic competence of children and adolescents who sustained closed head injuries (CHI) that cause diffuse brain damage. The Test of Language Competence-Expanded Edition (TLC-E), a standardized test of subtle language abilities, was administered to 20 children who sustained severe CHI. The study determined whether 10 subjects who experienced CHI at a pre-adolescent age (4 to 11 years) and 10 subjects who experienced CHI at an adolescent age (13 to 18 years) showed quantitative differences in linguistic competence as measured by the TLC-E Test. The language abilities of children in both groups were compared to determine whether there were trends in performance relative to age of onset or type of subtest. In addition, experimental subjects' performance was compared to the normative population used to standardize the TLC-E. Hypotheses were constructed according to separate developmental and pathophysiological perspectives.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Linguistic intergroup bias in political communication.

The Linguistic Intergroup Bias (LIB) illustrates the disposition to communicate positive in-group and negative out-group behaviors more abstractly than negative in-group and positive out-group behaviors. The present research examined the function of language in reinforcing this bias in political communication. To illustrate the LIB, the Linguistic Category Model (LCM) was used, including a nouns category. Because social stereotypes are usually conveyed by nominal terms, the aim was to observe the relationship between stereotypes and language in political communication. Moreover, we were interested in analyzing the psychological processes that drive the LIB. Therefore, we verified whether the LIB is more related to language abstractness than to agent-patient causality. Several political debates and interviews, which took place before the latest Italian provincial elections, were analyzed. Results suggested that the language politicians use in communicating about political groups are conceptualized as stereotypes rather than as trait-based categories. Moreover, it seems that the LIB could not be explained only at a lexical level. Social implications of the present findings in interpersonal relations and causal attribution were discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Enhanced recency effects with changing-state and primary-linguistic stimuli.

A number of explanations for the modality effect in immediate serial recall have been proposed. The auditory advantage for recall of recency items has been explained in terms of (1) the contributions of precategorical acoustic storage (PAS), (2) an advantage of changing-state over static stimuli, and (3) an advantage of primary-linguistic coding. Four experiments were conducted to evaluate these hypotheses. In the first, subjects viewed seven consecutive rectangles of different colors on a computer monitor. A small recency effect was obtained when the task was to recall the colors of the rectangles in order, with the size of the effect being independent of whether the rectangles remained stationary on the screen or moved in one of four directions. However, when the task was to recall the direction of movement of the rectangles, a larger recency effect was found. This pattern of results was interpreted as suggesting that recency effects are enhanced by changing-state stimulus information, but only when the changing-state information serves to identify the stimulus. Experiments 2 and 3 provided converging evidence by demonstrating an analogous recency advantage for changing-state visual stimuli that were somewhat different from those of Experiment 1. Experiment 4 demonstrated recency effects with synthesized speech stimuli that were substantially greater than were those found with the changing-state visual stimuli of the first three experiments. Implications of the results for the PAS, changing-state, and primary-linguistic hypotheses, as well as temporal-distinctiveness theories of recency, are discussed.

Color Perception↗