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PubMed2005

False memory across languages: implicit associative response vs fuzzy trace views.

We investigated false recognition across languages using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. A group of English-French bilinguals studied lists of converging associates, some lists in English and some in French, and then performed a recognition test containing studied list items and nonstudied critical lures whose language matched or mismatched the language at study. Participants were instructed to answer old only if the test cue was in the same language as the studied word. The results yielded a robust false memory rate both within-language and across-languages. The effect of the study-test language shift was much larger for list items than for critical lures. This finding suggests that memory representations for critical lures contain primarily semantic gist traces and little surface information, and hence is more consistent with the fuzzy trace view than with the implicit associative response view. In sum, the study demonstrates the existence of false memory across languages, and provides information about the memory traces underlying veridical and illusory recognition.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Facilitation of receptive and productive foreign vocabulary learning using the keyword method: the role of image quality.

Ellis and Beaton (1993a) reported that the keyword method of learning enhanced memory of foreign vocabulary items when receptive learning was measured. However, for productive learning, rote repetition was superior to the keyword method. The first two experiments reported here show that, in comparison with rote repetition, both receptive and productive learning can be enhanced by the keyword method, provided that the quality of the keyword images is adequate. In a third experiment using a subset of words from Ellis and Beaton (1993a), the finding they reported, that for productive learning rote repetition was superior to the keyword method, was reversed. The quality of keyword images will vary from study to study and any generalisation regarding the efficacy of the keyword method must take this into account.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

The incidence of false memories in native and non-native speakers.

The current study consisted of four experiments that utilised a novel approach to investigating false memories. Each of the experiments in the current study investigated individuals with varying experience with different languages. Experiment 1 tested participants in both their native and secondary languages as well as monolingual English speakers, while Experiment 2 assessed native Spanish speakers using both English and Spanish associative lists. Experiment 3 examined the illusory memories in monolingual Spanish speakers in both English and Spanish, while Experiment 4 investigated false memories in monolingual English speakers in both English and Spanish. Results indicated that memory for list items and critical lures was greatest when the lists were presented in the participants' primary language. Results can be explained by either activation-based or fuzzy-trace theories.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed2006

Language-dependent access to autobiographical memory in Japanese-English bilinguals and US monolinguals.

Japanese bilinguals retrieved autobiographical memories in response to 20 English and 20 Japanese cue words. US monolinguals were cued with 40 English words. All participants reported one earliest memory. Japanese bilinguals retrieved more memories and earlier memories when cued with Japanese words. They also retrieved more memories when the cue language matched either the language of memory encoding or the language of first thought. Although English cues elicited equivalent numbers of English and Japanese memories in the more fluent speakers of English, Japanese words elicited significantly larger numbers of Japanese memories in all Japanese-English bilinguals. The average age of cued autobiographical memories was significantly earlier for US than for Japanese students but age of the earliest memory did not differ.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Bilingual children: cross-sectional relations of psychiatric syndrome severity and dual language proficiency.

The severity of child psychiatric disorders is commonly associated with child language delays. However, the characteristics of these associations in the fast-growing population of bilingual children remain unknown. To begin to address this gap, we studied a unique sample of Spanish-English bilingual children with significant parent-reported psychopathology (n = 29), focusing on their language proficiencies and psychiatric severity using the Child Behavior Check List. We present cross-sectional analyses of associations of general and specific language proficiency in Spanish and English with the severity of specific psychiatric syndromes. We found Spanish language-proficiency scores to have negative correlations with a wide range of psychiatric symptoms, particularly externalizing (i.e., delinquency and aggression) symptoms (r = -.38 to -.61, p < or = .05). English scores were similarly associated. Dual language tests covering multiple specific language dimensions explained a large proportion (51%) of overall variance in aggression symptoms and also important proportions (40%) of total and attentional symptoms. While children's proficiency levels in both Spanish and English showed similar associations with the symptom severity measures (explaining close to 20% of the symptom variance; r(sp) = -.44, p < .01), these proficiency levels explain nonconverging variance in children's symptomatology. The findings suggest that clinical evaluation of language functioning is often needed in such populations and that it should be comprehensive and include both languages. Such thorough evaluation of bilingual children suffering from psychopathology will help us to precisely identify (1) language deficits, (2) specific relations of these deficits to the child's psychopathology, (3) differential implications of communication at home (e.g., in Spanish) and at school (e.g., in English) for clinical presentation and the child's competence in those differing contexts, and (4) language of choice for therapy, evaluation, and educational services. The findings are discussed in the context of clinical and conceptual implications and future research needs.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Pathophysiology of language switching and mixing in an early bilingual child with subcortical aphasia.

Acquired aphasia after circumscribed vascular subcortical lesions has not been reported in bilingual children. We report clinical and neuroimaging findings in an early bilingual boy who incurred equally severe transcortical sensory aphasia in his first language (L1) and second language (L2) after a posterior left thalamic hemorrhage. Following recurrent bleeding of the lesion the aphasic symptoms substantially aggravated. Spontaneous pathological language switching and mixing were found in both languages. Remission of these phenomena was reflected on brain perfusion SPECT revealing improved perfusion in the left frontal lobe and left caudate nucleus. The parallelism between the evolution of language symptoms and the SPECT findings may demonstrate that a subcortical left frontal lobe circuity is crucially involved in language switching and mixing.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

The different frameworks underlying abstract and concrete knowledge: evidence from a bilingual patient with a semantic refractory access dysphasia.

We report the case of a bilingual patient (IRQ) who acquired a semantic refractory access dysphasia following a middle cerebral artery stroke. In a series of spoken word-written word matching tasks, the degree of semantic similarity between target and distractor items was found to affect the accuracy of IRQ's identification of concrete but not abstract words. By contrast, the degree of semantic association between target and distractor items was found to affect response accuracy when identifying abstract but not concrete words. These results provide further corroboration for the notion that abstract concepts are supported by an associative representational network whereas concrete concepts are supported by a categorical representational framework. We also demonstrate an equivalent refractory deficit of comprehension in both English and Arabic. In addition, we provide the first documented evidence of a category-specific refractory deficit of knowledge for abstract words.

Aged↗
PubMed2003

Access to diabetes services: the experiences of Bangladeshi people in Bradford, UK.

Recent years have seen a renewed emphasis in UK healthcare policy on access to services, yet there has been little research into possible inequalities in access for people from different ethnic backgrounds. This paper examines access from the point of view of a group of Bangladeshi people with diabetes, whose views were obtained as part of a wider evaluation of diabetes services. Their message is a powerful one. The problems they experienced, however, cannot be attributed solely to cultural insensitivity, in which providers adopt a 'like it or lump it' approach. The wider evaluation provides a context within which to identify similarities with, as well as differences from, other groups in the community, and the findings show that the experiences of this vulnerable group highlight more general weaknesses in service provision. The paper also shows that conventional analysis of access in terms of barriers to be overcome misses a crucial dimension: the ability to make full use of services. Gaining access does not mean that needs will be met appropriately, and patients vary in the extent to which they are able and enabled to play an active role in obtaining the services they need.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

The experiences of postnatal depression in women from black and minority ethnic communities in Wiltshire, UK.

OBJECTIVES: To describe the experiences of women suffering from postnatal depression in black and minority ethnic communities in Wiltshire, UK. DESIGN: Semi-structured interviews and focus groups with women across Wiltshire with current and past experience of postnatal depression. EPDS data are also reported. Qualitative data (via telephone and face-to-face interviews) were also collected from GPs and health visitors who worked with these women. RESULTS: Qualitative analysis identified four main themes that were part of the experience of postnatal depression for the women and the primary health care professionals in contact with them--issues specific to pregnancy and birth (including postnatal depression), issues specific to primary health care, issues relating to culture, and 'other' issues. This latter theme describes the multitude of problems that many of the women endured, e.g. family/marital problems, violence, drinking alcohol, bereavement, financial difficulties, unemployment, accommodation and (racial) harassment. CONCLUSIONS: All the women had problematic lives, affected by a multitude of factors, and raised a number of serious concerns that related to health and social care. This has implications for practice and service provision, as demonstrated by the data from GPs and health visitors, in, for example, the provision of advice and information (and in different languages), training, improved communication and inter-agency working, in this area (where the research was conducted) and elsewhere in England. More research is needed to further explore the needs of women from minority ethnic groups, taking issues of, for example, cultural specificity and urbanity/rurality into account. Further research also needs to investigate ways of offering help and support to this patient group.

Black People↗
PubMed2006

Laterality and language experience.

A meta-analysis was conducted on studies that examined hemispheric functional asymmetry for language in brain-intact monolingual and bilingual adults. Data from 23 laterality studies that directly compared bilingual and monolingual speakers on the same language were analysed (n = 1234). Variables examined were language experience (monolingual, bilingual), experimental paradigm (dichotic listening, visual hemifield presentation, and dual task) and, among bilinguals, the influence of second language proficiency (proficient vs nonproficient) and onset of bilingualism (early, or before age 6; and late, or after age 6). Overall, monolinguals and late bilinguals showed reliable left hemisphere dominance, while early bilinguals showed reliable bilateral hemispheric involvement. Within bilinguals, there was no reliable effect of language proficiency when age of L2 acquisition was controlled. The findings indicate that early learning of one vs. two languages predicts divergent patterns of cerebral language lateralisation in adulthood.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Bilingual children in language units: does having 'well-informed' parents make a difference?

Findings from a large-cohort study of children with speech and language impairments in language units attached to primary schools across England have suggested that in 11% of the cohort who were bilingual form a subgroup with distinct characteristics. In particular, bilingual children's language difficulties seemed to be more complex and possibly more severe than those of their monolingual peers. It was suggested that these findings might reflect differences in the way that the bilingual children were identified and assessed for speech and language difficulties. Parents of the bilingual children in the original study were interviewed to explore the kind of experiences they had with the identification and assessment process. Differences were found between the bilingual parents and a group of monolingual parents who were also interviewed. Moreover, differences were found between two subgroups of the bilingual parents: those who were 'more informed' and 'less informed' about the process. These differences were found to be related to several other factors, including attitudes to language use within the family and the nature of the parents' relationship with the language unit.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Developmental perspectives on bilingual Swedish-Arabic children with and without language impairment: a longitudinal study.

BACKGROUND: There is a need for studies on bilingual language acquisition in combination with language impairment (LI). The speech and language clinician must have tools to differentiate between problems depending on inadequate exposure to a language and problems depending on a LI. Another important issue is the pace of bilingual language acquisition relative to the severity of LI. AIMS: To investigate grammatical development over 12 months in both languages in 10 Swedish-Arabic pre-school children with severe LI and 10 Swedish-Arabic pre-school children without LI. METHODS & PROCEDURES: The children were matched for age, gender, exposure to Swedish dialect, and exposure to Arabic dialect. The developmental hierarchy predicted by Processability Theory was used in tests in both Swedish and Arabic. Processability Theory was used as a yardstick to measure grammatical development in both languages. OUTCOME & RESULTS: Bilingual children, both with and without LI, developed grammatical structures in Swedish and Arabic in the same implicational way. Children with severe LI could develop two languages, although the pace of development was much slower in both languages. Bilingual children with severe LI were also more vulnerable to limited exposure of both their languages. CONCLUSIONS: A developmental perspective is important to understand the nature of LI in bilingual children. The results also have implications for the assessment of language development in bilingual children with severe LI, since a hardly perceptible development over time is observed.

Child↗
PubMedDate not supplied

When novel sentences spoken or heard for the first time in the history of the universe are not enough: toward a dual-process model of language.

Although interest in the language sciences was previously focused on newly created sentences, more recently much attention has turned to the importance of formulaic expressions in normal and disordered communication. Also referred to as formulaic expressions and made up of speech formulas, idioms, expletives, serial and memorized speech, slang, sayings, clichés, and conventional expressions, non-propositional language forms a large proportion of every speaker's competence, and may be differentially disturbed in neurological disorders. This review aims to examine non-propositional speech with respect to linguistic descriptions, psycholinguistic experiments, sociolinguistic studies, child language development, clinical language disorders, and neurological studies. Evidence from numerous sources reveals differentiated and specialized roles for novel and formulaic verbal functions, and suggests that generation of novel sentences and management of prefabricated expressions represent two legitimate and separable processes in language behaviour. A preliminary model of language behaviour that encompasses unitary and compositional properties and their integration in everyday language use is proposed. Integration and synchronizing of two disparate processes in language behaviour, formulaic and novel, characterizes normal communicative function and contributes to creativity in language. This dichotomy is supported by studies arising from other disciplines in neurology and psychology. Further studies are necessary to determine in what ways the various categories of formulaic expressions are related, and how these categories are processed by the brain. Better understanding of how non-propositional categories of speech are stored and processed in the brain can lead to better informed treatment strategies in language disorders.

Aphasia↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Issues in the development of cross-cultural assessments of speech and language for children.

BACKGROUND: There is an increasing demand for the assessment of speech and language in clinical and research situations in countries where there are few assessment resources. Due to the nature of cultural variation and the potential for cultural bias, new assessment tools need to be developed or existing tools require adaptation. However, there are few guidelines on how to develop 'culturally appropriate' assessment tools. AIMS: To review the literature on cross-cultural assessment in order to identify the major issues in the development and adaptation of speech and language assessments for children and to illustrate these issues with practical examples from our own research programme in Kenya. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Five broad categories pertaining to cross-cultural assessment development were identified: the influence of culture on performance, familiarity with the testing situation, the effect of formal education, language issues and picture recognition. It was outlined how some of these issues were addressed in our research. The results of the review were integrated to produce a list of ten guidelines highlighting the importance of collaboration with mother tongue speakers; piloting; familiar assessment materials; assessment location; and practice items and prompts. CONCLUSIONS: There are few clinicians and assessors, whether in the UK or abroad, who do not assess or treat children from a culture different to their own. Awareness of cultural variation and bias and cooperative efforts to develop and administer culturally appropriate assessment tools are the foundation of effective, valid treatment programmes.

Behavior↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Speech and language therapy provision for bilingual children: aspects of the current service.

The findings are presented here of a questionnaire survey which asked speech and language therapy managers in England about the caseloads of the therapists in their trust as regards bilingual children. The survey was the first part of a larger research project aiming to explore why there appears to be over-representation of bilingual children in speech and language therapy in some areas and under-representation in others (compared to the proportion of bilingual children in the population). This main research question is discussed in relation to the literature and to the survey aims. The results describe aspects of the context in which the speech and language therapy service for bilingual children is operating: the lack of information about bilingual children is high-lighted. The staffing and training implications of bilingual clients' distribution over therapists' caseloads in areas with different levels of minority ethnic population are also considered. The finding that the majority of speech and language therapists in England who work with children (59%) see at least one bilingual child speaks of the extent to which issues relating to bilingualism affects therapists.

Child↗
PubMed2005

Tone choice and voice quality of dispreferred turns in the English of Finns.

Authentic Finnish-English speech data was collected as part of an English conversation class in a Finnish college. Intonation was coded utilizing the framework involving 'tone', 'key' and 'termination'. A categorization of voice quality was chosen (e.g., 'modal voice', 'creak', 'breathy', and 'tense'). The tempo of speech was transcribed with such descriptors as, e.g., 'fast' and 'slow'. The majority of dispreferred turns in the data represented mitigated disagreement, with structural complexity (involving, e.g., wordiness). The p tone was predominant: a low/mid key often accompanied mitigated disagreement. The r and r+ tones were virtually absent in the mitigated dispreferred turns. Instead, the speakers often used a very lax/breathy voice quality and a slow/decelerating tempo, often resulting in creak near a transition relevant place.

Affect↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Is acculturation related to use of hearing protection?

Noise-exposed employees with limited English skills may pose a special challenge for hearing conservation programs. This pilot field study assessed knowledge, attitudes, and behavior regarding use of hearing protective devices in a largely Hispanic group of 88 workers exposed to industrial noise. Effectiveness of hearing protection was determined through field measurements of personal attenuation ratings. Individual scores on an acculturation scale (first language learned, language at home, degree of literacy in English, preferred language) demonstrated a correlation between a low degree of acculturation and low personal attenuation rating (R2= 0.49, p=0.0001). Low acculturation was also correlated with high-perceived barriers to use of hearing protection (p=0.006). Although neither self reports of self-efficacy nor perceived benefits of hearing protection correlated with personal attenuation rating, perceived barriers to hearing protector use was a significant predictor of hearing protector fit (p=0.05). These results indicate that less acculturated workers may be underutilizing hearing protection in the workplace partly due to perceived barriers to use of hearing protective devices. To be effective, hearing conservation training programs in work sites with an immigrant work force need to address language and cultural barriers to the use of hearing protection.

Acculturation↗
PubMed2006

Dual-modality monitoring in a classification task: the effects of bilingualism and ageing.

Two experiments are reported in which monolingual and bilingual participants who were younger (Experiment 1) or older (Experiment 2) adults performed in a dual-task classification paradigm. Visually (primary task) and auditorily (secondary task) presented stimuli were classified into two categories. The stimuli belonged to two domains, letters or numbers (LN) and animals or musical instruments (AM), and the two task modalities used stimuli from the same (related) or opposite (unrelated) domains. For both age groups, bilinguals were less disrupted than monolinguals in visual sorting in the LN domain, and relatedness affected performance only in the AM domain. The results indicate different processing demands for the two domains, with the simpler domain (LN) favouring bilinguals and the more semantically complex domain (AM) favouring related judgements for the two task modalities.

Acoustic Stimulation↗