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At least 865 records · Page 48Linked to original sources
PubMed2000

Pathological switching between languages after frontal lesions in a bilingual patient.

Cerebral lesions may alter the capability of bilingual subjects to separate their languages and use each language in appropriate contexts. Patients who show pathological mixing intermingle different languages within a single utterance. By contrast, patients affected by pathological switching alternate their languages across different utterances (a self contained segment of speech that stands on its own and conveys its own independent meaning). Cases of pathological mixing have been reported after lesions to the left temporoparietal lobe. By contrast, information on the neural loci involved in pathological switching is scarce. In this paper a description is given for the first time of a patient with a lesion to the left anterior cingulate and to the frontal lobe-also marginally involving the right anterior cingulate area-who presented with pathological switching between languages in the absence of any other linguistic impairment. Thus, unlike pathological mixing that typically occurs in bilingual aphasia, pathological switching may be independent of language mechanisms.

Aphasia↗
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↗
PubMed1998

Grammatical choice and affective experience in a second-language test.

This study measured the affective experience of 12 subjects reading grammatically correct and incorrect versions of 50 sentences, Questionnaire I, in their second language (French). This was followed by a multiple choice grammar test, Questionnaire II, using the same 50 sentences and offering the correct and incorrect answers. Subjects tended to choose correct as well as incorrect responses corresponding to their highest affective rating within each entry. In all cases the subjects' behavior was higher than chance level and thus followed a trend to maximize pleasure. This result supports the hypothesis according to which the key to decision-making lies in the affective dimension of conscious experience.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Educating speech-language pathologists for a multicultural world.

This paper presents critical elements and current needs in educating speech-language pathologists for a multicultural world. A proposed paradigm shift in clinical teaching using the UK model is also introduced. In addition, a case study on the American Speech Language Hearing Association's efforts in implementing the Multicultural Action Agenda by networking with the Asian Pacific Islander caucus is described. A survey of multicultural elements in programs in Australia and New Zealand is included. Finally, suggestions for collaboration with those in established professional bodies to meet the increasing needs of a multicultural world are provided.

Cultural Diversity↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Verbal fluency in elderly bilingual speakers: normative data and preliminary application to Alzheimer's disease.

This study investigated verbal fluency abilities in 30 healthy elderly English-Afrikaans bilingual speakers, and 6 bilingual subjects with Alzheimer's disease. Three 1-min semantic verbal fluency tasks (animals) were obtained in the bilingual mode, Afrikaans and English. Results were analysed in terms of total correct, and semantic clusters. There was no significant difference between monolingual and bilingual performance. Some healthy bilingual subjects used code switching as a strategy but with no direct increase in the number of exemplars generated, and there was no relationship between age of acquisition, pattern of use and verbal fluency scores. In comparison, subjects with Alzheimer's disease did not make use of code switching strategies, and there was some relationship between age of acquisition, pattern of use and verbal fluency scores.

Aged↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Cognitive and linguistic profiles of specific language impairment and semantic-pragmatic disorder in bilinguals.

This study explored the notion that the extent to which language-impaired children can become bilingual depends on the type of language impairment. Single-case studies were conducted on two 7-year-old bilingual children, who had both been exposed to English and Afrikaans consistently and regularly from an early age. The subjects presented with specific language impairment (SLI) and semantic-pragmatic disorder (SPD), respectively. They were assessed on a battery of cognitive and linguistic tests in both their languages. Results indicate that the SLI subject, who presented with a deficit in successive processing on the Cognitive Assessment System, had difficulty in acquiring the surface features of both languages. She developed much better proficiency in English than in Afrikaans, despite substantial exposure to the latter. The SPD subject, whose cognitive profile was characterised by planning and attention deficits, but a strength in successive processing, presented with equal proficiency in both languages. The theoretical and clinical implications of this research are discussed.

Child↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Comparison of cross-language generalisation following speech therapy.

Little is known about the phonological development of children who acquire two languages sequentially in the preschool years. Some of these children will be referred for assessment of speech disorder. Distinguishing between delayed development due to the language learning environment and disorder is problematic in the absence of normative data on the typical phonological development of bilingual children. Another major issue concerns whether both languages require intervention, or only one because of generalisation to the other language. Treatment efficacy studies of 2 bilingual children are reported. The data indicate that different patterns of cross-language generalisation occur depending upon the deficit in the speech processing chain underlying the speech disorder.

Articulation Disorders↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The production of english vowels by fluent early and late Italian-English bilinguals.

The primary aim of this study was to determine if fluent early bilinguals who are highly experienced in their second language (L2) can produce L2 vowels in a way that is indistinguishable from native speakers' vowels. The subjects were native speakers of Italian who began learning English when they immigrated to Canada as children or adults ('early' vs. 'late' bilinguals). The early bilinguals were subdivided into groups differing in amount of continued L1 use (early-low vs. early-high). In experiment 1, native English-speaking listeners rated 11 English vowels for goodness. As expected, the late bilinguals' vowels received significantly lower ratings than the early bilinguals' vowels did. Some of the early-high subjects' vowels received lower ratings than vowels spoken by a group of native English (NE) speakers, whereas none of the early-low subjects' vowels differed from the NE subjects' vowels. Most of the observed differences between the NE and early-high groups were for vowels spoken in a nonword condition. The results of experiment 2 suggested that some of these errors were due to the influence of orthography.

Female↗
PubMedDate not supplied

'Brain fag' symptoms in apprentices in Nigeria.

The 'brain fag' syndrome, which was first reported from West Africa in 1960 among students, has been shown to occur very widely in African students in western educational systems south of the Sahara. This study investigated the distribution of its symptoms in a group of apprentices chosen by convenient sampling from Ile-Ife, a university town about 240 km northeast of Lagos in Nigeria. The subjects who (in contrast) were training under an indigenous form of education - the African apprenticeship system - consisted of 183 (69.8%) males, and 79 (30.2%) females, in the age range of 13-26 years (mean +/- SD 18.2 +/- 3.0 years). Questionnaires were interview-administered to collect data on the sociodemographic, economic, and family background, English language proficiency, and the degree of the presence of brain fag symptoms. Results indicated a generally low rate of brain fag symptoms among these different types of apprentices. A relationship between proficiency in English, but not socioeconomic status, with brain fag symptoms was found. In the case of the Nigerian apprentices investigated here, brain fag symptoms were not significantly associated with the method of training learning (which is dependent mainly on verbal instructions in the vernacular from their bosses, and vicarious learning by observing the boss at work). The implications of these findings for two of the theories advanced for the pathogenesis of the brain fag syndrome were discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The vowel systems of Quichua-Spanish bilinguals. Age of acquisition effects on the mutual influence of the first and second languages.

This study investigates vowel productions of 20 Quichua-Spanish bilinguals, differing in age of Spanish acquisition, and 5 monolingual Spanish speakers. While the vowel systems of simultaneous, early, and some mid bilinguals all showed significant plasticity, there were important differences in the kind, as well as the extent, of this adaptability. Simultaneous bilinguals differed from early bilinguals in that they were able to partition the vowel space in a more fine-grained way to accommodate the vowels of their two languages. Early and some mid bilinguals acquired Spanish vowels, whereas late bilinguals did not. It was also found that acquiring Spanish vowels could affect the production of native Quichua vowels. The Quichua vowels were produced higher by bilinguals who had acquired Spanish vowels than those who had not. It is proposed that this vowel reorganization serves to enhance the perceptual distinctiveness between the vowels of the combined first- and second-language system.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Preliminary planning for training speech and language therapists in Uganda.

Country-specific issues affect both the implementation of services for people with communication disabilities and the training of specialists who provide these services. Uganda is a majority world country with an extremely limited specialist service, but is looking to expand it by developing training for specialist workers. This paper reports on the initial processes adopted in Uganda to develop such training. A workshop that brought together all the stakeholders identified key issues. The paper relates these issues to the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics guidelines for education and training and makes suggestions for the way forward.

Culture↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Phonological and orthographic processes of reading and spelling in young adolescents and adults with and without dyslexia in German and English: impact on foreign language learning].

The present study addressed the question whether there is a relationship between phonological and orthographic processes of reading and spelling in adolescents and young adults with and without dyslexia in German and English. On the evidence of the Linguistic Coding Differences Hypothesis and results of the latest research in foreign language learning the hypothesis is tested if there is a relationship between phonological and orthographic knowledge on the one hand and decoding and spelling performance on the other hand in German adolescents and young adults reading and spelling German and English words. This hypothesis was tested with the statistical method of structural equation modeling and therefore the research population was divided into the following groups: group 1 with dyslexia in reading (n = 93), group 2 with dyslexia in spelling (n = 93), group 3 without dyslexia in reading (n = 95), and group 4 without dyslexia in spelling (n = 95). Results of data analysis show that the postulated prediction model fits only the data of the dyslexia group for reading and spelling, but not for the control group. Also the model for both groups does not fit. The results of the pilot study show that it is necessary to modify diagnostic instruments of measurement and to separate scales of phonological and orthographic processes.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

A note on aphasia in bilingual patients: Pitres' and Ribot's laws.

Johann Gesner in 1770 probably provided the first description of dissociation in reading ability in different languages in a bilingual patient, who after brain damage was able to read Latin but not German. Clinical studies have since shown that bilingual 'aphasics' do not necessarily manifest the same language disorders with the same degree of severity in both languages. Superficially, different case findings indicate instances of shared and divergent representation of components of language in the bilingual brain. This paper considers a selection of many empirical studies, which have failed to reconcile the parallel recovery of language in many reported bilingual aphasiacs and the differential recovery in others. It reviews Pitres' rule (recovery of the most used acquired language) and Ribot's law (recovery of the native language) that are important concepts during recovery and rehabilitation of bilingual aphasiacs.

Aphasia↗
PubMed2006

Production of tense-lax contrast by Mandarin speakers of English.

The spectral and temporal characteristics of three English tense-lax vowel pairs [see text] produced by native Mandarin speakers are reported. The euclidean distance based on first and second formant frequencies (F1 and F2), the durational differences, as well as the perceptual judgment of the tense-lax vowel contrast were examined in the syllable level productions of 40 Mandarin speakers compared to 40 American English speakers. Results of the comparative analysis indicated that Mandarin speakers differed significantly from the American English speakers in distinguishing the English tense/lax contrast. The general pattern shown across the Mandarin subjects was one in which the temporal feature, rather than the spectral feature, was more indicative of the tense-lax contrast as compared to the American speakers. In addition, the perception for the tense-lax contrast produced by Mandarin speakers was less distinctive as compared to the American speakers. The phonetic influences of the Mandarin language on the production of English tense-lax vowels are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Electrophysiological measures of language processing in bilinguals.

The aim of the present study was to investigate how multiple languages are represented in the human brain. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from right-handed polyglots and monolinguals during a task involving silent reading. The participants in the experiment were nine Italian monolinguals and nine Italian/Slovenian bilinguals of a Slovenian minority in Trieste; the bilinguals, highly fluent in both languages, had spoken both languages since birth. The stimuli were terminal words that would correctly complete a short, meaningful, previously shown sentence, or else were semantically or syntactically incorrect. The task consisted in deciding whether the sentences were well formed or not, giving the response by pressing a button. Both groups read the same set of 200 Italian sentences to compare the linguistic processing, while the bilinguals also received a set of 200 Slovenian sentences, comparable in complexity and length, to compare the processing of the two languages within the group. For the bilinguals, the ERP results revealed a strong, left-sided activation, reflected by the N1 component, of the occipitotemporal regions dedicated to orthographic processing, with a latency of about 150 msec for Slovenian words, but bilateral activation of the same areas for Italian words, which was also displayed by topographical mapping. In monolinguals, semantic error produced a long-lasting negative response (N2 and N4) that was greater over the right hemisphere, whereas syntactic error activated mostly the left hemisphere. Conversely, in the bilinguals, semantic incongruence resulted in greater response over the left hemisphere than over the right. In this group, the P615 syntactical error responses were of equal amplitude on both hemispheres for Italian words and greater on the right side for Slovenian words. The present findings support the view that there are interand intrahemispheric brain activation asymmetries when monolingual and bilingual speakers comprehend written language. The fact that the bilingual speakers in the present study were highly fluent and had acquired both languages in early infancy suggests that the brain activation patterns do not depend on the age of acquisition or the fluency level, as in the case of late, not-so-proficient L2 language learners, but on the functional organization of the bilinguals' brain due to polyglotism and based on brain plasticity.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Common and segregated neuronal networks for different languages revealed using functional magnetic resonance adaptation.

The effect of word repetition within and across languages was studied in English-Chinese bilinguals who read rapidly presented word pairs in a block design and an event-related fMRI study. Relatively less increase in MR signal was observed when the second word in a pair was identical in meaning to the first. This occurred in the English-only and mixed-languages conditions. Repetition-induced reductions in BOLD signal change were found in the left lateral prefrontal and lateral temporal regions in both types of conditions in the block experiment, suggesting that processing in these regions is sensitive to semantic features present in words and characters, and that part of the semantic neuronal networks serving English and Chinese is shared. In addition, these regions showed greater absolute signal change in the mixed-languages trials relative to the English-only trials. These findings were mostly replicated in an event-related experiment. Together, the experiments suggest that while the networks for Chinese and English word processing have shared components, there are also components that may be language specific.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2003

fMRI evidence for cortical modification during learning of Mandarin lexical tone.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging was employed before and after six native English speakers completed lexical tone training as part of a program to learn Mandarin as a second language. Language-related areas including Broca's area, Wernicke's area, auditory cortex, and supplementary motor regions were active in all subjects before and after training and did not vary in average location. Across all subjects, improvements in performance were associated with an increase in the spatial extent of activation in left superior temporal gyrus (Brodmann's area 22, putative Wernicke's area), the emergence of activity in adjacent Brodmann's area 42, and the emergence of activity in right inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmann's area 44), a homologue of putative Broca's area. These findings demonstrate a form of enrichment plasticity in which the early cortical effects of learning a tone-based second language involve both expansion of preexisting language-related areas and recruitment of additional cortical regions specialized for functions similar to the new language functions.

Cerebral Cortex↗
PubMed2005

Second language interferes with word production in fluent bilinguals: brain potential and functional imaging evidence.

Bilingual individuals need effective mechanisms to prevent interference between their languages. Using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we present evidence for interference of phonological information from the nontarget language in German-Spanish bilinguals. A tacit picture-naming task was used in which bilinguals and monolinguals had to make speeded responses based on the first letter of the picture's name in the target language. In one condition, subjects were required to respond when the name began with a vowel and to withhold a response if it started with a consonant. Stimuli had been selected such that in half of the trials, the names in both languages necessitated the same response, whereas in the other half, responses were different for the two languages. For the bilinguals, the language in which the stimuli had to be named was changed after each block. Bilinguals showed phonological interference compared with monolingual performance, which was evident in their performance, ERPs, and fMRI patterns. Nonlanguagespecific brain areas such as the left middle prefrontal cortex were found to be crucial for the control of interference.

Adult↗