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At least 973 records · Page 54Linked to original sources
PubMed1983

Facet theory applied to the construction and validation of the Aachen Aphasia Test.

The linguistic performance of 120 aphasic patients of the four standard syndromes assessed by the Aachen Aphasia Test (AAT) is analyzed by a nonmetric (ordinal) multidimensional scaling procedure (Smallest Space Analysis, SSA1). The linguistic structure of the test items is characterized within the framework of L. Guttman's facet theory. Three systematic components (facets) are discerned: linguistic modality, unit, and regularity. Properties of the facets as well as their relations are assessed and tested empirically by analyzing the interrelations among different items or sets of items. The spatial configurations obtained by the scaling procedure fit only partially the expectations derived from the facet-theory model. The modality facet was found to have a strong overriding influence on the aphasic test performance. The facets unit and regularity were only found for the most rigorously designed subtests. Written Language and Comprehension. The results suggest the introduction of a new combined facet linguistic complexity which reflects the dependency of the facets regularity and unit.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Language control in the bilingual brain.

How does the bilingual brain distinguish and control which language is in use? Previous functional imaging experiments have not been able to answer this question because proficient bilinguals activate the same brain regions irrespective of the language being tested. Here, we reveal that neuronal responses within the left caudate are sensitive to changes in the language or the meaning of words. By demonstrating this effect in populations of German-English and Japanese-English bilinguals, we suggest that the left caudate plays a universal role in monitoring and controlling the language in use.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Speech therapy for children with cleft lips and palates. I. Basic linguistic considerations].

According to several basic principals of hermeneutic theory (theory of understanding natural languages) we describe the major fields of language acquisition in which anomalies of CPL children often can be found. Besides phonation and articulation there are morphological, psychomotoric, onomatopoetic, and isotopic disorders. Also a delay of understanding by listening is often observed. Additionally some cofactors in psychodynamics of the family have to be respected. Defense mechanisms, somatization, and social symptomatization are described. Some examples from statistics and experimental psycholinguistics show, that a diagnosis of early language acquisition can't be found by comparing means (naive model of diagnosis). We show how to find out the multiple covariance of early language acquisition tests with the control groups. A final case study shows a typical process of CLP children's language acquisition.

Child↗
PubMed1994

Early cognitive impairment in multiple sclerosis detected by a screening with a vocabulary-test.

Vocabulary deficits in multiple sclerosis patients do not fit to the concept of subcortical dementia usually applied to describe cognitive impairment in multiple sclerosis. In a screening of young patients with a vocabulary test a significant correlation was found between the age at the onset of symptoms and the score in this test. This may lead to an explanation of vocabulary deficits recently described as results of a slowed language acquisition caused by subcortical lesions in early multiple sclerosis.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

Hypothesis-testing and nonlinguistic symbolic abilities in language-impaired children.

This study sought to clarify further the cognitive abilities of language-impaired children by examining their hypothesis-testing and nonlinguistic symbolic abilities. A discrimination learning task and a concept formation task were used to measure hypothesis-testing abilities, and a haptic (touch) recognition task was used to assess nonlinguistic symbolic abilities. Subjects were 10 language-impaired and 10 language-normal children matched for performance Mental Age. Measures of expressive and receptive language were also obtained from each child. The language-impaired children were found to perform significantly poorer than their MA controls on the haptic recognition task and on a portion of the discrimination learning task. No differences were found between the two groups' concept formation abilities. Correlational analyses revealed a particularly strong positive relationship between performance on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and the haptic recognition tasks. It was speculated that this relationship was motivated by the symbolic demands of these tasks. One implication of this speculation is that a symbolic representational deficit might better explain the receptive language deficit than the expressive one.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1980

The prevalence, stability and significance of developmental language delay in preschool children.

A sample of 937 children in Dunedin, New Zealand, was assessed at ages three and five years in order to estimate the nature, prevalence, stability and significance of developmental language delays in three-year-olds. Assessments included language development, intelligence, and fine and gross motor-co-ordination. Detailed results are given which described three types of language delay at age three: delayed verbal comprehension only, delayed verbal expression only, and delayed development in both aspects of language. Follow-up testing at age five indicated that the specific language delays were not highly stable, whereas delays in both aspects were highly stable. A large proportion of the latter children gained very low scores on the measures at age five, and they accounted for 84 per cent of all children with very low intelligence. The implications of the results for a screening programme to identify three-year-old children at high risk of later developmental delays are considered.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Characterization of the linguistic profile of a family with Perisylvian Syndrome].

BACKGROUND: Perisylvian syndrome refers to a variety of clinical manifestations associated to lesions in the perisylvian or opercular regions. Polymicrogyria is the most common structural malformation found. The syndrome may be inherited and the clinical spectrum includes subtle language disturbances on one end and more severe characteristics such as prominent pseudobulbar signs and refractory epilepsy on the other end. Other studies have already associated perisylvian polymicrogyria with developmental language disorders or specific language impairment. AIM: to describe the language deficits of four members of a family with Perisylvian Syndrome, and to correlate these deficits to neuroimaging data. METHOD: The patients underwent neuroimaging investigation, psychological assessment using the Weschler Intelligence Scales, and specific speech-language evaluation. The following tests were used for the assessment of vocabulary, phonology, syntax, pragmatics, reading and writing: Thematical Pictures of Yavas, ABFW-Child Language Test, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), and other specific protocols. RESULTS: Magnetic resonance imaging revealed perisylvian polymicrogyria in all of the subjects, with varied locations and extensions. Speech-language assessment indicated significant oral and written language deficits in all of the subjects. CONCLUSION: The obtained data indicate that language impairment can co-exist with reading deficits in members of the same family. Neuroimaging findings reveal cortical alterations that are associated to specific language impairments within the spectrum of the Perisylvian Syndrome. Another important aspect evidenced by this study is the similarities in the language profiles of siblings and mother, suggesting that a variety of linguistic manifestations exist within the spectrum of the syndrome. Perisylvian polymicrogyria can be one of the neurobiological malformations involved in the manifestation of these deficits.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1999

Functional roles of Broca's area and SMG: evidence from cortical stimulation mapping in a deaf signer.

The importance of the left hemisphere in language function has been firmly established and current work strives to understand regional specializations within the perisylvian language areas. This paper reports a case study of a deaf user of American Sign Language undergoing an awake cortical stimulation mapping procedure. Patterns of sign errors accompanying electrical stimulation of Broca's area and the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) are reported. Our findings show Broca's area to be involved in the motor execution of sign language. These data demonstrate that the linguistic specificity of Broca's area is not limited to speech behavior. In addition, unusual semantic-phonological errors were observed with stimulation to the SMG; these data may implicate the SMG in the binding of linguistic features in the service of language production. Taken together, these findings provide important insight into the linguistic specificity of Broca's area and the functional role of the supramarginal gyrus in language processing.

Anomia↗
PubMed1986

Cerebral lateralization and handedness and their effects on verbal and spatial reasoning.

Consistent and inconsistent left- and right-handed male subjects completed four tests each of verbal and spatial reasoning. They also participated in tachistoscopic measures of verbal and spatial lateralization--consonant-vowel-consonant recognition and dot enumeration, respectively. The consistent handedness groups displayed significantly more lateralized patterns of cerebral organization that the inconsistent handedness groups. Increased lateralization was associated with superior performance on measures of spatial reasoning, but not on measures of verbal reasoning. Results are interpreted in terms of a competition hypothesis. No differences were found between the handedness groups on either the verbal or spatial reasoning tests.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1994

Decreased perceptual sensitivity to emotion-evoking stimuli in depression.

We measured two aspects of emotional response in depressed patients, as a preliminary study of the potential usefulness of such measures for elucidating pathophysiological mechanisms. First we used electromyography to measure the automatic mimicry on an individual's own face of facial displays of emotion observed on the faces of others. Next we used the fused dichotic listening paradigm to measure selective perception of both positive and negative emotion-related words as opposed to neutral words. Patients failed to show the normal facial mimicry of both positive and negative facial displays, despite normal cognitive processing of the stimuli. They also heard significantly fewer positive and negative words on the dichotic tests than did healthy controls. This suggests that depressed patients are hyposensitive to emotion-related stimuli in general.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Assessing pragmatic skills in elicited production.

In developing a test of pragmatic skills for children ages 4 to 9 years, we focused on a number of functional language skills that are important for children's success in early schooling and for the development of fluent reading and writing. They included (1) wh-question asking, (2) communicative role taking, (3) linking events in a cohesive narrative, and (4) articulating the mental states of the characters in a story. All of the proposed items provide specific referential support and pragmatic motivation for the forms and content to be produced by the child. The pictured materials and elicitation prompts constrain the range of appropriate utterances, so the children's productions are more easily scored than an open-ended spontaneous speech sample. All tasks described show a clear developmental trend, a clear separation between the performance of typically developing and language-impaired children, and no performance differences between African American English- and Mainstream American English-speaking children.

Child↗
PubMed1998

Neuropsychological function in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma after radiotherapy.

A neuropsychological test battery was administered to 27 adult patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) who had received radiotherapy, 28 adult patients with NPC awaiting radiotherapy, and 35 normal adult controls. The 27 patients with radiotherapy had a conventional dosage, 220 cGy per fraction, or less. The median interval between the completion of radiotherapy and the evaluation of neuropsychological function was 1.7 years. Groups were matched for age and educational level. The results showed that our NPC group with radiotherapy had neuropsychological impairments in the areas of auditory attention/concentration, immediate and delayed verbal recall and immediate visual recall, and recent memory, higher-order visuospatial abilities, and bimanual dexterity. Thus neuropsychological dysfunction may occur in patients with NPC within the first 2 years after radiotherapy.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Differential impairment of person-specific knowledge in a patient with semantic dementia.

We report the case of ST, a 61-year-old gentleman of superior intelligence, who presented with a five-year history of slowly progressive word finding difficulty for proper names. MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) showed marked atrophy in the left anterior temporal lobe and SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) demonstrated hypoperfusion in the left anterior and inferior temporal region. A detailed behavioral analysis of the integrity of his semantic system revealed naming deficits for both proper and common names. ST also showed severe impairments in person-specific semantic knowledge, but preservation of knowledge for famous places and common objects. ST's semantic knowledge deficit for people emerged whether he was tested with the faces or the names of famous individuals. Variables that affect name retrieval, such as familiarity, age of acquisition, and frequency of concept encounter, do not account for the selective impairment of person-specific knowledge evidenced by ST. Qualitative differences between the nature of knowledge representations for people and for common objects may underlie this effect. Disruptions in left temporal regions associated with semantic processing may be sufficient to produce a selective deficit in person-specific knowledge.

Attention↗
PubMed1987

Issues surrounding psychological testing of minority patients.

Psychological testing of minority patients is a frequently debated issue, not only in the scientific literature, but in the mass media, the courts, and legislative bodies. A historical overview of the controversy illustrates past abuses in such testing, but a closer look at methodological issues concerning cognitive-intellectual tests and objective personality assessment illustrates that the tests can be appropriately used with minority patients. Suggestions for appropriate use, backed by case illustrations, include gaining an understanding of a patient's cultural background; using interpreters and culture-appropriate reinforcers; supplementing formal testing with informal procedures; making sure patients understand required tasks; and taking into account ethnicity and social class during interpretation of results.

Cultural Characteristics↗