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PubMed1989

[Psychometric study of the vocabulary of older and very old adults].

Sixty-five non-demented elderly adults, born between 1895 and 1918 (mean age +/- SD: 80.0 +/- 5.4) were tested with the Vocabulary Test of the 1970 Dutch revision (30-item form) of Wechsler's Adult Intelligence Scale. Subjects were recruited from homes for the aged and were rated by the staff as free from any symptoms of dementia or other psychiatric disease. Vocabulary scores ranged from 11 to 53 (maximum score would be 60) with mean +/- SD of 31.3 +/- 10.2 Subjects who had received more formal education performed better on this test (Pearson's r = 0.59). When education was controlled for in the analysis, the correlation between age and performance was attenuated and did not reach statistical significance (Pearson's r = -0.16). Data are presented for two levels of education that can be used to put clinical data in perspective. The level of difficulty of each item of the Vocabulary scale was calculated for this sample. Twelve per cent of the subjects recorded correct answers beyond the official criterion of five consecutive failures for discontinuing the test. The effect of differences in item difficulty could be minimized by using a criterion of six consecutive failures to determine the point at which the test should be discontinued.

Aged↗
PubMed2003

Exploring the language and literacy outcomes of pediatric cochlear implant users.

OBJECTIVE: The principal goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between language and literacy (i.e., reading and writing) skills in pediatric cochlear implant users. A peripheral objective was to identify the children's skills that were in need of remediation and subsequently to provide suggestions for remedial programming. It was predicted that the robust language skills often associated with children who have cochlear implant experience would facilitate the development of literacy skills. It was further proposed that the language and literacy skills of pediatric cochlear implant users would approximate the language and literacy skills of children with normal hearing. DESIGN: Sixteen pediatric cochlear implant users' language and literacy skills were evaluated and then compared with a reference group of 16 age-matched, normal-hearing children. All 32 participants were educated in mainstream classes within the public school system in the Midwest. The "Sentence Formulation" and "Concepts and Directions" subtests of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-3 test were used to evaluate receptive and expressive language skills. Reading comprehension was evaluated with the "Paragraph Comprehension" subtest of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test. Performance measures for the writing analyses included productivity, complexity and grammaticality measures. RESULTS: Children with cochlear implants performed within 1 SD of the normal-hearing, age-matched children on measures of language comprehension, reading comprehension and writing accuracy. However, the children with cochlear implants performed significantly poorer than the children with normal hearing on the expressive "Sentence Formulation" subtest. The cochlear implant users also produced fewer words on the written narrative task than did the normal-hearing children, although there was not a significant difference between groups with respect to total words per clause. Furthermore there was a strong correlation between language performance and reading performance, as well as language performance and total words produced on the written performance measure for the children using cochlear implants. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study suggest that the language skills of pediatric cochlear implant users are related to and correlated with the development of literacy skills within these children. Consequently, the performance of the cochlear implant users, on various language and literacy measures, compared favorably to an age-matched group of children with normal hearing. There were significant differences in the ability of the cochlear implant users to correctly utilize grammatical structures such as conjunctions and correct verb forms when they were required to formulate written and oral sentences. Given this information, it would be appropriate for their educational or remedial language programs to emphasize the use and development of these structures.

Child↗
PubMed2006

Dexamethasone and long-term outcome in adults with bacterial meningitis.

OBJECTIVE: This follow-up study of the European Dexamethasone Study was designed to examine the potential harmful effect of adjunctive dexamethasone treatment on long-term neuropsychological outcome in adults with bacterial meningitis. METHODS: Neurological, audiological, and neuropsychological examinations were performed in adults who survived pneumococcal or meningococcal meningitis. RESULTS: Eighty-seven of 99 (88%) eligible patients were included in the follow-up study; 46 (53%) were treated with dexamethasone and 41 (47%) with placebo. Median time between meningitis and testing was 99 months. Neuropsychological evaluation showed no significant differences between patients treated with dexamethasone and placebo. The proportions of patients with persisting neurological sequelae or hearing loss were similar in the dexamethasone and placebo groups. The overall rate of cognitive dysfunction did not differ significantly between patients and control subjects; however, patients after pneumococcal meningitis had a higher rate of cognitive dysfunction (21 vs 6%; p = 0.05) and experienced more impairment of everyday functioning due to physical problems (p = 0.05) than those after meningococcal meningitis. INTERPRETATION: Treatment with adjunctive dexamethasone is not associated with an increased risk for long-term cognitive impairment. Adults who survive pneumococcal meningitis are at significant risk for long-term neuropsychological abnormalities.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Word production deficits in schizophrenia.

Fronto-cerebellar circuitry is implicated in word production. Data suggest that the cerebellum is involved in word search, whereas the prefrontal cortex underlies the selection of words from among competing alternatives. We explored the role of search and selection processes in word production deficits in schizophrenia patients. In Experiment 1, patients were impaired in a verb generation task under both high and low selection conditions but were more impaired in the high selection condition. In Experiment 2, when the difficulty level of search and selection conditions was equated in a word stem completion task, patients were only impaired in the search condition. Word search deficits underlie word production problems in schizophrenia, and may involve fronto-cerebellar dysfunction.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Semantic information is used by a deep dyslexic to parse compounds.

We report a case study of a 48 year-old patient, J.O., who was tested 20 years after the removal of a tumor in the left temporal-parietal region. This surgery and subsequent radiation resulted in right side paralysis and numerous language problems. Tests of J.O.'s single word reading abilities indicate that she could be classified as a deep dyslexic with over 16% of her errors in word naming having a clear semantic relationship with the target word (Coltheart, 1980). We examined her ability to read compound words aloud and following Libben (1993) we provide evidence that J.O. is a second case in which there is obligatory access of morphological constituents of compound words. These data are discussed within the context of Libben's (1998) compound word processing model.

Aphasia↗
PubMed1988

Impaired syntactic comprehension and production in Broca's aphasia: CT lesion localization and recovery patterns.

Three of 50 patients with left hemisphere stroke manifested Broca's aphasia associated with deficits in syntactic processing. CT demonstrated anterior infarcts in two patients and a posterior infarct in the third. Two years later, all three patients showed improved syntactic production, but only the patient with the posterior lesion performed significantly above change on a sentence comprehension test requiring syntactic manipulations in the absence of semantic constraints. Prospective investigations combining psycholinguistic analyses and brain imaging techniques may provide empiric data relevant to neurologic models of language and ultimately may contribute to patient prognostication and rehabilitation.

Aged↗
PubMed1996

Speech recognition in noise. Development of a computerized test and preparation of test material.

In adaptable, Finnish language, "speech in noise" test was developed using a personal computer equipped with a sound card. each of the 1000 test items stored as a separate digitized wave form file on the hard disk of a personal computer consisted of disyllabic words on one stereo track and synchronized speech noise on the other. Because only a few randomly selected words are presented in this test for SRTN (speech recognition threshold in noise or S/N ratio corresponding to 50% recognition) the selection and equalization of test material is considered to be crucial to the achievement of reproducible results in short time. Equalization of the test items (word + noise) in accordance with degree of difficulty, by adapting the noise signal to the properties of the corresponding word, and selection of 510 of the initial 1,000 recordings with the smallest SDs are described. The effect of this procedure on the test-retest reliability of testing SRTN is evaluated. Despite contrary expectations, the procedure appears to have no effect on the reliability of the speech recognition threshold in noise (SD from 1.5 to 1.7 dB).

Audiometry, Speech↗
PubMed2005

Inter-rater and test-retest reliability of the Spanish language version of the eating disorder examination interview: clinical and research implications.

BACKGROUND: To examine the inter-rater and test-retest reliability of the Spanish Language version of the Eating Disorder Examination (S-EDE) in monolingual Latina women. Established measures are needed to study Latino groups, and short-term test-retest reliability findings are needed to provide context for clinical treatment and outcome studies. METHODS: Inter-rater reliability (IRR) and short-term (5-14 days) test-retest reliability (TRR) of the S-EDE (using intraclass correlation coefficients [ICCs]) were examined in a non-clinical study group of 60 monolingual Latina women. RESULTS: IRR was excellent for objective bulimic episodes (ICC = 0.99) but was modest for subjective bulimic episodes (ICC = 0.55). TRR was good for objective bulimic episodes (ICC = 0.79) but was unacceptable for subjective bulimic episodes (ICC = 0.22). IRR and TRR kappa coefficients (0.56 and 0.37, respectively) for identifying the presence or absence of objective bulimic episodes were modest. For the S-EDE subscales, both IRR (ICCs ranged from 0.80 to 0.98) and TRR (ICCs ranged from 0.67 to 0.90) were good to excellent. CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide preliminary support for the reliability of the S-EDE for use with Latina women. The constructs of eating disorder psychopathology measured by the S-EDE subscales (restraint, eating concern, weight concern, and shape concern) and the core feature of binge eating (objective bulimic episodes) show high short-term consistency. The results for subjective bulimic episodes are consistent with previous studies that have questioned whether these eating behaviors are reliable indicators of eating disorders. Additional evaluation is needed with clinical groups.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

The effect of proportion overlap and repeated testing on primed work fragment completion.

Subjects studied a list of words (e.g., cheetah) and received an implicit word fragment completion test (complete -h-t-h). On the test, the ratio of studied to nonstudied items (proportion overlap) was 0, 25, 50, 75, or 100%. Subjects were administered the identical test twice. Proportion overlap did not affect priming in word fragment completion, on either the first or second test. Also, the completion of studied and nonstudied fragments increased over repeated tests, but priming (the studied-nonstudied rate) remained unchanged. The proportion overlap of items between study and test does not affect performance on primed word fragment completion.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Genetic and environmental influences on pupil performances.

The results presented in this paper are part of a current comparative study of genetic and environmental influences in three educational settings: Stockholm, Jerusalem and the Israeli kibbutz. We specifically wanted to investigate whether a more restrictive educational setting would decrease genetic influences. Here we report on comparisons of cognitive performance measures at several time points for twins/controls, boys/girls and within-pair similarity in MZ, DZ and controls. The tests used were the Raven Progressive Matrices, verbal, reading comprehension and arithmetic. The results show no differences between twins and controls, whilst gender differences seem to be smallest in the Stockholm sample and largest in Jerusalem. A pattern of genetic influences on cognitive performance was also clearly visible in Jerusalem. In Stockholm shared environmental influences at home and at school seemed even stronger than in the kibbutz. No consistent differences were found between tests or occasions.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Concurrent language and motor performance in bilinguals: a test of the age of acquisition hypothesis.

The objective of the present study was to test the hypothesis that the age at which a second language is acquired influences the pattern of cerebral lateralization associated with that language. Subjects who differed in terms of the age at which they had acquired their second language (English or French) were tested on a concurrent task paradigm involving motor and language performance. Hemispheric processing was inferred from the pattern of lateralized and generalized interference between the tasks. No support was found for the age-of-acquisition hypothesis. Instead, the data indicated a language-specific effect. Regardless of age of acquisition and of whether the first language was English or French, bilingual subjects showed lateralized interference effects consistent with left-hemisphere processing when reading in English and translating from French into English, but no lateralized interference when reading in French and translating from English into French. Whether this effect reflects characteristics of the two languages or the influence of social factors in subject-experimenter interaction is considered.

Adult↗