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PubMed2004

The effect of upper extremity support on upper extremity posture and muscle activity during keyboard use.

Forearm support during keyboard use has been reported to reduce neck and shoulder muscle activity and discomfort. However, the effect of forearm support on wrist posture has not been examined. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of 3 different postures during keyboard use: forearm support, wrist support and "floating". The floating posture (no support) was used as the reference condition. A wrist rest was present in all test conditions. Thirteen participants completed 20 min wordprocessing tasks in each of the test conditions. Electromyography was used to monitor neck, shoulder and forearm muscle activity. Bilateral and overhead video cameras recorded left and right wrist extension, shoulder and elbow flexion and radial and ulnar deviation. The forearm support condition resulted in significantly less ulnar deviation (p < or = 0.007), less time spent in extreme ulnar deviation (p = 0.002) and less reports of discomfort than the "floating" condition (p = 0.002). The wrist support but not the forearm support condition resulted in less trapezius and anterior deltoid muscular activity (p < 0.007). These findings indicate that typing with upper extremity support in conjunction with a wrist rest may be preferable to the "floating" posture implicit in current guidelines.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Interhemispheric communication involving multiple tasks: A study of children with dyslexia.

The study investigated whether inefficient interhemispheric communication is involved in developmental dyslexia using multiple tasks. A finger localization task, rhyming judgment task, primed lexical decision task, and a visual half-field presentation paradigm were used. Nineteen dyslexic children (mean age = 13.1 years) were compared with 26 chronological age-matched normal children. Although the dyslexic group demonstrated significantly slower and less accurate performance in all three tasks, there was no significant group difference in term of interhemispheric communication. However, priming effects demonstrated by the dyslexic group (p < .05) further indicate that their reading problems may stem from the word retrieval process from the long term memory.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Action and object processing in aphasia: from nouns and verbs to the effect of manipulability.

The processing of words and pictures representing actions and objects was tested in 21 aphasic patients and 20 healthy controls across three word production tasks: picture-naming (PN), single word reading (WR) and word repetition (WRP). Analysis 1 targeted task and lexical category (noun-verb), revealing worse performance on PN and verb items for both patients and control participants. For Analysis 2 we used data collected in a concurrent gesture norming study to re-categorize the noun-verb items along hand imagery parameters (i.e., objects that can/cannot be manipulated and actions which do/do not involve fine hand movements). Here, patients displayed relative difficulty with the 'manipulable' items, while controls displayed the opposite pattern. Therefore, whereas the noun-verb distinction resulted simply in lower verb accuracy across groups, the 'manipulability' distinction revealed a 'double-dissociation' between patients and control participants. These results carry implications for theories of embodiment, lexico-semantic dissociations, and the organization of meaning in the brain.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Differential activation of object-selective visual areas by passive viewing of pictures and words.

Functional imaging has shown that pictures of faces (N. Kanwisher, J. McDermott, M.M. Chun, The fusiform face area: a module in human extrastriate cortex specialized for face perception, J. Neurosci. 17 (1997) 4302-4311) and buildings (R. Epstein, N. Kanwisher, A cortical representation of the local visual environment, Nature 391 (1998) 598-601) activate different regions within the lateral occipital complex (LOC). To investigate effects of stimulus format on activation in these areas, we used event-related fMRI to measure brain activity during the passive viewing of pictures showing buildings and faces, and of words identifying these pictures. Consistent with earlier findings, pictures of faces activated bilateral regions in the lateral fusiform gyri, whereas pictures of buildings activated bilateral regions in the parahippocampal gyri. Analyzing the activation elicited by visually presenting the written names of the pictures, however, we did not find an effect of word meaning on the fMRI signal change in these areas: fMRI signal changes for the names of faces and the names of buildings did not differ in any of the areas selectively activated by the corresponding pictures. In general, both word conditions and non-preferred picture conditions elicited similar signal amplitudes. While presentation of words did not lead to strong activation in object-specific areas, activation for words of both categories was found in the left occipito-temporal cortex, close to the location which has tentatively been called 'visual word form area' (L. Cohen, S. Dehaene, L. Naccache, S. Lehéricy, G. Dehaene-Lambertz, et al., The visual word form are: spatial and temporal characterization of an initial stage of reading in normal subjects and posterior split-brain patients, Brain 123 (2000) 291-307), revealing that words were processed effectively during the experiment. Taken together, these results show that names of pictures do not automatically activate the corresponding object-selective areas.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Musical structure modulates semantic priming in vocal music.

It has been shown that harmonic structure may influence the processing of phonemes whatever the extent of participants' musical expertise [Bigand, E., Tillmann, B., Poulin, B., D'Adamo, D. A., & Madurell, F. (2001). The effect of harmonic context on phoneme monitoring in vocal music. Cognition, 81, B11-B20]. The present study goes a step further by investigating how musical harmony may potentially interfere with the processing of words in vocal music. Eight-chord sung sentences were presented, their last word being either semantically related (La girafe a un tres grand cou, The giraffe has a very long neck) or unrelated to the previous linguistic context (La girafe a un tres grand pied, The giraffe has a very long foot). The target word was sung on a chord that acted either as a referential tonic chord or as a congruent but less referential subdominant chord. Participants performed a lexical decision task on the target word. A significant interaction was observed between semantic and harmonic relatedness suggesting that music modulates semantic priming in vocal music. Following Jones' dynamic attention theory, we argue that music can modulate semantic priming in vocal music, by modifying the allocation of attentional resource necessary for linguistic computation.

Humans↗
PubMed2005

A comparison of symptomatic and asymptomatic office workers performing monotonous keyboard work--1: neck and shoulder muscle recruitment patterns.

Work-related neck and upper limb disorders (WRNULD) are common problems among office workers who use computers intensively and maintain prolonged static postures. These disorders have often been attributed to result from sustained muscle activity in the neck-shoulder musculature. The present study examined whether symptomatic subjects exhibited the same muscle activity patterns as asymptomatic controls when they performed a prolonged computer task under the same conditions. Surface electromyography (EMG) of four major neck-shoulder muscles were compared between a Case Group (n=23) and a Control Group (n=20) of female office workers. The Case Group had higher activity in the right upper trapezius (UT) while the Control Group had more symmetrical muscle activity between left and right UT. The Case subjects could also be differentiated into "High Discomfort" and "Low Discomfort" sub-groups based on their discomfort scores. The High Discomfort Group had significantly higher right UT activity compared to the Low Discomfort and Control Groups. Results suggested that symptomatic individuals had altered muscle recruitment patterns that persisted throughout the sustained occupational task, while discomfort increased with time-at-task. These findings indicate that altered muscle recruitment patterns observed in the symptomatic subjects preceded the onset of task discomfort, and this finding may have important implications for the etiology of WRNULD.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

An electrophysiological (ERP) component, the recognition potential, in the assessment of brain semantic networks in patients with schizophrenia.

Abnormal activation of semantic networks may be the underlying basis for thought disorder (ThD) in patients with schizophrenia. However, whether this abnormality consists of increased or decreased activation is unclear. Previous behavioral and electrophysiological (N400) data have failed to yield consistent evidence for clarifying this hypothesis. One of the event-related potentials (ERP) components (the recognition potential, RP), presumably reflecting activation of specific semantic networks involved in ThD, has not been used to studies of schizophrenia, and may add additional information to support or refute this hypothesis. In an initial experiment, RP amplitude was reduced in schizophrenic patients, but particularly in those with ThD. In a second experiment, in addition to reduced overall RP amplitude, concrete words were shown to have higher amplitudes than abstract words in both patients and controls, supporting a relative integrity of the lexicon in ThD patients. RP reduction suggests that a fewer number of networks' elements are activated when an incoming word is processed, thus supporting hypoactivation of the semantic networks as the basis for ThD.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Neurophysiological markers of early language acquisition: from syllables to sentences.

Recently, there have been several reports of the neurophysiological correlates of language acquisition. These indicate that the infant's brain is able to discriminate different phonemes within the first 2 months of life, that knowledge about stress patterns and phonotactic rules is established between 5-12 months, and that phonotactic knowledge begins to interact with lexical-semantic processes between 12-14 months. Electrophysiological markers for lexical-semantic processes indicate that semantic processing of words in picture contexts is present at 14 months and for words in sentential contexts around 30 months. At 32 months, children demonstrate an adult-like electrophysiological response pattern to syntactic violations. The similarities between the brain response patterns observed in children and adults support the view that language develops in a continuous manner.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Control of a trackball by the chin for communication applications, with and without neck movements.

The overall aim was to evaluate whether a trackball could be used for communication by people who cannot speak due to severe motor impairment. The precision of trackball control by isolated jaw movements or a combination of jaw and head movements was evaluated in 18 healthy physical-education students, free of overt symptoms of craniomandibular dysfunction. The participants were asked to operate a trackball using the chin to type a standard text of four short sentences. There were two experimental situations: nine participants performed the typewriting task with their heads fixed; the other nine performed this task with free head movements. Trackball operation moved to the cursor over an alphabetical keyboard displayed on a computer screen and character selection was made by depression of the left-hand click button using the chin. Participants were asked to perform the task as quickly and accurately as possible. Result showed that those with free head movement typed the test significantly faster than those restricted to using only their jaw muscles. The mean time per character selection was 2.4 s (SD 0.3) for the group with free head movement and 2.7 s (SD 0.3) for the group using only jaw muscles. Group scores were not significantly different with regard to accuracy. It is suggested that a chin-operated trackball could be used for communication applications both with and without neck movements.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

The role of prosodic boundaries in the resolution of lexical embedding in speech comprehension.

Participants' eye movements were monitored as they heard sentences and saw four pictured objects on a computer screen. Participants were instructed to click on the object mentioned in the sentence. There were more transitory fixations to pictures representing monosyllabic words (e.g. ham) when the first syllable of the target word (e.g. hamster) had been replaced by a recording of the monosyllabic word than when it came from a different recording of the target word. This demonstrates that a phonemically identical sequence can contain cues that modulate its lexical interpretation. This effect was governed by the duration of the sequence, rather than by its origin (i.e. which type of word it came from). The longer the sequence, the more monosyllabic-word interpretations it generated. We argue that cues to lexical-embedding disambiguation, such as segmental lengthening, result from the realization of a prosodic boundary that often but not always follows monosyllabic words, and that lexical candidates whose word boundaries are aligned with prosodic boundaries are favored in the word-recognition process.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

The relationship between oral spelling and phonological breakdown in a conduction aphasic.

Unsolicited oral spelling has been observed in conduction aphasics during word-production difficulty (Kohn, 1985), but has never been examined systematically. In the present study, the possible role of oral spelling in the word-production process of a conduction aphasic (JM) is explored. Oral spelling occurred much more frequently during picture naming than during either oral reading or repetition, and it seemed to be operating as a strategy to lessen the phonemic output deficit often observed in this syndrome.

Aphasia, Broca↗
PubMed1976

The "tip-of-the-tongue" phenomenon in aphasia.

Forty-two male aphasics, classified as Broc's, Wernicke's, anomic, and conduction, were examined for their ability to partially retrieve acoustic features of words they could not provide in a confrontation naming task (the "tip-of-the-tongue" phenomenon). The results indicated that conduction aphasics were superior to Wernicke's and anomic asphasics in their ability to identify both the first letter and the syllabic length of the words they could not name. Since the aphasic groups were comparable in their naming difficulty, the findings could not be attributed to degree of wordfinding impairment. The difference between groups that were obtained using the TOT technique are discussed with regard to differences in the word finding process.

Aphasia↗
PubMed1976

Phonemic behavior of aphasic subjects without dysarthria or apraxia of speech.

Thirty adult aphasic subjects without apraxia of speech or dysarthria were tested for their ability to produce phonemes in single test words and in spontaneous contextual speech. Results indicated that 75% of the total phonemic errors were due to a whole-word phenomenon apparently associated with faulty processing of the word rather than faulty production of the phoneme. True phonemic errors comprised 25% of the total errors or about 2% of all responses. Phoneme substitutions were by far the most frequent error (61%). Of the 30 subjects, 28 made no phonemic errors in spontaneous contextual speech. Aphasic behavior is not characterized by significant breakdown of articulatory performance. Observed patterns of error do not clearly support a phonemic regression hypothesis.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Modeling of time-dependent force response of fingertip to dynamic loading.

An extended exposure to repeated loading on fingertip has been associated to many vascular, sensorineural, and musculoskeletal disorders in the fingers, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, hand-arm vibration syndrome, and flexor tenosynovitis. A better understanding of the pathomechanics of these sensorineural and vascular diseases in fingers requires a formulation of a biomechanical model of the fingertips and analyses to predict the mechanical responses of the soft tissues to dynamic loading. In the present study, a model based on finite element techniques has been developed to simulate the mechanical responses of the fingertips to dynamic loading. The proposed model is two-dimensional and incorporates the essential anatomical structures of a finger: skin, subcutaneous tissue, bone, and nail. The skin tissue is assumed to be hyperelastic and viscoelastic. The subcutaneous tissue was considered to be a nonlinear, biphasic material composed of a hyperelastic solid and an invicid fluid, while its hydraulic permeability was considered to be deformation dependent. Two series of numerical tests were performed using the proposed finger tip model to: (a) simulate the responses of the fingertip to repeated loading, where the contact plate was assumed to be fixed, and the bone within the fingertip was subjected to a prescribed sinusoidal displacement in vertical direction; (b) simulate the force response of the fingertip in a single keystroke, where the keyboard was composed of a hard plastic keycap, a rigid support block, and a nonlinear spring. The time-dependent behavior of the fingertip under dynamic loading was derived. The model predictions of the time-histories of force response of the fingertip and the phenomenon of fingertip separation from the contacting plate during cyclic loading agree well with the reported experimental observations.

Bone and Bones↗
PubMed1997

Lexical and semantic processing in the absence of word reading: evidence from neglect dyslexia.

Nine patients with left-sided neglect and nine matched control patients performed three tasks on horizontal (either normal or mirror-reversed) letter strings. The tasks were: reading aloud, making a lexical decision (word vs non-word), and making a semantic decision (living vs non-living item). Relative to controls, neglect patients performed very poorly in the reading task, whereas they performed nearly normally in the lexical and semantic tasks. This was considered to be a dissociation between direct tasks, rather than a dissociation between explicit and implicit knowledge. The explanation offered for the dissociation is in terms of both a dual-route model for reading aloud and a degraded representation of the letter string.

Aged↗
PubMed2003

Reading disorders in children.

Reading difficulties are a complex set of disorders. Current research indicates that these disorders are not caused by vision abnormalities. Treatment of these disorders requires a multidisciplinary approach involving educators, psychologists, and physicians. Parents, physicians, and school officials should understand that there are no quick cures for these children.

Brain↗
PubMed1995

Response rates to six recruitment mailing formats and two messages about a nutrition program for women 50-79 years old.

Recruiting participants for large prevention trials is time consuming and costly. In order to test various recruitment techniques, we conducted two studies of response rates to recruitment mailings for the Women's Health Trial. The potential participants, 50- to 79-year-old women, were requested to return an enclosed postcard to learn more about the trial. In the first study, we sent at random either a short or a long message to a group of University of Miami personnel (N = 862) and a Dade County cohort (N = 2964). More university women responded to the short message than to the long message (22.4% vs 16.4%, p = 0.024). Similarly, more of the Dade County cohort replied to the short message than to the long one (12.1% vs 9.6%, p = 0.027). The long message listed details of the intervention (e.g., modifying recipes) that some women may have used to decide they were not interested in participating. In the second study, we examined response rates to two different ways of addressing the mailing, i.e., handwritten envelopes and machine-printed labels; we also evaluated three methods for delivering the short message: (1) formal invitation, (2) business letter with an inside name and address of the recipient, and (3) business letter without the recipient's name and address. Response rates were similar between the methods of addressing envelopes and among the three vehicles for the message, suggesting that the least costly method of mailing should be used.

Aged↗