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PubMedDate not supplied

Standardized test performance of children with a history of prenatal exposure to multiple drugs/cocaine.

Twenty-four children, age 14 to 50 months, with a history of prenatal exposure to multiple drugs including cocaine, were matched by adjusted birth age and sex to 24 children with no history of drug exposure. All children had been living in stable, drug-free environments from at least the age of 11 months. Tests administered included the Sequenced Inventory of Communicative Development-Revised (SICD), the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R). Results indicated significant differences between groups and genders on the SICD when age was covaried and between groups on the Bayley. No groups or genders differed on the PPVT-R. Many (45.8%) of the children in the drug-exposed group qualified for intervention services according to Washington state criteria. Subject characteristics, other than age, did not play a significant role in the findings of group differences. It is concluded that, due to the cumulative effects of prenatal history, these children should be considered at risk for language delay.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed1998

Impairment of dentato-thalamo-cortical pathway in autistic men: language activation data from positron emission tomography.

Recent evidence suggests disturbances of serotonin synthesis affecting the dentato-thalamo-cortical pathway in autistic boys. We studied possible effects of such disturbances on brain activations for language in autistic adults. Four autistic and five normal men were studied while listening to, repeating, and generating sentences, using [15(O)]-water positron emission tomography (PET). Activation in the right dentate nucleus and in the left frontal area 46 was reduced during verbal auditory and expressive language and enhanced during motor speech functions in the autism as compared to the control group. The thalamus showed group differences concordant with area 46 for expressive language. The results may indicate atypical functional specialization of the dentato-thalamo-cortical pathway and are compatible with a model of region-specific biochemical disturbances in the developing autistic brain.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Hierarchical linear modeling of California Verbal Learning Test--Children's Version learning curve characteristics following childhood traumatic head injury.

California Verbal Learning Test-Children's Version (CVLT-C) indices have been shown to be sensitive to the neurocognitive effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI). The effects of TBI on the learning process were examined with a growth curve analysis of CVLT-C raw scores across the 5 learning trials. The sample with history of TBI comprised 86 children, ages 6-16 years, at a mean of 10.0 (SD=19.5) months postinjury; 37.2% had severe injury, 27.9% moderate, and 34.9% mild. The best-fit model for verbal learning was with a quadratic function. Greater TBI severity was associated with lower rate of acquisition and more gradual deceleration in the rate of acquisition. Intelligence test index scores, previously shown to be sensitive to severity of TBI, were positively correlated with rate of acquisition. Results provide evidence that the CVLT-C learning slope is not a simple linear function and further support for specific effects of TBI on verbal learning.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Standardized assessment of phonological awareness skills in low-income African American first graders.

Accurate identification of students with poor phonological awareness skills is important to providing appropriate reading instruction. This is particularly true for segments of the population, such as African American students, who have a history of reading failure. The purpose of this study was to examine the performance of a group of African American first-grade students from low-income families on a standardized test of phonological awareness. Fifty-six African American first graders were given the Test of Phonological Awareness (TOPA; J. K. Torgesen and B. R. Bryant, 1994). Mean student performance on the TOPA was significantly below expected norms and negatively skewed. However, students' mean performance on a test of basic reading skills indicated performance within normal limits. Outcomes are discussed relative to the validity and predictive power of standardized phonological assessment instruments, in this case, the TOPA, for use with African American students and the possible influence of dialect on performance.

Black or African American↗

PubMed1992

Improving screening for dementia in the elderly using, Mini-Mental State Examination subscores, Benton's Visual Retention Test, and Isaacs' Set Test.

The Mini-Mental State Examination score is often used as a screening test for dementia. We studied its properties for a population of French community residents, using a sample of 2,792 randomly selected subjects in Gironde, France. When the traditional cutoff point 23-24 was used, we observed a sensitivity of 1.0 and a specificity of 0.77. We sought to increase the specificity of the test, while keeping sensitivity at 1.0, with the use of logistic regression analysis. We found (1) a specificity of 0.81 when "recall three objects" and "orientation to time" were added to the Mini-Mental State Examination score; (2) a specificity of 0.90 when Benton's Visual Retention Tests and Isaacs' Set Test of Verbal Fluency were added to the Mini-Mental State Examination score and subscores; and (3) no improvement in specificity when age and educational level were included in the analyses.

Age Factors↗

PubMed2002

Diagnostics of phonological lexical processing: pseudohomophone naming advantages, disadvantages, and base-word frequency effects.

Phonological lexical access has been investigated by examining both a pseudohomophone (e.g., brane) base-word frequency effect and a pseudohomophone advantage over pronounceable nonwords (e.g., frane) in a single mixed block of naming trials. With a new set of pseudohomophones and non-words presented in a mixed block, we replicated the standard finding in the naming literature: no reliable base-word frequency effect, and apseudohomophone advantage. However, for this and two of three other sets of stimuli--those of McCann and Besner (1987), Seidenberg, Petersen, MacDonald, and Plaut (1996), and Herdman, LeFevre, and Greenham (1996), respectively--reliable effects of base-word frequency on pseudohomophone naming latency were found when pseudohomophones were presented in pure blocks prior to nonwords. Three of the four stimulus sets tested produced a pseudohomophone naming disadvantage when pseudohomophones were presented prior to nonwords. When nonwords were presented first, these effects were diminished. A strategy-based scaling account of the data is argued to provide a better explanation of the data than is the criterion-homogenization theory (Lupker, Brown, & Colombo, 1997).

Humans↗

PubMed1994

The effect of retrieval enactment on recall of subject-performed tasks and verbal tasks.

The effect of retrieval enactment on memory for nouns (objects) or verbal phrases describing simple actions (e.g., "lift the box") was addressed in two experiments. In Experiment 1, the type of object involved in the actions was manipulated, with three different types of object being used (body parts, laboratory-related objects, and external objects). In Experiment 2, the integration between the verb-noun pairs was manipulated (well-integrated vs. poorly integrated). Results from both experiments showed that whereas encoding enactment (motor encoding and verbal test) substantially improved the memory performance compared with a verbal condition (verbal encoding and verbal test), retrieval enactment (verbal encoding and motor test) had no major impact on the number of recalled nouns or phrases. Moreover, there was no additional effect of dual enactment (motor encoding and motor test). The overall pattern of the results suggests that there is a fundamental difference between motor processing at encoding and motor processing at retrieval, and the lack of encoding specificity advantage for the motor modality contradicts the view that encoding enactment of verbal commands results in storage of motor representations.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Linguistic and cognitive ability of adults with Down syndrome and mental retardation of unknown etiology.

The linguistic and cognitive abilities of adults with Down syndrome were compared to those of adults with mental retardation of unknown etiology matched for mental and chronological age. Linguistic data consisted of verbal responses to an elicitation procedure that tested for forty-three different linguistic constructions. Cognitive tests measured simultaneous, successive, auditory, and visual processing. The adults with Down syndrome exhibited significantly poorer linguistic ability than the adults with mental retardation of unknown etiology. Though the two groups exhibited different cognitive profiles, differences in cognitive abilities could not account for the difference in linguistic ability.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1986

Viewing conditions and hemisphere asymmetry for the lexical decision.

Exposure duration, retinal eccentricity and stimulus size were systematically varied to assess the contribution of viewing conditions to the lexical decision asymmetry. Contrary to Sergent's hypothesis (Psychol. Bull. 93, 481-512), the RVF advantage was unaltered over the range of conditions tested. This suggests that hemisphere differences in the ability to extract information from degraded signals cannot account for the asymmetry in this task. The results are compatible with the view that the lexical decision asymmetry arises from a relatively late stage of processing in which the information is no longer represented in sensory form.

Functional Laterality↗

PubMed2005

Disproportionate impairment in semantic verbal fluency in schizophrenia: differential deficit in clustering.

The purpose of the current study was to investigate whether patients with schizophrenia present disproportionate impairment in semantic, relative to phonemic, fluency. Specifically, we explored whether this impairment could be explained by differential deficits in clustering or switching strategies. The Greek Verbal Fluency Test was administered to 119 patients with schizophrenia and 150 age-, education-, and gender-matched healthy controls. We calculated the total number of words generated, the number of cluster related words, and the number of switches on the semantic and phonological fluency tasks separately. Patients with schizophrenia generated fewer total words, cluster related words and switches than healthy controls on both fluency tasks. When controlling for the total number of words produced, however, the differences between the two groups in the number of cluster related words and switches disappeared. We found a disproportionate impairment in semantic, compared with phonemic, fluency in schizophrenia for total word production and the number of cluster related words, but not for the number of switches. In conclusion, patients with schizophrenia used the same strategies as healthy controls to perform on a word fluency test, but they used them less effectively. Disproportionate impairment in semantic fluency in schizophrenia resulted from a differential deficit only in clustering. Therefore, disproportionately impaired category fluency in schizophrenia may be primarily due to disorganization and not to inefficient access to and retrieval from semantic store.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disord↗

PubMed1998

Phonological deterioration in adults with an acquired severe hearing impairment.

The study examined the phonological processing skills in a group of adults who have acquired a severe hearing loss in adult life. These severely hearing-impaired individuals performed at a significantly lower level on the rhyme judgement tasks and the letter span task, but on a par with the control group on other cognitive tests. A correlation analysis showed that duration of hearing loss is negatively related to performance on the rhyme judgement tasks and letter span task. The results indicate that the phonological processing skills in individuals who have acquired a severe hearing loss in adult life deteriorates. The results are discussed with respect to theoretical and clinical implications.

Adult↗

PubMed1998

Phonetically cued word-fluency, gender differences and aging: a reappraisal.

Five-hundred and three normal subjects were given a phonetically cued word-fluency task in order to investigate the controversial issue of the influence of gender and aging on this task. Subjects were requested to say in one minute all the words that occurred to them, beginning with a given letter (F, P and L). Besides the expected significance of education, we observed a female advantage, but not a significant decline in the performance with aging. However, the slope of the line expressing word fluency as a function of age was different between females and males, indicating a greater sensitivity to aging for males. We provide inner and outer tolerance limits for this test in the normal population and give a formula useful for adjusting the raw scores on the basis of gender and education. The results are discussed with reference to previous findings and some hypotheses about the origins of the female advantage in PWF.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Toddlers recognize verbs in novel situations and sentences.

Toddlers' (MA=22 and 27 months) ability to extend newly taught verbs to new situational and sentential contexts was investigated. Children were interactively taught two novel verbs, presented in only the transitive frame (e.g. You're lorping the ball), in a playroom setting. They then viewed the verb actions presented on side-by-side monitors and were asked to distinguish the verbs in three test frames (transitive, intransitive, neutral (e.g. lorping)). Both groups demonstrated learning of the verbs in the new situation and generalized the verbs to the intransitive sentence frame, but neither generalized reliably to the neutral frame. We conclude that even 22-month-olds demonstrate considerable context independence in their verb representations.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed1989

Comparison of SCAN results with other auditory and language measures in a clinical population.

This study was conducted to compare results of SCAN: A Screening Test for Auditory Processing Disorders with other central auditory and language tests. The SCAN, Staggered Spondee Word test (SSW), Competing Sentence test, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), and the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Revised (CELF-R) were administered to 155 children between the ages of 6 and 15 years. All subjects were referred for possible auditory or language processing disorders. Results showed significant correlations between the SCAN, SSW, and Competing Sentence test results except for Filtered Word and Auditory Figure Ground subtests of SCAN that were not significantly correlated with the Competing Sentence Test. Significant correlations also existed between SCAN and the PPVT, but there were no significant correlations between SCAN and the CELF-R subtests. Patterns of responses according to histories of Attention Deficit Disorders were also found.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1996

An examination of impaired acoustic-phonetic processing in aphasia.

This research examines the nature of acoustic-phonetic impairments found in aphasia, and the reliability of patient performance on phoneme discrimination and identification tasks. Aphasic patients were tested on three phoneme discrimination tasks examining their ability to discriminate items on the basis of contrasts in sonorance, manner, place, or voicing using both spoken and synthetic stimuli. One of these tests involving the discrimination of spoken, one-syllable items was given to patients on three occasions over the course of 1 year to examine short- and long-term test reliability. In addition to these measures, patients were tested on three phoneme identification tasks using stimulus items drawn from the discrimination tests. The results of these tests show that aphasic patients may display stable patterns of performance on these measures over time and between tests. Furthermore, these findings suggest that discriminations of synthetic speech do not necessarily reflect patients' ability to discriminate spoken speech tokens. These results are interpreted as evidence that aphasics display stable, discrete impairments in acoustic-phonetic processing, and that these deficits may be measured reliably using phoneme discrimination and identification tasks using natural speech.

Adult↗

PubMed1993

An experimental study of the relationship between thoughts and eating behaviour in bulimia nervosa.

This study tested the hypothesis that cognitive disturbance has a causal role in the maintenance of disturbed eating in bulimia nervosa. Thoughts about eating, weight and shape were activated in one group of patients with bulimia nervosa (the experimental group) but not in another (the control group). There was an increase in negative self-statements in the experimental group following the experimental manipulation. Food consumption was then measured in a taste test. As predicted, the experimental group ate less in the short term than the control group. Contrary to expectations, they did not subsequently report more objective bulimic episodes as a consequence of this decreased food intake. They did, however, report significantly fewer subjective bulimic episodes.

Adult↗

PubMed2007

Characteristics of speech errors produced by children with and without delayed phonological awareness skills.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the types of speech errors that are produced by children with speech-sound disorders and the children's phonological awareness skills during their prekindergarten and kindergarten years. METHOD: Fifty-eight children with speech-sound disorders were assessed during the spring of their prekindergarten year and then again at the end of their kindergarten year. The children's responses on the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation (R. Goldman & M. Fristoe, 2000) were described in terms of match ratios for the features of each target sound and the type of error produced. Match ratios and error type frequencies were then examined as a function of the child's performance on a test of phonological awareness. RESULTS: Lower match ratios for +distributed and higher frequencies of typical syllable structure errors and atypical segment errors were associated with poorer phonological awareness test performance. However, no aspect of the children's error patterns proved to be a reliable indicator of which individual child would pass or fail the test. The best predictor of test performance at the end of the kindergarten year was test performance 1 year earlier. Children who achieved age-appropriate articulation skills by the end of kindergarten also achieved age-appropriate phonological awareness skills. CONCLUSION: Children who enter kindergarten with delayed articulation skills should be monitored to ensure age-appropriate acquisition of phonological awareness and literacy skills.

Articulation Disorders↗

PubMed1980

Northwestern Syntax Screening Test: a short form.

The NSST was administered to 900 children aged three years to seven years, 11 months. Using a step-wise multiple regression model, the test was shortened from 20 to 11 test items receptively and expressively, while accounting for 95% of total test score variance. This shortened form, taking approximately 10 minutes to administer, was normed in six-month intervals as opposed to the one-year intervals of the original NSST. A cross validation sample of 301 children was used to demonstrate that comparable clinical decisions are made employing either form.

Child↗