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PubMed2005

Beyond verbal fluency: investigating the long-term effects of bilateral subthalamic (STN) deep brain stimulation (DBS) on language function in two cases.

Cognitive functioning has been described as largely impervious to chronic STN-DBS administered over 12-month periods. In relation to the domain of language, however, the effects of STN-DBS are yet to be thoroughly delineated. Verbal fluency tasks represent an almost exclusively applied index of linguistic proficiency relative to neuropsychological research within this population. Comprehensive investigations of the impact of STN-DBS on language function, however, have never been undertaken. The more precise elucidation of the role of the STN in the mediation of language processes, by way of assessments which probe language comprehension and production mechanisms, served as the primary focus of this research. Longitudinal analysis also afforded consideration of the way in which cognitive-linguistic circuits respond to STN-DBS over time. Bilateral STN-DBS primarily effected clinically reliable fluctuations (i.e., both improvements and declines) in performance in both subjects on tasks demanding cognitive-linguistic flexibility in the formulation and comprehension of complex language. Of particular note, both subjects demonstrated a cumulative increase in the proportion of reliable post-operative improvements achieved over time. The findings of this research lend support to models of subcortical participation in language which endorse a role for the STN, and suggest that bilateral STN-DBS may serve to enhance the proficiency of basal ganglia-thalamocortical linguistic circuits over time.

Aged↗
PubMedDate not supplied

False belief and sentence complement performance in children with specific language impairment.

BACKGROUND: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have language abilities not commensurate with other cognitive abilities. This pattern makes the SLI population of interest when investigating the relationship between language and theory of mind. One view regarding this relationship is that theory of mind develops independently of language, but certain language skills are required to meet the demands of tasks used to measure theory of mind, such as false belief. Another view is that language development facilitates theory of mind development, and specifically, that mastery of sentence complement structures is necessary for false belief. AIMS: The study asked (1) if children with SLI can succeed on false belief, despite their language deficits, when the linguistic demands of the false belief task are low, and (2) if performance on sentence complement structures predicts false belief performance. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Fifteen children with SLI, 15 children matched for age and 15 children matched for language comprehension level participated in a false belief task with four conditions of differing linguistic complexity, and a test of sentence complementation understanding. Spontaneous production of sentence complements was also measured. Group differences for false belief and sentence complementation, and condition differences for false belief, were tested non-parametrically. Partial correlation analysis, log-linear analysis, and Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney tests were used to explore relationships among the complementation and false belief measures for all children and for each group. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Children with SLI performed similarly to age-matched peers on false belief when linguistic complexity of the task was low, and performed more poorly than age-matched peers on understanding of sentence complements. For all children, sentence complement performance was correlated with false belief (controlling for age), and those who performed well on sentence complements had higher mean rates of false belief success. Log-linear analysis showed the sentence complement-false belief relationship to hold for a condition with relatively low linguistic demands. CONCLUSIONS: The study provides evidence that children with SLI can perform at age-appropriate levels when false belief tasks are less demanding, and that mastery of sentence complementation is a predictor of false belief ability.

Child Development↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Predicting communicative competence at 2 and 3 years from pragmatic skills at 10 months.

It is proposed that children play an important part in determining the kinds of linguistic experience they receive, influencing their language environment by means of early pragmatic communication. These early behaviours may also be predictive of later communicative competence. As a preliminary investigation into the wider implications of children's potential influence over their linguistic environment, a study was undertaken which looked at infant pragmatic signalling systems and joint engagement skills, to establish whether these early interactive behaviours might be related to children's subsequent communicative development. During the course of the study, the frequency and distribution of early pragmatic behaviours in a random sample of 145 10-month-old infants were investigated, and their subsequent language development followed up at ages 24 and 36 months. The study examined (a) the predictive validity of specific pragmatic behaviours at age 10 months for language development at age 24 months and (b) the specificity and stability of profiles of communicative disability at 2 and 3 years. A subset of behaviours was identified which would have correctly predicted 82.4% of children found to have communicative difficulties at 24 months and 85.4% of those who did not. Predictive language profiles drawn up at age 24 months were substantially confirmed when the children were reassessed at age 36 months. It is proposed that specific early communicative behaviours may be predictive of a child's subsequent linguistic development. Additionally, 2-year-old children will be exhibiting certain patterns of language acquisition which may be significant for subsequent linguistic development. Implications for intervention are discussed.

Child Behavior↗
PubMed2006

Educational responses to varying objectives of parents of deaf children: a Dutch perspective.

In 1999, Mary Brennan wrote "By recognising the child as, in effect, a 'little linguist' we are also recognising the power and effectiveness of the child's linguistic capacity" (Brennan, 1999). The recognition of the power and effectiveness of deaf children's linguistic capacity needs to be taken a step further. Focus should be on the conditions in the children's environments necessary to develop their linguistic capacity to its fullest potential and to enhance the use of this capacity in academic and social learning. This leads to the issue of the identification of the right language and instructional mix for deaf children, the topic that is addressed in this article. Essential in this process of identification are the educational objectives parents of deaf children have and the choices they make. This is related to a second issue, that of professional advice. Both issues are characterized by several dilemmas. These dilemmas are illustrated and directions are put forward that will enable educators to negotiate these dilemmas.

Child↗
PubMed2000

Cognitive sequence processing and syntactic comprehension in schizophrenia.

It has been repeatedly demonstrated that schizophrenic patients are impaired in the comprehension of sentences with complex syntax. We investigated the hypothesis that this syntactic comprehension impairment in schizophrenia is not a purely linguistic dysfunction, but rather the reflection of a cognitive sequence processing impairment that is revealed as task complexity increases. We tested 10 schizophrenic patients using a standard measure of syntactic comprehension, and a non-linguistic sequence processing task, both of which required simple and complex transformation processing. Patients' performance impairment on the two tasks was highly correlated (r2 = 0.84), and there was a significant effect for complexity, independent of the task. These results are quite similar to those of aphasic patients with left hemisphere lesions. This suggests that syntactic comprehension deficits in schizophrenia reveal the dysfunction of cognitive sequence processing mechanisms that can be expressed both in linguistic and non-linguistic sequence tasks.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Detection of verbal discordances during sleep.

We used an electrophysiological marker of linguistic discordance, the N400 wave, to investigate how linguistic and pseudo-linguistic stimuli are categorised during sleep as compared to waking. During wakefulness, signs of discordance detection were, as expected, greater for pseudo-words than for real but semantically incongruous words, relative to congruous words. In sleep stage 2 all signs of hierarchic process of discordance disappeared. A new hierarchic process reappeared in paradoxical sleep, which differed from that of waking, responses to pseudo-words being similar to those to congruous words. Linguistic absurdity appears to be accepted in a different manner during paradoxical sleep than during waking, and this might explain why absurd contents are so naturally incorporated into otherwise plausible dream stories.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed2003

Language recovery following subthalamic nucleus stimulation in Parkinson's disease.

Neuropsychological consequences of stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus for treatment of drug-resistant Parkinson's disease (PD) have been studied previously. However, no detailed investigations of linguistic function modifications have been carried out. We studied four consecutive patients with PD who underwent chronic bilateral stimulation of the subthalamic nuclei. Neuropsychological and linguistic evaluations were performed before and 2 weeks after surgery. Linguistic abilities were studied also 1 year after surgery with stimulators both off and on. Intraphrasal hesitation pauses, phonemic paraphasias and morpho-syntactic errors were significantly reduced and lexical retrieval improved with stimulation of the subthalamic nuclei. Implicit linguistic phenomena, mainly occurring within basal ganglia circuitry, benefited by recovery of functional equilibrium within basal nuclei and between overall basal ganglia circuitry and cerebral cortex.

Aged↗
PubMed1990

Language and Parkinson disease.

Previously published reports of deficits in linguistically oriented tasks were reviewed for both demented and nondemented Parkinson disease (PD) patients in a discussion of the question of whether PD affects language. Additionally, to illustrate the methodological problems inherent in evaluating linguistic competence, the performance on four linguistically oriented tasks of 12 PD patients who scored 8 or better on the Mental Status Questionnaire was compared to that of 32 age- and education-matched control subjects. These tasks, from which a composite variable representing performance was formed, were oral object description, story retelling, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and the Similarities subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), a test of verbal associative reasoning. After controlling for the effects of disease severity, a significant effect was observed for the presence of PD. However, when the additional effects of performance on the Block Design subtest of the WAIS were controlled, the PD effect was of borderline significance. These results typify those in the literature, that is, whereas nondemented PD patients can be demonstrated to perform significantly more poorly on linguistically oriented tasks, the performance deficit cannot be conclusively demonstrated to result from a language deficit per se.

Aged↗
PubMed1996

Long-term consistency in speech/language profiles: I. Developmental and academic outcomes.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the 7-year developmental and academic outcome of speech/language-impaired and control children selected from a community sample. METHOD: Speech/language and psychiatric measures were administered to the children at ages 5 and 12.5 years. Using children's age 5 speech/language test results, a cluster analysis was performed to ascertain whether specific linguistic subgroups would emerge. The long-term consistency of these subgroups was explored. The association between time 1 speech/language clusters and linguistic, cognitive and academic measures at time 2 were examined. RESULTS: Four groups were identified in the cluster analysis: high overall, poor articulation, poor comprehension, and low overall. Children with pervasive language problems continued to perform poorly on linguistic, cognitive, and academic measures, while those with comprehension problems fared slightly better but still had more difficulties than those with normal language. The poor articulation cluster had few articulation errors at follow-up. CONCLUSIONS: Empirically supported speech/language classifications identified as early as age 5 continued to be relevant into late childhood. Pervasive speech/language impairment in early childhood was associated with increased risk of poor linguistic and academic outcome at follow-up, while isolated articulatory problems improved over time. These findings reveal the urgent need for early intervention among children with pervasive speech/language impairment.

Child↗
PubMed1991

Disturbances of speech prosody following right hemisphere infarcts.

The ability to perceive and express emotional, as well as number of linguistic prosodic qualities of speech was tested in 20 Swedish-speaking patients with right-sided cortical, as well as purely subcortical brain infarcts, and in 18 normal controls. The infarcts were assessed by clinical neurological examination, and by CT, EEG, and measurements of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF). In the patients the identification of emotional messages was disturbed, as well as the identification and production of several linguistic prosodic qualities. The study supports the claim that prosodic impairment could be linguistic in nature, and not secondary to affective disorder. The total degree of anatomical and functional disturbance of the right hemisphere played a role for both the ability to identify emotional messages and for identification of two of the linguistic prosodic qualities tested. However, it was not possible to find support for the hypothesis that the organization of prosody in the right hemisphere mirrors that of propositional speech on the left side.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Respondent burden and patient-perceived validity of the PDQ-39.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the respondent burden and patient-perceived content validity of the Parkinson's disease (PD)-specific health status questionnaire PDQ-39, and the linguistic validity of its revised Swedish version. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Eighteen PD patients completed the revised Swedish version of the PDQ-39. Respondent burden was assessed by recording the time taken to complete the questionnaire. Content and linguistic validity was evaluated qualitatively. RESULTS: Patients with mild, moderate and advanced PD needed a mean time of 9.5, 11.3 and 20.1 min, respectively, to complete the PDQ-39. One-third of the patients identified irrelevant items and 50% identified important health-related areas that were missing. Revisions had eliminated previous linguistic problems with the Swedish PDQ-39. CONCLUSIONS: Undue respondent burden challenged the appropriateness of the PDQ-39 among patients with more advanced disease. Overall content validity was acceptable but compromised by lack of important content areas. Observations supported the linguistic validity of the revised Swedish PDQ-39.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Using statistical decision theory to predict speech intelligibility. I. Model structure.

This article introduces a new model that predicts speech intelligibility based on statistical decision theory. This model, which we call the speech recognition sensitivity (SRS) model, aims to predict speech-recognition performance from the long-term average speech spectrum, the masking excitation in the listener's ear, the linguistic entropy of the speech material, and the number of response alternatives available to the listener. A major difference between the SRS model and other models with similar aims, such as the articulation index, is this model's ability to account for synergetic and redundant interactions among spectral bands of speech. In the SRS model, linguistic entropy affects intelligibility by modifying the listener's identification sensitivity to the speech. The effect of the number of response alternatives on the test score is a direct consequence of the model structure. The SRS model also appears to predict the differential effect of linguistic entropy on filter condition and the interaction between linguistic entropy, signal-to-noise ratio, and language proficiency.

Decision Making↗
PubMed2002

Quantifying the intelligibility of speech in noise for non-native listeners.

When listening to languages learned at a later age, speech intelligibility is generally lower than when listening to one's native language. The main purpose of this study is to quantify speech intelligibility in noise for specific populations of non-native listeners, only broadly addressing the underlying perceptual and linguistic processing. An easy method is sought to extend these quantitative findings to other listener populations. Dutch subjects listening to Germans and English speech, ranging from reasonable to excellent proficiency in these languages, were found to require a 1-7 dB better speech-to-noise ratio to obtain 50% sentence intelligibility than native listeners. Also, the psychometric function for sentence recognition in noise was found to be shallower for non-native than for native listeners (worst-case slope around the 50% point of 7.5%/dB, compared to 12.6%/dB for native listeners). Differences between native and non-native speech intelligibility are largely predicted by linguistic entropy estimates as derived from a letter guessing task. Less effective use of context effects (especially semantic redundancy) explains the reduced speech intelligibility for non-native listeners. While measuring speech intelligibility for many different populations of listeners (languages, linguistic experience) may be prohibitively time consuming, obtaining predictions of non-native intelligibility from linguistic entropy may help to extend the results of this study to other listener populations.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Utility of preoperative functional magnetic resonance imaging for identifying language cortices in patients with vascular malformations.

OBJECT: The goal of this study was to evaluate the utility of preoperative functional magnetic resonance (fMR) imaging in the prediction of whether a given cortical area would be deemed essential for language processing by electrocortical stimulation mapping (ESM). METHODS: The authors studied patients with vascular malformations, specifically arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) and cavernous angiomas, in whom blood-flow patterns are not normal and in whom a perfusion-dependent mapping signal may be questionable. Ten patients were studied (seven harboring AVMs and three with cavernous angiomas). The authors used a battery of linguistic tasks, including visual object naming, word generation, auditory responsive naming, visual responsive naming, and sentence comprehension, to identify brain regions that were consistently activated across expression and comprehension linguistic tasks. In a comparison of ESM and fMR imaging activations, the authors varied the matching criteria (overlapping activations, adjacent activations, and deep activations) and the radii of influence of ESM (2.5, 5, and 10 mm) to determine the effects of these factors on the sensitivity and specificity of fMR imaging. The sensitivity and specificity of fMR imaging were dependent on the task, lobe, and matching criterion. For the population studied, the sensitivity and specificity of fMR imaging activations during expressive linguistic tasks were found to be up to 100 and 66.7%, respectively, in the frontal lobe, and during comprehension linguistic tasks up to 96.2 and 69.8%, respectively, in the temporal and parietal lobes. The sensitivity and specificity of each disease population (patients with AVMs and those with cavernous angiomas) and of individuals were consistent with those values reported for the entire population studied. CONCLUSIONS: The authors conclude that preoperative fMR imaging is a highly sensitive preoperative planning tool for the identification of which cortical areas are essential for language and that this imaging modality may play a future role in presurgical planning for patients with vascular malformations.

Brain Mapping↗
PubMed2003

Revitalization of minority languages as a way to promote well-being in the North.

BACKGROUND: In this paper I discuss the interdependence between the revitalization of minority languages and well-being at the population level. OBJECTIVES: The paper aims to describe the history and current status of three northern minority languages, Kven, Meänkieli and Viena Karelian, and the ways in which revitalization of these languages and restoration of their linguistic rights could enhance the well-being of the speakers of these languages. METHODS: A number of research findings are presented to show that being a minority language speaker constitutes an economic, social and health risk. The potential psychic and physical adverse effects of linguistic exploitation are also discussed. RESULTS: It is further demonstrated in the paper that non-existent linguistic rights may have a negative impact, not only on the overall well-being of the minority, but also on the group's economic status. Positive findings on minority status are presented concerning the speakers of Swedish in Finland and the speakers of French in Canada. CONCLUSION: It is also shown that the development of a minority language and functional linguistic rights may prolong the life expectancy and well-being of the minority members and have a positive economic impact, not only on the minority, but also on society as a whole.

Culture↗
PubMed1992

Mental models, pictures, and text: integration of spatial and verbal information.

In the past several years, there has been an acceleration in the publication of cognitive research on the interplay between linguistic and pictorial/spatial information. To report on and encourage this sort of research, we organized a symposium at the 1991 meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association. The articles in this special section of Memory & Cognition are based on the work presented at the symposium. In this introduction, we offer a suggestion for why the integration of linguistic and spatial information is not only a possibility, but a requirement for effective communication. Our suggestion follows the linguistic analysis of the closed-class elements that convey spatial relations, the prepositions (Talmy, 1983). The structure of language provides but a small set of prepositions to encode the vast number of spatial relations that we can perceive. Thus, to understand a situation that a speaker or a writer is conveying, the listener or reader must combine linguistic information with (perhaps metric) spatial information derived from pictures, the environment, or memory.

Cognition↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Language development in a child with left hemispherectomy.

A longitudinal study of a left hemispherectomized boy (AB) was conducted to document linguistic evolution and maturation and determine the extent to which right hemisphere processes allow development of language. Resection of the left hemisphere occurred at age 5 years 6 months, following intractable epilepsy. Tests of language comprehension (pointing, understanding of prepositions, understanding of narratives) and production (naming, repetition, lexical diversity, grammatical production) were administered at ages 6:2, 6:4, 6:6, and 6 years 9 months. Observations showed little progress, if any, in most aspects of linguistic performance. In contrast to studies with left-hemispherectomized children, AB showed only a modest expansion of the semantic lexicon and the phonological repertoire more than a year after the surgical intervention. These observations indirectly suggest (1) poor functional involvement of the right hemisphere in the development of adequate linguistic abilities, (2) the necessary integrity of the LH for adequate development of language, or (3) that variations in individual brain maturation rates may account for AB's linguistic progress.

Brain↗
PubMed2001

[The evaluation of creative thought: a comparison of methodologies].

BACKGROUND: To verify the reliability of the evaluation of the original thought through verbal tests, processed and standardised with reference to different socio-cultural contexts. In this respect we focused our attention on the Torrence Test on Creative Thought (TTCT), considering the trans-cultural studies carried out by Torrence. METHODS: The analyses were carried out on the linguistic output of 116 subjects attending the 4th and 5th years of primary school, responding to the first verbal activity of the TTCT. For the evaluation of the Italian output, pointing out the Type and Token, morphemes and phrases were considered as basic units. The authors calculated the percentage values of occurrence of phrases, morphemes and grammatical functions. Then they made cross comparisons between the resulting percentage values, found unique morphemes, morphemes recurring only twice, as well as phrases characterised by the presence of the aforesaid typology of words. RESULTS: TTCT prescriptive evaluation: the percentage (41.19%) is in favour of a widespread originality in the phraseological output of our sample. Evaluation of phrases/units according to their statistical frequency: 93.39 and 83.91% respectively of the type/phrases and of the overall phraseological output turned out to consist of unique phrases. Originality: Italian linguistic production is highly original. Analysis of phrases containing unique and double words: the evaluation of Originality according to Torrence's criteria was not adequately confirmed in our sample. Functional analysis: it showed that 23.17 and 41.67% of unique productions acted respectively verbs and as nouns; the only analogies in the comparison between American and Italian productions were pointed out by analyses carried out according to the criterion of the grammatical function of words. CONCLUSIONS: The data from this research bring forward the use of tests with verbal contents whose ideational solutions are articulate and complex linguistic propositions, validated on people that are different in terms of lexical structures and reference context, from those on whom the prescriptive criteria are identified and built. With reference to the higher levels of Originality noticed in the Italian linguistic output in comparison with American, the question is still open if they are linked to creative modes of thought or can be referred to specific cultural styles of the Italian language.

Child↗