Happy Holidays
The University of Texas at Dallas will be closed December 22-January 1. New posts will start appearing on January 2. Have a safe and happy holiday season.
Functional analysis of swallowing outcomes after supracricoid partial laryngectomy
from Head and Neck
Abstract
Background.
In this study, we analyzed swallowing recovery after supracricoid partial laryngectomy (SCPL).
Methods.
We retrospectively reviewed 27 patients treated with SCPL (September 1997 to March 2005). We evaluated recovery course, nutritional outcomes, and swallowing using objective analysis. Modified barium swallow (MBS) study results identified swallowing physiology and therapeutic effectiveness.
Results.
Average length of hospitalization was 7.7 ± 9.2 days; time to decannulation was 5.3 ± 8.2 weeks. The most common complications included pneumonia and subcutaneous emphysema (26%). Twenty-two patients had MBS studies, in which initially, all patients aspirated due to neoglottic incompetency, and impaired base of tongue and laryngeal movements. Although aspiration rates did not change significantly over time, use of appropriately selected swallowing strategies effectively protected the airway (p = .0365). Ultimately, 81% of patients returned to complete oral intake with median tube removal at 9.4 weeks.
Conclusion.
SCPL produces severe dysphagia initially. Our findings suggest that objective swallowing assessment is important for return to oral nutrition after SCPL. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Head Neck, 2008
Auditory steady-state responses to multiple simultaneous stimuli in children with functional or sensorineural hearing loss
from the European Archives of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology
Abstract The goal of our study was to identify the role of auditory steady-state responses for hearing assessment in patients with functional hearing loss. The study design was to compare auditory steady-state response thresholds and standard pure-tone audiometry thresholds between patients with functional or sensorineural hearing loss. Subjects comprised 16 patients (24 ears) with functional hearing loss and 17 patients (24 ears) with sensorineural hearing loss. Differences and correlations between auditory steady-state response thresholds and standard pure-tone audiometry thresholds at 500, 1,000, 2,000 and 4,000 Hz were evaluated. In children with functional hearing loss, pure-tone audiometry thresholds and auditory steady-state response thresholds were significantly different at all frequencies and were not significantly correlated. In patients with sensorineural hearing loss, pure-tone audiometry thresholds and auditory steady-state response thresholds did not differ significantly at any frequencies and were significantly correlated. Auditory steady-state responses may have principal role in the assessment of auditory brainstem acuity, particularly at low frequencies in patients with functional hearing loss.
Intact inner speech use in autism spectrum disorder: evidence from a short-term memory task
from Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
Background: Inner speech has been linked to higher-order cognitive processes including ‘theory of mind’, self-awareness and executive functioning, all of which are impaired in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Individuals with ASD, themselves, report a propensity for visual rather than verbal modes of thinking. This study explored the extent to which children with ASD used inner speech or visual imagery to support recall from short-term memory.
Method: Twenty-five children with ASD and 20 comparison children with moderate learning disabilities completed an immediate serial recall task, in which stimuli consisted of items with either phonologically similar features, visuo-spatially similar features or control items which were neither visuo-spatially nor phonologically similar.
Results: ASD and comparison participants, with verbal mental ages above 7 years, recalled phonologically similar stimuli less well than control stimuli, indicating that both groups were using inner speech to recode visually presented information into a phonological code. In contrast, those participants with verbal mental ages below 7 years, whether with ASD or not, recalled visuo-spatially similar stimuli less well than control stimuli, indicating visual rather than phonological coding. This developmental pattern mirrors that found in typically developing children.
Conclusions: Under experimental conditions, individuals with ASD use inner speech to the same extent as individuals without ASD of a comparable mental age.
Voice outcomes after radiotherapy treatment for early glottic cancer: Assessment using multidimensional tools
from Head and Neck
Background.
This is the first prospective study to use instrumental and both clinician- and client-rated auditory-perceptual measures to examine voice and voice-related quality of life changes in patients after curative radiotherapy for early glottic cancer.
Method.
Thirty patients undergoing curative radiotherapy treatment for early glottic cancer completed the following: 3 voice tasks for acoustic, aerodynamic, and auditory-perceptual voice measures (therapist-rated); a patient self-report rating of voice quality; and a voice-related quality of life assessment before and 12 months after radiotherapy.
Results.
Patients’ perceptions of their voice quality and their voice-related quality of life significantly improved posttreatment, as did acoustic, aerodynamic, and auditory-perceptual voice measures. Mean speaking fundamental frequency did not change significantly, although breathiness and strain in the voice recordings were demonstrably reduced.
Conclusion.
In describing postradiotherapy voices in this study, pertinent measures of voice outcomes have been established, setting the benchmark for comparison in future cohort studies. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Head Neck, 2008
Durable effects of concentrated disadvantage on verbal ability among African-American children
from Docuticker
Disparities in verbal ability, a major predictor of later life outcomes, have generated widespread debate, but few studies have been able to isolate neighborhood-level causes in a developmentally and ecologically appropriate way. This study presents longitudinal evidence from a large-scale study of >2,000 children ages 6–12 living in Chicago, along with their caretakers, who were followed wherever they moved in the U.S. for up to 7 years. African-American children are exposed in such disproportionate numbers to concentrated disadvantage that white and Latino children cannot be reliably compared, calling into question traditional research strategies assuming common points of overlap in ecological risk. We therefore focus on trajectories of verbal ability among African-American children, extending recently developed counterfactual methods for time-varying causes and outcomes to adjust for a wide range of predictors of selection into and out of neighborhoods. The results indicate that living in a severely disadvantaged neighborhood reduces the later verbal ability of black children on average by {approx} 4 points, a magnitude that rivals missing a year or more of schooling.
GenVec Announces NIH Funding For Balance And Hearing Loss Program
GenVec, Inc. (Nasdaq:GNVC) announced that it has received a sub-award under a grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to develop a gene-based drug therapy to treat severe balance disorders. GenVec will receive up to $1,125,000 over five years to support pre-clinical research in collaboration with Dr. Hinrich Staecker, University of Kansas Medical Center, leading to the development of a drug candidate for clinical testing.
Tone-deafness linked to size of grey matter
from CTV.ca
Daring to dislike Christmas carols is often enough to be branded a hard-headed humbug, but a new study shows the size of a person’s grey matter can actually have an impact on one’s appreciation of music.
In a study published recently in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers at McGill University and the Universite de Montreal claim the tone-deaf have a thicker cortex in certain parts of their brain.
Endogenous Cortical Rhythms Determine Cerebral Specialization for Speech Perception and Production
from Neuron
Across multiple timescales, acoustic regularities of speech match rhythmic properties of both the auditory and motor systems. Syllabic rate corresponds to natural jaw-associated oscillatory rhythms, and phonemic length could reflect endogenous oscillatory auditory cortical properties. Hemispheric lateralization for speech could result from an asymmetry of cortical tuning, with left and right auditory areas differentially sensitive to spectro-temporal features of speech. Using simultaneous electroencephalographic (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) recordings from humans, we show that spontaneous EEG power variations within the gamma range (phonemic rate) correlate best with left auditory cortical synaptic activity, while fluctuations within the theta range correlate best with that in the right. Power fluctuations in both ranges correlate with activity in the mouth premotor region, indicating coupling between temporal properties of speech perception and production. These data show that endogenous cortical rhythms provide temporal and spatial constraints on the neuronal mechanisms underlying speech perception and production.
Abstract Coding of Audiovisual Speech: Beyond Sensory Representation
from Neuron
Is there a neural representation of speech that transcends its sensory properties? Using fMRI, we investigated whether there are brain areas where neural activity during observation of sublexical audiovisual input corresponds to a listener’s speech percept (what is “heard”) independent of the sensory properties of the input. A target audiovisual stimulus was preceded by stimuli that (1) shared the target’s auditory features (auditory overlap), (2) shared the target’s visual features (visual overlap), or (3) shared neither the target’s auditory or visual features but were perceived as the target (perceptual overlap). In two left-hemisphere regions (pars opercularis, planum polare), the target invoked less activity when it was preceded by the perceptually overlapping stimulus than when preceded by stimuli that shared one of its sensory components. This pattern of neural facilitation indicates that these regions code sublexical speech at an abstract level corresponding to that of the speech percept.
Sound localization with communications headsets: Comparison of passive and active systems
from Noise & Health
Studies have demonstrated that conventional hearing protectors interfere with sound localization. This research examines possible benefits from advanced communications devices. Horizontal plane sound localization was compared in normal-hearing males with the ears unoccluded and fitted with Peltor H10A passive attenuation earmuffs, Racal Slimgard II communications muffs in active noise reduction (ANR) and talk-through-circuitry (TTC) modes and Nacre QUIETPRO TM communications earplugs in off (passive attenuation) and push-to-talk (PTT) modes. Localization was assessed using an array of eight loudspeakers, two in each spatial quadrant. The stimulus was 75 dB SPL, 300-ms broadband noise. One block of 120 forced-choice loudspeaker identification trials was presented in each condition. Subjects responded using a laptop response box with a set of eight microswitches in the same configuration as the speaker array. A repeated measures ANOVA was applied to the dataset. The results reveal that the overall percent correct response was highest in the unoccluded condition (94%). A significant reduction of 24% was observed for the communications devices in TTC and PTT modes and a reduction of 49% for the passive muff and plug and muff with ANR. Disruption in performance was due to an increase in front-back reversal errors for mirror image spatial positions. The results support the conclusion that communications devices with advanced technologies are less detrimental to directional hearing than conventional, passive, limited amplification and ANR devices.
Factorial validity of the noise sensitivity questionnaire
from Noise & Health
The Noise Sensitivity Questionnaire (NoiSeQ) aims at the measurement of global noise sensitivity as well as the sensitivity for five domains of everyday life namely ‘Leisure’, ‘Work’, ‘Habitation’, ‘Communication’ and ‘Sleep’. The present investigation examined the factorial validity of the NoiSeQ to determine whether the items of the NoiSeQ cover the different factors as assumed. The analysis was done using the method of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The linear structural model took into consideration only the scales of the NoiSeQ for which reliability could be demonstrated, namely, ‘Sleep’, ‘Communication’, ‘Habitation’ and ‘Work’. The linear structural model presumed that each of the 28 items has a relation only to one corresponding factor. Furthermore, the model allowed for correlations between the four factors. The data base encompassed 293 persons. Parameter estimation was based on the General Least Square method. The data was checked with respect to the occurrence of multivariate outliers, deviation from multivariate normality and existing collinearities. The data met the overall requirements of a CFA. The evaluation of model fit was based on the relative chi2 -value, the Root Mean Square Error of Approximation, the Goodness of Fit Index, the Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index and the Root Mean Square Residual. All fit indices indicated an acceptable match of the model. As the postulated structure of the NoiSeQ was consistent with the empirical data, the classification of the items as well as the claimed interdependencies between the scales can be maintained. The regression weights of all items as well as the correlations between the latent variables were statistically significant. The estimated reliability of the latent variables took values of >/=0.84. The findings generally justified the conclusion that there is no urgent need to modify the four scales of the NoiSeQ thus, indicating the factorial validity of the NoiSeQ.
Effects of binaural electronic hearing protectors on localization and response time to sounds in tEffects of binaural electronic hearing protectors on localization and response time to sounds in the horizontal planehe horizontal plane
from Noise & Health
The effects of electronic hearing protector devices (HPDs) on localization and response time (RT) to stimuli were assessed at six locations in the horizontal plane. The stimuli included a firearm loading, telephone ringing and .5-kHz and 4-kHz tonebursts presented during continuous traffic noise. Eight normally hearing adult listeners were evaluated under two conditions: (a) ears unoccluded; (b) ears occluded with one of three amplitude-sensitive sound transmission HPDs. All HPDs were found to affect localization, and performance was dependent on stimuli and location. Response time (RT) was less in the unoccluded condition than for any of the HPD conditions for the broadband stimuli. In the HPD conditions, RT to incorrect responses was significantly less than RT to correct responses for 120 degrees and 240 degrees , the two locations with the greatest number of errors. The RTs to incorrect responses were significantly greater than to correct responses for 60 degrees and 300 degrees , the two locations with the least number of errors. The HPDs assessed in this study did not preserve localization ability under most stimulus conditions.
New Brain Mechanism Identified For Interpreting Speech
In conversation, humans recognize words primarily from the sounds they hear. However, scientists have long known that what humans perceive goes beyond the sounds and even the sights of speech. The brain actually constructs its own unique interpretation, factoring in both the sights and sounds of speech.
How do I sound to me? Perceived changes in communication in Parkinson’s disease
Objective: To examine self and carer perceived changes in communication associated with Parkinson’s disease and relate these to speech intelligibility, gender, age and other disease measures.
Design: Cross-sectional survey of a hospital- and community-based sample of 176 people with Parkinson’s disease and their carers using a questionnaire based on semantic differential techniques.
Participants: One hundred and four people with Parkinson’s disease with no history of communication difficulties prior to onset of their Parkinson’s disease and 45 primary carers who returned completed questionnaires.
Main outcome measures: Differences in ratings for `before’ the onset of Parkinson’s disease versus present status.
Results: There was a strong perception of negative impact on communication between `before’ and `now’, irrespective of age and gender and largely independent of disease severity and duration, intelligibility and cognitive status. Activities of daily living (assessed by Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) II) and depression rating scale scores had the strongest association with change (adjusted R 2 0.27). There was a significant correlation between the rank order of perceived change in features examined in people with Parkinson’s disease versus their carers, though in general carers rated change as having less impact.
Conclusions: Parkinson’s disease exercises a strong influence on communication even before apparent alterations to intelligibility or motor status (UPDRS).
Age-related differences in auditory evoked responses during rapid perceptual learning
OBJECTIVE: Young and older adults can learn to rapidly discriminate between elementary visual and auditory features. While growing evidence supports the notion that such behavioral improvement is paralleled by neuroplastic changes in corresponding sensory areas during adulthood, studies have not examined practice-related improvement in older adults and the corresponding changes in neural activity. METHODS: We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the effects of age on rapid learning-related changes in listeners’ ability to identify two phonetically different vowels presented simultaneously. RESULTS: During the first hour of testing, young and older listeners showed comparable behavioral improvement in identifying both vowels. In young adults, learning was paralleled by enhanced amplitudes of early (130ms) and late (320ms) ERP waves over the right temporal lobe, as well as an increased negative wave over the midline parietal region, peaking at about 400ms after sound onset. The practice-related changes over the right temporal lobe were not present in older adults whereas the learning effect observed over the parietal region was present in both young and older adults. In older adults, behavioral improvement was also associated with reduced N1 amplitude recorded at inferior and posterior temporal/occipital scalp sites while no such changes were observed in young adults. CONCLUSIONS: Age-related differences in neural activity during learning suggest that neural networks supporting behavioral improvements in speech segregation and identification change during the course of aging. SIGNIFICANCE: This research highlights the role of practice on concurrent sound perception and may facilitate the development of training programs that may help older listeners to parse the auditory scene into component sound sources.
The role of spatial location in auditory search
from Hearing Research
The majority of research findings to date indicate that spatial cues play a minor role in enhancing listeners’ ability to parse and detect a sound of interest when it is presented in a complex auditory scene comprising multiple simultaneous sounds. Frequency and temporal differences between sound streams provide more reliable cues for scene analysis as well as for directing attention to relevant auditory ‘objects’ in complex displays. The present study used naturalistic sounds with varying spectro-temporal profiles to examine whether spatial separation of sound sources can enhance target detection in an auditory search paradigm. The arrays of sounds were presented in virtual auditory space over headphones. The results of Experiment 1 suggest that target detection is enhanced when sound sources are spatially separated relative to when they are presented at the same location. Experiment 2 demonstrated that this effect is most prominent within the first 250ms of exposure to the array of sounds. These findings suggest that spatial cues may be effective for enhancing early processes such as stream segregation, rather than simply directing attention to objects that have already been segmented.
Origin of suppression of otoacoustic emissions evoked by two-tone bursts
from Hearing Research
Otoacoustic emission (OAE) data recorded for tone bursts presented separately and as a two-tone burst complex, that had been reported previously [Yoshikawa, H., Smurzynski, J., Probst R., 2000. Suppression of tone burst evoked otoacoustic emissions in relation to frequency separation. Hear. Res. 148, 95-106], were re-processed using the method of adaptive approximations by matching pursuit (MP). Two types of stimuli were applied to record tone burst OAEs (TBOAEs): (a) cosine-windowed tone bursts of 5-ms duration with center frequencies of 1, 1.5, 2 and 3kHz, (b) complex stimuli consisting of a digital addition of the 1-kHz tone burst together with either the 1.5-, 2- or 3-kHz tone burst. The MP method allowed decomposition of signals into waveforms of defined frequency, latency, time span, and amplitude. This approach provided a high time-frequency (t-f) resolution and identified patterns of resonance modes that were characteristic for TBOAEs recorded in each individual ear. Individual responses to single-tone bursts were processed off-line to form ’sum of singles’ responses. The results confirmed linear superposition behavior for a frequency separation of two-tone bursts of 2kHz (the 1-kHz and 3-kHz condition). For the 1, 1.5-kHz condition, the MP results revealed the existence of closely positioned resonance modes associated with responses recorded individually with the stimuli differing in frequency by 500Hz. Then, the differences between t-f distributions calculated for dual (two-tone bursts) and sum-of-singles conditions exhibited mutual suppression of resonance modes common to both stimuli. The degree of attenuation depended on the individual pattern of characteristic resonance modes, i.e., suppression occurred when two resonant modes excited by both stimuli overlapped. It was postulated that the suppression observed in case of dual stimuli with closely-spaced components is due to mutual attenuation of the overlapping resonance modes.
The Ideology of Interculturality in Japanese Language-in-Education Policy
from the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics
Language learning is frequently justified as a vehicle for promoting intercultural communication and understanding, and language-in-education policies have increasingly come to reflect this preoccupation in their rhetoric. This paper will examine the ways in which concepts relating to interculturality are constructed in Japanese language policy documents. It will explore in particular the ways in which ideologies of nationalism and Japanese identity have an impact on understandings of the nature and purpose of interculturality and how these are developed discursively in Japanese language-in-education policy documents. Language policies construct a discourse of interculturality which focuses on the development of a nationalistic adherence to a particular conceptualisation of Japanese identity, which is unique, homogenous, and monolithic. These themes will be discussed in the contexts of Japanese policy documents relating to foreign language teaching and Japanese language spread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Girl-Lass or Curl?
from the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics
One of the ways to investigate the mental lexicon is to use word association tests. Empirical studies comparing associations by children and adults have indicated a tendency for children to give syntagmatic responses, whereas adults give paradigmatic responses. In order to investigate lexical development in L2 acquisition of Swedish we collected data from two groups of students, one in Malmö, Sweden and one in Melbourne. Part of the Melbourne group also took the association test in their L1 six months later. Native speakers were used as a control group. The results demonstrate that learners in general tend to focus more on form than content compared to native speakers. This trend was particularly strong for the L2 group in Melbourne who also exhibited more variation in their responses compared to the L2 group in Sweden and the NS control group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Rutgers Neuroscience May Hold Key To New Cochlear Implant Technology
A Rutgers University team led by neuroscientist Robin Davis is opening new doors to improved hearing for the congenitally or profoundly deaf. Their findings could lead to a new generation of cochlear implants.
Childhood Exposure To Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Negatively Affects Verbal Ability
Childhood exposure to severely disadvantaged communities is linked to decreased verbal ability later in childhood, a lasting negative effect that continues even after moving out of the neighborhood, according to research that will be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Living in “concentrated disadvantage” decreases later verbal test scores by about four IQ points, which is roughly equivalent to missing a year of school.
The use of psychological state words by late talkers at ages 3, 4, and 5 years
from Applied Psycholinguistics
The use of four types of psychological state words (physiological, emotional, desire, and cognitive) during mother–child play sessions at ages 3, 4, and 5 years was examined in 30 children diagnosed with delayed expressive language at 24–31 months and 15 age-matched comparison children with typical development. The children’s mean length of utterance, total words uttered, lexical diversity, and use of propositional complements were assessed. The late talkers used significantly more physiological state words at ages 3 and 4, but the two groups did not differ in their use of physiological state terms at age 5. The late talkers used significantly fewer cognitive words than the comparison children at each age. The mothers of the late talkers made significantly fewer references to cognitive states than the mothers of the comparison children at each age. The delay in the emergence of cognitive state words in the preschool years may affect other aspects of late talkers’ cognitive and social development.
Mental imagery of concrete proverbs: A developmental study of children, adolescents, and adults
from Applied Psycholinguistics
The development of mental imagery in relation to the comprehension of concrete proverbs (e.g., one rotten apple spoils the barrel) was examined in children, adolescents, and adults who were ages 11 to 29 years old (n = 210). The findings indicated that age-related changes occurred in mental imagery and in proverb comprehension during the years between late childhood and early adulthood, and that the two domains were associated in children and adults but not in adolescents. Children and adults were more likely to describe relevant mental imagery (age 11: “A big barrel of apples and a woman picks up one that is rotten and there are worms in it and the worms go to all the other apples”) when they also comprehended the proverb on a multiple-choice task. It was also found that participants’ mental images became more metaphorical in relation to increasing age (age 21: “One bad comment can spoil the entire conversation”). The findings are consistent with dual coding theory, the view that nonverbal information (relevant visual imagery) in addition to verbal information (related words and phrases) supports language comprehension in the case of concrete meanings. The results also support the view that mental imagery reflects figurative understanding and the individual’s tacit awareness of underlying metaphorical concepts.
Lexical acquisition over time in minority first language children learning English as a second language
from Applied Psycholinguistics
The English second language development of 19 children (mean age at outset = 5 years, 4 months) from various first language backgrounds was examined every 6 months for 2 years, using spontaneous language sampling, parental questionnaires, and a standardized receptive vocabulary test. Results showed that the children’s mean mental age equivalency and standard scores on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—Third Edition nearly met native-speaker expectations after an average of 34 months of exposure to English, a faster rate of development than has been reported in some other research. Children displayed the phenomenon of general all-purpose verbs through overextension of the semantically flexible verb do, an indicator of having to stretch their lexical resources for the communicative context. Regarding sources of individual differences, older age of second language onset and higher levels of mother’s education were associated with faster growth in children’s English lexical development, and nonverbal intelligence showed some limited influence on vocabulary outcomes; however, English use in the home had no consistent effects on vocabulary development.
Language and thought in bilinguals: The case of grammatical number and nonverbal classification preferences
from Applied Psycholinguistics
Recent research shows that speakers of languages with obligatory plural marking (English) preferentially categorize objects based on common shape, whereas speakers of nonplural-marking classifier languages (Yucatec and Japanese) preferentially categorize objects based on common material. The current study extends that investigation to the domain of bilingualism. Japanese and English monolinguals, and Japanese–English bilinguals were asked to match novel objects based on either common shape or color. Results showed that English monolinguals selected shape significantly more than Japanese monolinguals, whereas the bilinguals shifted their cognitive preferences as a function of their second language proficiency. The implications of these findings for conceptual representation and cognitive processing in bilinguals are discussed.
Bilingual language representation and cognitive processes in translation
from Applied Psycholinguistics
A text-translation task and a recognition task investigated the hypothesis that semantic memory principally mediates translation from a bilingual’s native first language (L1) to her second language (L2), whereas lexical memory mediates translation from L2 to L1. This has been held for word translation by the revised hierarchical model (RHM) of Kroll and Stewart. The results from Greek, English, and French fluent bilinguals showed semantic errors in L1–L2 direction and lexical errors in L2–L1 direction in the translation task as RHM would predict, but not semantic effects in L1–L2 direction in the word recognition task. These findings suggest a flexible use of conceptual and lexical connections that fluent bilinguals engage, depending upon the cognitive processes required by the task at hand.
Bilingual children with language impairment: A comparison with monolinguals and second language learners
from Applied Psycholinguistics
The purpose of this study is twofold: (a) to examine whether English finite morphology has the potential to differentiate children with and without language impairment (LI) from Spanish-speaking backgrounds and different levels of English proficiency in comparison to Hispanic English speakers and (b) to investigate the extent to which children who are bilingual exhibit differences in their grammatical performance because of cross-linguistic influence from their first language. Seventy-one children between the ages of 4 years, 5 months and 6 years, 5 months were distributed into the following five groups: English as a first language (EL1) speakers with typical language development (TLD), EL1 speakers with LI, Spanish–English bilinguals with TLD, Spanish–English bilinguals with LI, and English as a second language (EL2) learners with TLD were compared on regular verb finiteness and nominative subject use using spontaneous narrative samples. The EL1 children with LI had significantly lower verb accuracy rates than the EL1 controls with TLD. Verb finiteness marking was also a significant discriminator for the bilinguals with LI. There was no evidence of cross-linguistic influence, however. The analysis indicated no significant differences between EL1 and bilingual children on subject or verb use. The EL2 group only presented difficulties with finite verb use. The typological differences between English and Spanish for overt subject use did not seem to affect the performance of either typical or atypical bilingual learners. The findings underscore the need for addressing language dominance in future bilingual studies.
Answering hard questions: Wh-movement across dialects and disorder
from Applied Psycholinguistics
A large-scale study of complex wh-questions with 1,000 subjects aged 4–9 years is reported. The subjects’ dialects were Mainstream American English or African American English, and approximately one-third were language impaired. The study examined when children permit long distance wh-movement, and when they respect a variety of syntactic barriers to movement. Thirteen different structures were compared, and the results suggest that typically developing children and disordered children at all the ages studied are capable of long-distance movement and obedience to abstract barriers. In no case was dialect a significant factor in the children’s linguistic performance on these tasks.
Developmental dysgraphia with profound hearing impairment: Intervention by auditory methods enabled by cochlear implant
from Auris Nasus Larynx
Learning disability combined with hearing impairment (LDHI) is a poor prognostic factor for the language development of hearing impaired children after educational intervention. A typical example of a child with LDHI and effective interventions provided by cochlear implants are presented in this report. A case of congenital cytomegaloviral infection that showed dysgraphia as well as profound deafness was reported and an underlying visual processing problem diagnosed in the present case caused the patient’s dysgraphia. The dysgraphia could be circumvented by the use of auditory memory fairly established by a cochlear implant.
About the Callier Library
Callier Library is a satellite facility of The University of Texas at Dallas, McDermott Library. It is located at the Dallas, Texas campus of the Callier Center for Communication Disorders. The library supports the graduate-level programs and faculty in communications sciences which are located at the center. It also supports the work of clinicians in hearing and speech disorders who work at both campuses of the Callier Center. One of the missions of Callier Library is to be a useful source of information to the international community of researchers and clinicians in communication disorders. To that end, this web log of citations and news in the field has been built and maintained by Allen Clayton, the Callier Center Librarian.
Note: These news items are gleaned from over 400 sources on the Internet and are provided as a service to our patrons. The University of Texas at Dallas does not guarantee the veracity, reliability or completeness of any information provided on this page, or in any hyperlink appearing on this page
