Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices

from Docuticker

This guide presents strategies that classroom teachers and specialists can use to increase the reading ability of adolescent students. The recommendations aim to help students gain more from their reading tasks, improve their motivation for and engagement in the learning process, and assist struggling readers who may need intensive and individualized attention.

Facing challenges head-on

from Topix.net

Speech Therapist Laura Keehner works with Emery Veltstra, 5, during a therapy session Tuesday, September 2, 2008.

Iconicity of sequence: A corpus-based analysis of the positioning of temporal adverbial clauses in English

from Cognitive Linguistics

Recent work in functional and cognitive linguistics has argued and presented evidence that the positioning of adverbial clauses is motivated by competing pressures from syntactic parsing, discourse pragmatics, and semantics. Continuing this line of research, the current paper investigates the effect of the iconicity principle on the positioning of temporal adverbial clauses. The iconicity principle predicts that the linear ordering of main and subordinate clauses mirrors the sequential ordering of the events they describe. Drawing on corpus data from spoken and written English, the paper shows that, although temporal clauses exhibit a general tendency to follow the main clause, there is a clear correlation between clause order and iconicity: temporal clauses denoting a prior event precede the main clause more often than temporal clauses of posteriority. In addition to the iconicity principle, there are other factors such as length, complexity, and pragmatic import that may affect the positioning of temporal adverbial clauses. Using logistic regression analysis, the paper investigates the effects of the various factors on the linear structuring of complex sentences.

Initial parsing decisions and lexical bias: Corpus evidence from local NP/S-ambiguities

from Cognitive Linguistics

Recent research in sentence comprehension suggests that lexically specific information plays a key role in on-line syntactic ambiguity resolution. On the basis of an analysis of the local NP/S-ambiguity, the present study offers a corpus-based approach to sentence processing that supports this view. However, it is proposed that the relevant information used to recover the syntactic structure of an incoming string of words is not retrieved from individual verbs but from a more fine-grained level of form-meaning pairings that distinguishes different verb senses. The investigation proceeds in two steps: First, verb-general and sense-specific preferences for nominal and sentential complementation are induced from corpus data and compared using odds ratios as a measure of association. Second, correlation analyses are performed that relate the computed coeffcients of association to reading time latencies from a recent self-paced moving window experiment (Hare et al. 2003). The results corroborate the view that individual verb senses, rather than individual verbs, guide initial parsing decisions.

Lexical chunking effects in syntactic processing

from Cognitive Linguistics

Research on syntactic ambiguity resolution in language comprehension has shown that subjects’ processing decisions are influenced by a variety of heterogeneous factors such as e.g., syntactic complexity, semantic fit and the discourse frequency of the competing structures. The present paper investigates a further potentially relevant factor in such processes: effects of syntagmatic lexical chunking (or matching to a complex memorized prefab) whose occurrence would be predicted from usage-based assumptions about linguistic categorisation. Focusing on the widely studied so-called DO/SC-ambiguity in which a post-verbal NP is syntactically ambiguous between a direct object and the subject of an embedded clause, potentially biasing collocational chunks of the relevant type are identified in a number of corpus-linguistic pretests and then investigated in a self-paced reading experiment. The results show a significant increase in processing difficulty from a collocationally neutral over a lexically biasing to a strongly biasing condition. This suggests that syntagmatically complex and partially schematic templates of the kind envisioned in usage-based Construction Grammar may impinge on speakers’ online processing decisions during sentence comprehension.

Negative entrenchment: A usage-based approach to negative evidence

from Cognitive Linguistics

The alleged absence of negative evidence in the linguistic input has played a major role both in linguistic theorizing and in discussions about linguistic methodology. I argue that, given a sufficiently sophisticated understanding of frequency, negative evidence can be inferred from the positive evidence in the linguistic input. Using an extension of collostructional analysis, I show how the corpus linguist, and, by analogy, the language learner, can discriminate between combinations of linguistic items that are accidentally absent from a given corpus and combinations whose absence is statistically significant. I also show that this kind of negative corpus evidence correlates with degrees of acceptability in judgment tasks. I propose a conceptualization of such negative evidence as negative entrenchment in a usage-based model.

New evidence against the modularity of grammar: Constructions, collocations, and speech perception

from Cognitive Linguistics

This paper combines quantitative corpus data and experimental evidence to address the question whether speech perception is influenced by knowledge of grammatical constructions and, more specifically, knowledge of preferred collocation patterns of these constructions. Lexical identification tasks are devised in which subjects are presented with synthesized, phonetically ambiguous stimuli. The results suggest that knowledge of constructions and collocations influences speech perception, thus providing evidence for a usage-based, non-modular view of grammar.

Linguistic Competence in Aphasia

from Perspectives on Augmentative and Alternative Communication

Loss of implicit linguistic competence assumes a loss of linguistic rules, necessary linguistic computations, or representations. In aphasia, the inherent neurological damage is frequently assumed by some to be a loss of implicit linguistic competence that has damaged or wiped out neural centers or pathways that are necessary for maintenance of the language rules and representations needed to communicate. Not everyone agrees with this view of language use in aphasia. The measurement of implicit language competence, although apparently necessary and satisfying for theoretic linguistics, is complexly interwoven with performance factors. Transience, stimulability, and variability in aphasia language use provide evidence for an access deficit model that supports performance loss. Advances in understanding linguistic competence and performance may be informed by careful study of bilingual language acquisition and loss, the language of savants, the language of feral children, and advances in neuroimaging. Social models of aphasia treatment, coupled with an access deficit view of aphasia, can salve our restless minds and allow pursuit of maximum interactive communication goals even without a comfortable explanation of implicit linguistic competence in aphasia.

Augmentative and Alternative Communication Treatment for Persons With Primary Progressive Aphasia

from Perspectives on Augmentative and Alternative Communication

Persons with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) are appearing more frequently in our AAC clinics. The syndrome is identified by the insidious onset and gradual loss of word finding, object naming, or word-comprehension skills with otherwise intact cognitive skills over a 2-year period in adults. Management of persons with this language-based neurodegenerative disease challenges our understanding of language competence and performance in adults. Clients present us with questions about when and how to provide intervention techniques and how to change the treatment as they slowly lose language skills. An AAC framework for intervention during the neurodegenerative language process seen in Nonfluent Progressive Aphasia is proposed. Tools and strategies are presented that have been reported in clinical cases for individual clients.

AAC Language Assessment: Considerations for Adults With Aphasia

from Perspectives on Augmentative and Alternative Communication

The process of recommending AAC systems and strategies for adults with aphasia requires clinicians to analyze both the language skills of the client and the specific language demands posed by different AAC systems. This paper describes some of the challenges people with aphasia face when attempting to use AAC approaches and presents a brief overview of language assessment techniques for people with aphasia. We review the AAC-Aphasia Classification System (Garrett & Lasker, 2005)—a tool for describing communication behaviors of people with aphasia. We present a brief analysis of the language features inherent in some AAC systems in terms of language storage and retrieval. We also discuss the importance of matching clients’ current and potential language skills with an appropriate AAC tool.

Interventions to Improve Communication in Autism

from Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America

Children with autism benefit from intensive, early intervention that focuses on increasing the frequency, form, and function of communicative acts. Available evidence shows that highly structured behavioral methods have important positive consequences for these children, particularly in eliciting first words. However, the limitation of these methods in maintenance and generalization of skills suggests that many children with autism will need to have these methods supplemented with less adult-directed activities to increase communicative initiation and carry over learned skills to new settings and communication partners. Providing opportunities for mediated peer interactions with trained peers in natural settings seems to be especially important in maximizing the effects of this intervention.

Developing Drugs for Core Social and Communication Impairment in Autism

from Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America

There are many challenges to studying drug effects on core social and language impairment in autism. Drugs such as fenfluramine, naltrexone, and secretin do not appear to be efficacious for these core symptoms. Risperidone has led to improvement in some aspects of social relatedness when used to treat irritability in autism. More research is needed on the utility of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, cholinergic drugs, glutamatergic drugs, and oxytocin for core autistic symptoms.

Linguistic Interactions: A Therapeutic Consideration for Adults With Aphasia

from Perspectives on Augmentative and Alternative Communication

Linguistic interaction models suggest that interrelationships arise between structural language components and between structural and pragmatic components when language is used in social contexts. The linguist, David Crystal (1986, 1987), has proposed that these relationships are central, not peripheral, to achieving desired clinical outcomes. For individuals with severe communication challenges, erratic or unpredictable relationships between structural and pragmatic components can result in atypical patterns of interaction between them and members of their social communities, which may create a perception of disablement. This paper presents a case study of a woman with fluent, Wernicke’s aphasia that illustrates how attention to patterns of linguistic interaction may enhance AAC intervention for adults with aphasia.

Parental Talk About Internal States to Their Child With Autism

from Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities

In this case study, all parental talk directed to a young child with autism at home over a 3-day period was analyzed for internal state (IS) language, which explicitly focuses upon the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of animate beings. The mother and father used IS terms in 33% and 24% of their utterances, respectively, with sensory and desire categories occurring most frequently. Rarely did either parent elaborate on the causes or consequences of the IS terms they used. Comparison of these data to the literature on typically developing children with the same language age suggests similarities in the pattern of IS language input. However, the overall frequency appeared to be lower. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Toward an Understanding of the Interplay Between Culture, Language, and Augmentative and Alternative Communication

from Perspectives on Augmentative and Alternative Communication

The discovery of appropriate forms and function for linguistic competence in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) is linked to an understanding of the complexity of culture, cultural choices, the impact of acculturation on practices, societal norms and perceptions, and persons’ with complex communication needs (PWCCN) basic human rights to full inclusion in social, educational, economic, and personal experiences on an everyday basis. This article focuses on these topics in order to promote further discussion regarding the influence of culture on the practice of AAC.