School-based social-skills interventions demonstrate minimally effective results for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

from Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention

No abstract available.

Children with autism spectrum disorders can learn to label actions without requiring verbal prompting

from Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention

No abstract available.

Children assess informant reliability using bystanders’ non-verbal cues

from Developmental Science

Recent findings show that preschool children are selective with respect to whom they ask for information and whose claims they endorse. In particular, they monitor an informant’s record of past accuracy or inaccuracy and use that record to gauge future trustworthiness. We ask if preschoolers also monitor the non-verbal cues of assent or dissent that bystanders display toward an informant’s claims and use that information to gauge an informant’s trustworthiness. In familiarization trials, 4-year-olds watched as two adult informants made conflicting claims regarding the name of an unfamiliar object. Two adult bystanders consistently signaled assent – via nods and smiles – to the claims of one informant, and dissent – via head shakes and frowns – from the claims of the other informant. When invited to endorse one of the two claims, 4-year-olds mostly agreed with the informant who had received bystander assent. Thus, in the absence of background knowledge about an object’s name, children use third-party non-verbal signals to assess the accuracy of conflicting labels. On subsequent test trials, the informants again made conflicting claims about novel object names, but in the absence of the two bystanders. Despite the lack of any informative bystander signals, children with more advanced understanding of mental states continued to display greater trust in the informant who had received bystander assent in the earlier trials.

Children’s understanding of idioms and theory of mind development

from Developmental Science

The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis according to which theory of mind competence was a prerequisite to ambiguous idioms understanding. We hypothesized that the child needs to understand that the literal interpretation could be a false world representation, a false belief, and that the speaker’s intention is to mean something else, to correctly process idiomatic expressions. Two kinds of ambiguous idioms were of interest: decomposable and nondecomposable expressions ( Titone & Connine, 1999 ). An experiment was designed to assess the figurative developmental changes that occur with theory of mind competence. Five-, 6- and 7-year-old children performed five theory of mind tasks (an appearance–reality task, three false-belief tasks and a second-order false-belief task) and listened to decomposable and nondecomposable idiomatic expressions inserted in context, before performing a multiple choice task. Results indicated that only nondecomposable idiomatic expression was predicted from the theory of mind scores, and particularly from the second-order competences. Results are discussed with respect to theory of mind and verbal competences.

Treatment For Tinnitus

from Medical News Today.com

Researchers at the University of Essex have received a three-year studentship from the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) to investigate the relationship between tinnitus and defects in the inner ear.

The award, worth over £69,000, has been given to the Hearing Research Laboratory based within the University’s Department of Psychology.

How autism affects a child’s development

from Topix.net

Babies are born instinctively knowing their mother’s voice and are calmed by their touch.

Responses to Interaural Time Delay in Human Cortex

from the Journal of Neurosphysiology

Humans use differences in the timing of sounds at the two ears to determine the location of a sound source. Various models have been posited for the neural representation of these interaural time differences (ITDs). These models make opposing predictions about the lateralization of ITD processing in the human brain. The weighted-image model predicts that sounds leading in time at one ear activate maximally the opposite brain hemisphere for all values of ITD. In contrast, the -limit model assumes that ITDs beyond half the period of the stimulus centre-frequency are not explicitly encoded in the brain, and that such ‘long’ ITDs activate maximally the side of the brain to which the sound is heard. A previous neuro-imaging study revealed activity in the human inferior colliculus consistent with the -limit. Here we show that, cortical responses to sounds with ITDs within the -limit are in line with the predictions of both models. However contrary to the immediate predictions of both models, neural activation is bilateral for ‘long’ ITDs, despite these being perceived as clearly lateralized. Furthermore, processing of long ITDs leads to higher activation in cortex than processing of short ITDs. These data show that coding of ITD in cortex is fundamentally different from coding of ITD in brainstem. We discuss these results in the context of the two models.

Evaluation of the Progress of Therapy in Patients with Cleft Lip, Jaw and Palate, Using Voice Analysis – a Pilot Study

from the Journal of Orofacial Orthopedics

Background: The defective morphology of the hard and soft palate in patients with cleft lip, jaw and/or palate in conjunction with speech, voice and hearing disorders can considerably restrict the ability to communicate. Changes in vocal timbre and the centripetal displacement of articulation are characteristic of cleft palate speech. There has not been a uniform diagnostic method in cleft centers to date which makes possible the analysis, documentation and comparison of changes in timbre. In this study we assessed a computer-aided evaluation process to determine objective vocal timbre parameters while treating children with cleft lip, jaw and palate who had undergone surgery according to the principle of delayed palate repair.
Patients and Methods: The data and findings of 24 patients with various cleft forms were evaluated. The group we investigated consisted of seven patients with bilateral clefts, fourteen with unilateral cleft, and three with isolated cleft palate. Our subject cohort was limited to those born between 1985 and 1986. At the baseline investigation the children were aged 3 to 4 years, at the second investigation 4 to 5 years, and at the third investigation 5 to 7 years. These children underwent palate repair together with velopharyngoplasty between their fourth and fifth years. Our data were based on the tape recordings taken at these three investigation time points (before velopharyngoplasty, after velopharyngoplasty, and in the year they started school). The German words “Ball”, “Kaffeekanne”, “Schuhe” and “Schokoladenpudding” and the sentence “Meine Puppe heißt Sabine.” were analyzed using “Multi Speech” software. The individual vowels were manually extracted from these recordings and the fundamental frequency (F0) and frequency of the first formant (F1) determined
Results: We were able to evaluate the spectra of the vowels /a/, /i/ and /u/ of 24 children in all. There were statistically-significant differences in fundamental frequency when considering the intra-individual progress of patients with bilateral cleft lip, jaw and palate. The fundamental frequency at the second and third investigation time points was significantly lower (p = 0.003; p = 0.000) than that at the baseline investigation. We observed no significant differences regarding that parameter at the various time points when evaluating the children with unilateral cleft lip, jaw and palate. Careful appraisal of the individual vowels showed that the speech results correlated with the severity of the type of cleft.
Conclusion: Since the fundamental frequency and analysis of the first formant have proven to be suitable parameters for the analytical description of the vocal timbre of cleft patients, our results provide a solid basis for further studies. We provided evidence that this investigatory method is also effective when considering time and equipment requirements.