Monthly Archives: December 2010
Early language intervention for children with intellectual disabilities: A neurocognitive perspective
For children with intellectual disabilities (ID), stimulation of their language and communication is often not a priority. Advancements in brain research provide guidelines for early interventions aimed at the stimulation of language and communication skills. In the present study, the effectiveness of an early language intervention which draws upon neurocognitive principles of language processing and language learning was assessed. Ten children participated in the intervention and 18 were followed for control purposes. The intervention group showed greater progress than the control group. The higher learning gains for the intervention group were mostly driven by the non-speaking children. However, the progress of the intervention children slowed down significantly following intervention.
An early language intervention such as that studied here can accelerate the language development of children with ID. To maintain the effects, however, the intervention should be prolonged in several settings that focus on consecutive learning (e.g., day-care centres and schools).
Bilingualism influences inhibitory control in auditory comprehension
Bilinguals have been shown to outperform monolinguals at suppressing task-irrelevant information. The present study aimed to identify how processing linguistic ambiguity during auditory comprehension may be associated with inhibitory control. Monolinguals and bilinguals listened to words in their native language (English) and identified them among four pictures while their eye-movements were tracked. Each target picture (e.g., hamper) appeared together with a similar-sounding within-language competitor picture (e.g., hammer) and two neutral pictures. Following each eye-tracking trial, priming probe trials indexed residual activation of target words, and residual inhibition of competitor words. Eye-tracking showed similar within-language competition across groups; priming showed stronger competitor inhibition in monolinguals than in bilinguals, suggesting differences in how inhibitory control was used to resolve within-language competition. Notably, correlation analyses revealed that inhibition performance on a nonlinguistic Stroop task was related to linguistic competition resolution in bilinguals but not in monolinguals. Together, monolingual-bilingual comparisons suggest that cognitive control mechanisms can be shaped by linguistic experience.
from Cognition
Dichotic listening performance suggests right hemisphere involvement in PTSD
The present study focuses on language laterality as measured with dichotic listening (DL) to consonant-vowel syllables (CV syllables) in refugees with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is associated with impaired callosal transfer and with increased right hemisphere activation and impaired executive skills that could influence the processing of dichotic stimuli. A total of 22 participants with PTSD were compared to 23 participants without a diagnosis of PTSD. All participants had similar experiences of acts of war and political violence. They were tested with dichotic listening to CV syllables with free recall and directed attention following the forced attention paradigm. The PTSD group showed increased right ear advantage due to impaired left ear reporting and also smaller attention modulation compared to the control group, and the performance shared variance with self-report measures of arousal and intrusive memories. The results are discussed towards a model of impaired functionality of the frontal lobe and right hemisphere versus impaired callosal transfer, both yielding predictions for the processing of the left ear input and the ability to attention modulation of the performance.
Enhancing visuospatial learning: The benefit of retrieval practice
Studies examining the beneficial effect of testing on memory have relied almost exclusively on verbal materials. Whether testing can improve the learning of novel, abstract visuospatial information was investigated, using Chinese characters as study stimuli. Subjects with no prior Chinese language experience studied English words paired with their Chinese equivalents. Subsequently, they either restudied the pairs twice or attempted to retrieve covertly the Chinese characters twice (with feedback provided afterward). The durations of the study and the retrieval/feedback trials were equated. On a final test given after 10 min (Experiment 1) or 24 h (Experiment 2), the subjects who had practiced retrieval were more accurate at writing/drawing the Chinese characters than were those who had studied repeatedly. The same result was replicated when learning condition was manipulated within subjects (Experiment 3). In predictions of future performance made after training, however, the subjects seemed unaware that retrieval practice was more effective than repeated studying. Testing enhances visuospatial learning, with potential implications for learning a foreign language that uses a writing script different from one’s language: Repeated retrieval from memory trumps repeated studying.
from Memory and Cognition
Repetition is easy: Why repeated referents have reduced prominence
The repetition and the predictability of a word in a conversation are two factors that are believed to affect whether it is emphasized: Predictable, repeated words are less acoustically prominent than unpredictable, new words. However, because predictability and repetition are correlated, it is unclear whether speakers lengthen unpredictable words to facilitate comprehension or whether this lengthening is the result of difficulties in accessing a new (nonrepeated) lexical item. In this study, we investigated the relationship between acoustic prominence, repetition, and predictability in a description task. In Experiment 1, we found that repeated referents are produced with reduced prominence, even when these referents are unexpected. In Experiment 2, we found that predictability and repetition both have independent effects on duration and intensity. However, word duration was primarily determined by repetition, and intensity was primarily determined by predictability. The results are most consistent with an account in which multiple cognitive factors influence the acoustic prominence of a word.
from Memory and Cognition
Scientists Link Relationship Among ADHD, Reading, Math
The researchers found that ADHD behaviors, reading achievement, and math achievement were all influenced by the same genetic influences; this doesn’t prove anything about what causes what, but some psychological scientists think that all three might be linked through the working memory system.
Once upon a time in the Intensive Care Unit …
Jan Lariviere, a nurse in the neonatal clinic and the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at The Montreal Children’s Hospital (MCH) of the MUHC led an innovative research project that suggests reading to newborns in the NICU greatly lends normalcy and allows parents to feel closer to their babies during this difficult period. The results are published in the latest edition of the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.
from EurekAlert.org
2011 Medical Subject Headings (MeSH®) Now Available
The Introduction to MeSH 2011 is now available, including information on its use and structure, as well as recent updates and availability of data.
from the NLM Technical Bulletin
The iPhone can now help children with speech delay
Speech or language delay- a term used to describe children who have difficulty communicating their basic needs and wants do to the presence of difficulties pronouncing some sounds, stuttering, autism, or a specific language disorder. If you have or know of a child who is suffering from this problem, there is now an app for that- in fact there are 15 different apps for that.
from Uberphones.com
Minimum reading fluency necessary for comprehension among second-grade students
The current study examined the relationship between oral reading fluency (ORF) and reading comprehension for students in second grade. A total of 84 participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions that involved reading a grade-appropriate passage with either 0%, 10%, 20%, or 30% scrambled words and answering subsequent comprehension questions. The correlation coefficient between ORF and the number of comprehension questions correctly answered was r = .54. Receiver operating characteristics were then used to empirically derive a minimum ORF score necessary for comprehension, indicating that when these students read 63 words correct per minute they successfully comprehended what they read. Finally, the diagnostic accuracy of the derived criterion of 63 words read correctly per minute was tested and resulted in overall correct classification of .80. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Alcohol Consumption and Domain-Specific Cognitive Function in Older Adults: Longitudinal Data From the Johns Hopkins Precursors Study
Discussion. Results suggest that higher alcohol consumption in midlife may impair some components of executive function in late life.
from the Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences
Dyslexia: Advances in clinical and imaging studies
The aim of this report is to describe the characteristics of Japanese dyslexia, and to demonstrate several of our studies about the extraction of these characteristic and their neurophysiological and neuroimaging abnormalities, as well as advanced studies of phonological awareness and the underlying neural substrate. Based on these results, we have proposed a 2-step approach for remedial education (e-learning web site: http://www.dyslexia-koeda.jp/). The first step is decoding, which decreases reading errors, and the second is vocabulary learning, which improves reading fluency. This 2-step approach is designed to serve first grade children. In addition, we propose the RTI (response to intervention) model as a desirable system for remedial education.
Investigating the inner speech of people who stutter: Evidence for (and against) the Covert Repair Hypothesis
In their Covert Repair Hypothesis, Postma and Kolk (1993) suggest that people who stutter make greater numbers of phonological encoding errors, which are detected during the monitoring of inner speech and repaired, with stuttering-like disfluencies as a consequence. Here, we report an experiment that documents the frequency with which such errors are made. Thirty-two people who stutter (PWS) and thirty-two normally-fluent controls, matched for age, gender and education, recited tonguetwisters and self-reported any errors they perceived themselves to have made. In 50% of trials the tonguetwisters were recited silently and errors reported were those detected in inner speech. Compared to controls, PWS produced significantly more word-onset and word-order errors. Crucially, this difference was found in inner as well as in overt speech. Comparison of experimenter ratings and participants’ own self-ratings of their overt speech revealed similar levels of accuracy across the two groups, ruling out a suggestion that PWS were simply more sensitive to the errors they made. However, the frequency of participants’ inner-speech errors was not correlated to their SSI4 scores, nor to two other measures of stuttering severity. Our findings support Postma and Kolk’s contention that, when speech rate is held constant, PWS make, and therefore detect, more errors of phonological encoding. They do not, however, support the hypothesis that stuttering-like disfluencies in everyday speech stem from covert repairs of errors of phonological encoding.
from the Journal of Communication Disorders
