Monthly Archives: February 2011
People with untreated hearing loss lose income annually
People with untreated hearing loss lose as much as $30,000 in income annually, depending on their degree of hearing loss, according to the latest national study by the Better Hearing Institute (BHI). And the cost to society is estimated to be as high as $26 billion in unrealized federal taxes.
from News-Medical.net
Language Patterns Are Roller-Coaster Ride During Childhood Development
Research from North Carolina State University on African-American children presents an unexpected finding: language use can go on a roller-coaster ride during childhood as kids adopt and abandon vernacular language patterns.
from ScienceDaily.com
Nonverbal Cognition in Deaf Children Following Cochlear Implantation: Motor Sequencing Disturbances Mediate Language Delays
We assessed profoundly deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs) (N = 24) and age-matched normal-hearing children (N = 31) on several nonverbal cognition measures: motor sequencing, tactile discrimination, response inhibition, visual-motor integration, and visual-spatial processing. The results revealed that the children with CIs showed disturbances solely on motor sequencing and that performance on this task was significantly correlated with scores on the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, 4th Edition (CELF-4). These findings suggest that a period of auditory deprivation before cochlear implantation affects motor sequencing skills, which in turn may mediate the language delays displayed by some deaf children with CIs.
Working Memory Impairment in Children With Developmental Dyslexia: Is it Just a Phonological Deficity?
Although reduced verbal span is well documented in individuals with developmental dyslexia, the existing data on visual-spatial span are inconclusive. The aim of the present study was to ascertain whether the working memory deficit in developmental dyslexia is confined to verbal material or whether it also involves visual-object and visual-spatial information. Results document deficits on span tasks tapping verbal, visual-spatial, and visual-object working memory in dyslexic children and indicate that the working memory deficit in developmental dyslexia is not limited to dysfunction of phonological components but also involves visual-object and visual-spatial information.
Lexical input to young children from extremely poor communities in Argentina: Effects of a home literacy program
The study analyzes the lexical properties of the linguistic context that children from marginalized urban neighborhoods from Buenos Aires, Argentina, are exposed to in the literacy situations generated by an at-home early literacy program. The analysis is focused on the comparison of the vocabulary that these children are exposed to daily with the characteristics of the lexical surround in the literacy settings induced by the implementation of the program. Results showed that literacy situations provided children with an enriched lexical input: a higher amount of word tokens and word types, and more unfamiliar words that represented phenomena, properties or actions not directly observable.
from the Journal of Early Childhood Research
The long term effects of early acquired skills and behaviors on young children’s achievement in literacy and mathematics
Using the recently available wave of a large nationally representative sample of American elementary school children (ECLS-K data), this study examined the relationship between 6-7 year old students’ behaviors exhibited in the 1st grade (approaches to learning, interpersonal skills, externalizing and internalizing behavior) and their reading and mathematics achievement at the end of the 5th grade (pupils aged 10 – 11 years), controlling for their achievement in the 1st grade. Findings include the single behavioral dimension that has a substantial association with later achievement is students’ approaches to learning. The analysis of the interaction effects showed that students from families of low socioeconomic status, girls (in case of math) and minority students were more likely to have higher test scores given their improved approaches to learning. Further, the results demonstrated that basic skills (math and reading in the 1st grade) are substantial predictors of the 5th-grade approaches to learning. The findings reveal the complexity of the intertwined relationship between cognitive and behavior outcomes among young students and the long-term effects of early acquired skills and behaviors.
from the Journal of Early Childhood Research
Cognitive Skills of Young Children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder Using the BSID-III
Conclusion. Formal cognitive assessment of children with ASD can provide guidance for developmental expectations and educational programming. Cognitive skills of children with ASD may be underappreciated.
Phonetic and phonemic acquisition: Normative data in English and Dutch speech sound development
Conclusion
The data from the development of the English and Dutch speech sound system show many similar tendencies. Vowels are mastered by the age of three, most consonants by the age of four and most consonant clusters between 5 and 6–8 years of age. Perhaps, there is a universal trend in speech sound development like there is in language development.
from the International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology
EDUCATION OF EUROPEAN FLUENCY SPECIALISTS The European Clinical Specialization on Fluency Disorders (ECSF)
The European Clinical Specialization on Fluency Disorders (ECSF) project consists of one-year post-qualification fluency specialization training and a harmonized graduate fluency program. It was developed by eight European universities/colleges to provide the means whereby graduates would meet comparable standards of competence to practice in the field of fluency disorders. In this paper we describe criteria that guided the consortium in their decision making process to create an optimal learning environment for participants. A review of the first completed course cycle, with 23 international participants, is discussed.
Gender and Number processing in Chinese Learners of Spanish–Evidence from Event Related Potentials
Traditionally, age of acquisition (AoA) has been considered the single most important factor in second language (L2) acquisition and processing, particularly in the area of syntax processing. However, there is now growing evidence of the importance of other factors, such as the level of proficiency attained and the degree of overlap or similarity between the first language (L1) and L2 structures and possibility of transfer of features and/or processing routines. However, the relative importance of these factors and the nature of L1-L2 transfer are still unclear. To shed light on these issues, we recorded the electrical brain activity of a group of Chinese proficient late learners of Spanish, using the Event Related Potentials technique, while they read Spanish sentences containing violations of number and grammatical gender agreement (adjective-noun agreement and article-noun agreement). Unlike Spanish, Mandarin Chinese is an isolating language in which morphosyntactic features such as gender and number are not computed and so the ERP results from this group can help to clarify the role of L1-L2 transfer in morpho-syntax processing routines. The results included P600 effects for both gender and number agreement violations, with no differences between these disagreement conditions. These results are taken to support second language acquisition models which stress the roles of proficiency and L1-L2 transfer in L2 syntax processing.
from Neuropsychologia
Contributions of the Thalamocortical system towards sound-specific auditory plasticity
The function of the auditory cortex is dynamic. Although auditory cortical plasticity can be induced through various approaches such as learning, experience and sensory deprivation, a common property is the frequency-specificity; the change in neuronal receptive field or functional maps is highly specific to the frequency content of the acquired sound. This unique property suggests that precise frequency information must be relayed to the auditory cortex. It is well known that the auditory thalamocortical pathway is the only neural substrate that sends precise frequency information to the auditory cortex. This review addresses the impact of the auditory thalamocortical system on cortical plasticity. The frequency-specificity of auditory cortical plasticity and the tonotopic features of the auditory thalamocortical system are briefly presented. A discussion of the decisive role of thalamocortical system follows. After an exploration of a possible synaptic mechanism, a thalamocortical model is proposed to better interpret the neural mechanisms underlying frequency-specific plasticity of the auditory cortex.
Stress and prevalence of hearing problems in the Swedish working population
Conclusions
The present study unambiguously demonstrates associations between hearing problems and various stressors that have not been previously described for the auditory system. These findings will open new avenues for future investigations.
from BMC Public Health
Number without a language model
Cross-cultural studies suggest that access to a conventional language containing words that can be used for counting is essential to develop representations of large exact numbers. However, cultures that lack a conventional counting system typically differ from cultures that have such systems, not only in language but also in many other ways. As a result, it is difficult to isolate the effects of language on the development of number representations. Here we examine the numerical abilities of individuals who lack conventional language for number (deaf individuals who do not have access to a usable model for language, spoken or signed) but who live in a numerate culture (Nicaragua) and thus have access to other aspects of culture that might foster the development of number. These deaf individuals develop their own gestures, called homesigns, to communicate. We show that homesigners use gestures to communicate about number. However, they do not consistently extend the correct number of fingers when communicating about sets greater than three, nor do they always correctly match the number of items in one set to a target set when that target set is greater than three. Thus, even when integrated into a numerate society, individuals who lack input from a conventional language do not spontaneously develop representations of large exact numerosities.
from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Interpreting and translation in a Japanese social and historical context
The paper will review interpreting and translation within the socio-historical context of Japan, and their relevance to language education, one of the crucial elements in a globalized world. First, Nagasaki interpreters in Edo period will be studied to illustrate their multifaceted role as language specialists, followed by an examination of the phenomenon called translationism and its influence on the modernization process during Meiji period. Then, the discussion proceeds to the role played by simultaneous interpreters after WWII, and growing awareness in the country for the importance of English as a global language, resulting in the increased interest in interpreter training as part of communicative language teaching in Japanese tertiary education. In conclusion, the paper addresses the significance of translation and interpreting studies, in terms of society at large.
Translation and interpreting in the Arabic of the Middle Ages: lessons in contextualization
Between the seventh and the eighth centuries, a remarkable linguistic phenomenon took place: the Arabic language, which in the early seventh century had been mainly the tongue of a few isolated tribes in Western Arabia, became the spoken and written language of a vast region that spanned from the Oxus River in the East to the Atlantic Ocean in the West. Virtually overnight, speakers of other languages had to become conversant and literate in Arabic in order to maintain their positions throughout the Arabic-speaking Muslim Empire. Throughout this dramatic transition, translation of foreign texts into Arabic and interpreting between Arabic and other languages such as Aramaic, Coptic, Greek, and Persian became of tantamount importance. Despite the scale and speed of these endeavors, they included some consistently common methodological components. This article uses medieval Arabic sources to explore the ways in which translation and interpreting were carried out in this context, analyzing the accepted methodology in its role as a reflection of the dominant sociolinguistic environment of the time. The final portion of the article discusses the relevance of this methodology and sociolinguistic environment with regard to questions within the field of Arabic translation and interpreting that are raised today.
