Will We Hear the Light? Infrared Can Activate Ear Cells

University of Utah scientists used invisible infrared light to make rat heart cells contract and toadfish inner-ear cells send signals to the brain. The discovery someday might improve cochlear implants for deafness and lead to devices to restore vision, maintain balance and treat movement disorders like Parkinson’s.

from Newswise.com

1-Sided Hearing Loss Lowers Language Skills

Kids With Hearing Loss in 1 Ear Have Lower Speech-Language Scores Than Siblings With Normal Hearing

fromWebMD.com

Soldiers screened for potential vulnerability to tinnitus

Phantom noise affects many veterans returning from combat

from the Washington University in St. Louis Newsroom

Great handout from Ann Kummer on velopharyngeal dysfunction therapy techniques

Without abstract.

from CASLPA, The Canadian Association of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists

The synchrony and diachrony of differential object marking in Paraguayan Guaraní

This paper explores the synchrony and diachrony of differential object marking in Paraguayan Guaraní on the basis of a quantitative study of a corpus of naturally occurring data of the modern language and an investigation of object marking in a 17th-century catechism. We show that both animacy and topicality, but not definiteness, affect whether a direct object is marked in modern Guaraní, a finding that has implications for cross-linguistic theories of differential object marking, not all of which recognize topicality as a factor. We also find no categorical constraints on differential object marking in Guaraní, contrary to Bossong (1985b). Our study of the 17th-century catechism provides further support for Bossong’s (1985b, 2009) claim that Guaraní did not have differential object marking when it came into contact with Spanish. The paper concludes with a discussion of the hypothesis that differential object marking in Guaraní resulted from contact with Spanish.

from Language Variation and Change

Development of social perception: A conversation study of 6-, 12- and 36-month-old children

A conversation is made up of visual and auditory signals in a complex flow of events. What is the relative importance of these components for young children’s ability to maintain attention on a conversation? In the present set of experiments the visual and auditory signals were disentangled in four filmed events. The visual events were either accompanied by the speech sounds of the conversation or by matched motor sounds and the auditory events by either the natural visual turn taking of the conversation or a matched turn taking of toy trucks. A cornea-reflection technique was used to record the gaze-pattern of subjects while they were looking at the films. Three age groups of typically developing children were studied; 6-month-olds, 1-year-olds and 3-year-olds. The results show that the children are more attracted by the social component of the conversation independent of the kind of sound used. Older children find spoken language more interesting than motor sound. Children look longer at the speaking agent when humans maintain the conversation. The study revealed that children are more attracted to the mouth than to the eyes area. The ability to make more predictive gaze shifts develops gradually over age.

from Infant Behavior and Development

The Effects of Humming and Pitch on Craniofacial and Craniocervical Morphology Measured Using MRI

Traditional voice research occurs within a phonetic context. Accordingly, pitch-related contributions are inseparable from those due to articulator input. In humming, articulator input is negligible. Using magnetic resonance imaging, we test the hypothesis that voice production is accompanied by pitch-related adjustments unrelated to articulatory or postural input.

from the Journal of Voice

Hemisphere lateralization is influenced by bilingual status and composition of words

It has been generally accepted that the left hemisphere is more functionally specialized for language than the right hemisphere for right-handed monolinguals. But more and more studies have also demonstrated right hemisphere advantage for some language tasks with certain participants. A recent comprehensive survey has shown that hemisphere lateralization of language depends on the bilingual status of the participants, with bilateral hemispheric involvement for both languages of early bilinguals, who acquired both languages by age of 6, left hemisphere dominance for language of monolinguals, and also left hemisphere dominance for both languages of late bilinguals, who acquired the second language after age of 6. We propose a preliminary model which takes into account both composition of stimulus words and bilingual status of participants to resolve the apparent controversies regarding hemisphere lateralization of various reading experiments in the literature with focus on Chinese characters, and to predict lateralization patterns for future experiments in Chinese word reading. The bilingual status includes early bilingual, late bilingual and monolingual. However, we have tested this model only with late Chinese–English bilingual participants by using a Stroop paradigm in this paper, though the aim of our model is to disentangle the controversies in the lateralization effect of Chinese character reading. We show here with stimuli written in Chinese single characters that the Stroop effect was stronger when the stimuli were presented to the right than to the left visual field, implying that the language information and color identification/naming may interact more strongly in the left hemisphere. Therefore, our experimental results indicate left hemisphere dominance for Chinese character processing, providing evidence for one part of our model.

from Neuropsychologia

Neural substrates for writing impairments in Japanese patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease: a SPECT study

Language is fairly well preserved in most patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease, but writing ability seems to be impaired even in the early stages of the disease. To investigate the neural bases of writing impairments in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), we examined the correlation between writing ability and regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in 52 Japanese patients with mild AD compared to 22 controls, using single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). We found that, compared with control subjects, Kana writing to dictation and copying Kanji words were preserved in AD patients, but writing to dictating Kanji words was impaired. We classified the errors in the Kanji dictation task into four types to investigate the correlation between rCBF and the error type, as follows: non-response errors, phonologically plausible errors, non-phonologically plausible errors, and peripheral errors. Non-response errors, which indicated difficulty with retrieving Kanji graphic images, were the most frequent. When controlled for confounding factors, the number of non-response errors negatively correlated with rCBF in the left inferior parietal lobule, the posterior middle and inferior temporal gyri, and the posterior middle frontal gyrus. Thus, the impaired recall of Kanji in early Alzheimer’s disease is related to dysfunctional cortical activity, which appears to be predominant in the left frontal, parietal, and temporal regions.

from Neuropsychologia

Words and pictures: An electrophysiological investigation of domain specific processing in native Chinese and English speakers

Comparisons of word and picture processing using Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) are contaminated by gross physical differences between the two types of stimuli. In the present study, we tackle this problem by comparing picture processing with word processing in an alphabetic and a logographic script, that are also characterized by gross physical differences. Native Mandarin Chinese speakers viewed pictures (line drawings) and Chinese characters (Experiment 1), native English speakers viewed pictures and English words (Experiment 2), and naïve Chinese readers (native English speakers) viewed pictures and Chinese characters (Experiment 3) in a semantic categorization task. The varying pattern of differences in the ERPs elicited by pictures and words across the three experiments provided evidence for i) script-specific processing arising between 150-200 ms post-stimulus onset, ii) domain-specific but script-independent processing arising between 200-300 ms post-stimulus onset, and iii) processing that depended on stimulus meaningfulness in the N400 time window. The results are interpreted in terms of differences in the way visual features are mapped onto higher-level representations for pictures and words in alphabetic and logographic writing systems.

from Neuropsychologia

Body awareness in preschool children with psychiatric disorder

The purpose of this study was to investigate the body awareness of preschool children with a psychiatric disorder as measured by the test imitation of gestures (Bergès & Lézine, 1978), using the subsections for pointing to body parts (passive vocabulary) and naming body parts (active vocabulary). Seventy-seven children from 37 to 72 months of age with psychiatric disorders and 67 children without psychiatric disorders were matched for age and sex. A MANOVA indicated no significant interaction effects on the results between the sexes in the psychiatric group and the control group for passive vocabulary (F(1,150) = .59, p ≥ 0.05) or for active vocabulary (F(1,150) = .61, p ≥ 0.05). An ANOVA was conducted to determine the differences between the boys and girls for passive and active vocabulary, and the differences between the psychiatric group and the control group for passive and active vocabulary. No significant differences between the boys and girls for passive vocabulary (F(1,150) = 1.968, p ≥ 0.05) and active vocabulary (F(1,150) = 1.57, p ≥ 0.05) were found. There was a significant difference between the psychiatric and the control group for passive vocabulary (F(1,150) = 9.511, p = 0.002) and active vocabulary (F(1,150) = 16.18, p = 0.00009). The study provides support for the presence of language disorders associated with active and passive body awareness in children with psychiatric disorders compared to typically developing children.

from Research in Developmental Disabilities

Profiles of language development in pre-school children: a longitudinal latent class analysis of data from the Early Language in Victoria Study

Conclusions Developmental profiles show that some pre-schoolers’ language is characterized by periods of accelerated development, slow development and catch-up growth. Given the uncertainty in classifying children into these profiles, use of this knowledge for identifying children who will be impaired on school entry is not straightforward. The findings do, however, indicate greater need for language enrichment programmes among disadvantaged children.

from Child: Care, Health and Development

How common are motor problems in children with a developmental disorder: rule or exception?

Conclusions This study indicates that co-morbidity of motor problems with other clinical disorders is not exceptional and developmental deviance is seldom specific to one domain. However, current co-morbidity studies tend to overestimate the number of children with motor problems. In addition, there may be different patterns of symptoms between the genders. These findings stress the importance of assessing motor skills in children with various developmental disorders.

from Child: Care, Health and Development

Adult cochlear implantation in Canada: Results of a survey

This paper presents the results of a survey of the adult cochlear implant centres in Canada. The survey was conducted in 2008 to examine trends in the cochlear implantation of adults in Canada between 1995 and 2007. All 12 Canadian programs, including nine surgical and three non-surgical centres, returned the questionnaire. The results showed that there has been signifi cant growth in adult cochlear implantation over the past 12 years, particularly since 1999. By 2007, a total of 2,534 adults had received implants in Canadian centres, 270 prior to 1995 and 2264 in the twelve-year period covered by this survey. In the past fi ve years (2003 through 2007), on average, 296 patients have received implants annually in Canada. The majority of adults who receive implants are under age 60; however, a notable trend in recent years is the implantation of adults over the age of 80 years. Major areas of concern for the centres are related to clinical resources (10 of 12 centres), clerical support (5 of 12) and surgical services (4 of 12). Respondents perceived that patients were most concerned about: 1) the costs of maintaining and upgrading their devices and, 2) access to both assessment and surgery in a timely manner. Respondents rated borderline audiologic candidacy, bilateral implantation and bimodal hearing (use of a cochlear implant and hearing aid) as the primary issues of interest for clinical discussions. These data provide baseline information about adult cochlear implant services in Canada that may assist in program planning and resource allocation.

from the Canadian Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology http://www.scopus.com/record/display.url?eid=2-s2.0-79952327028&origin=inward&txGid=-9KwX1JqOV6RlEjmvQl6NXB%3a8

Development of the Test de Phrases dans le Bruit (TPB)

The Test de Phras es dans le Bruit, which consists of fi ve French lists of 40 recorded sentences and a speech babble, was developed for use in evaluating speech perception in noise. The development of the sentence material was based on an approach that had previously been employed for the Speech Perception In Noise test. The key word familiarity of the sentences was tested, as well as the intelligibility in noise. Measures were also performed to obtain equivalent difference of scores between the high and low predictability sentences across the lists. Based on the results obtained with a subset of adult participants, it is believed that the sentence list sets that evolved from this work have the characteristics to be useful for the exploration of the underlying auditory and/or language-based origins of speech perception problems in noise among the Canadian French population. However, the present fi ndings should be interpreted with caution as only individuals with normal hearing function participated in the experiments. The results may not apply to individuals with speech perception problems in noise. Additional evaluations of the psychometric properties of the test must be performed before its clinical application. Nevertheless, these preliminary fi ndings suggest that further development of the Test de Phrases dans le Bruit is warranted.

from the Canadian Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology http://www.scopus.com/record/display.url?eid=2-s2.0-79952331249&origin=inward&txGid=-9KwX1JqOV6RlEjmvQl6NXB%3a6