PubMed HealthSearch

Biomedical subjects

J J Masterson

Publications and source records attributed to J J Masterson.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

Verbal analogical reasoning in children with language-learning disabilities.

This study was designed to explore the influences of both cognitive and linguistic abilities on verbal analogy completion. School-age children classified as language-learning disabled were administered five types of verbal analogies: synonyms, antonyms, linear order, category membership, and functional relationship. The performance of the children with language-learning disabilities was compared with one group of normally developing children matched for mental age and another group matched for language age. Results indicated that the group matched for mental age performed better than the other two groups on all types of analogies. Although they had significantly higher mental ages, the children with language-learning disabilities did no better than the language-matched group on any analogy type except antonyms.

Adolescent

The performance of children with language-learning disabilities on two types of cognitive tasks.

The performance of children with language-learning disabilities on two types of cognitive tasks was compared to that of two groups without language-learning disabilities, one matched for mental age and the other for language (vocabulary) age. The first task, Concept Formation, measured one's ability to identify and state the rule for a concept about a set of colored geometric figures when shown instances and noninstances of the concept. The second task, Analysis Synthesis, required the identification and use of a solution key to solve an incomplete logic puzzle. Both tasks involved increases in complexity as additional items were administered. Results indicate that the children with language-learning disabilities performed at a level commensurate with the language-matched group on the Concept Formation task, and at a level commensurate with the mental-age matched group on the Analysis-Synthesis task. The implications of these findings for the nature of language-learning disabilities are discussed.

Adolescent

Linguistic trade-offs in school-age children with and without language disorders.

Factors influencing the occurrence of trade-off effects among linguistic components were examined. Several linguistic measures were used to represent syntactic and phonological production in order to determine whether interrelationship patterns would vary across measures. Linguistic interactions present in imitated speech were compared to those from spontaneous speech. Group effects were explored by comparing data from children with language-learning disabilities, children with reading disabilities, and normally developing children. Results indicated trade-offs between some linguistic measures and positive relationships among others. More trade-offs were present in imitated speech than in spontaneous utterances. In general, interrelationship patterns were similar across groups. Interpretation of these results in reference to current models of sentence production is offered.

Child

The effects of sampling conditions on sentence production in normal, reading-disabled, and language-learning-disabled children.

This study explored the effects of contextual support, discourse genre, and the listener's knowledge of information on syntactic and phonologic production and fluency. Subjects were language-learning-disabled, reading-disabled, and normal primary school children. Clause structure complexity, fluency, and grammatical and phonemic accuracy tended to be highest when children were discussing absent referents, providing explanations and stories, and giving unshared information. These effects were generally the same across all groups, although some effects were significant for only the language-learning-disabled children. Several explanations for these findings are considered.

Child