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Biomedical subjects

J Q Simmons

Publications and source records attributed to J Q Simmons.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1995

Speech and language disorders in children and adolescents with schizophrenia.

This study examines communication characteristics and specific language deficits in 47 children and adolescents diagnosed with early-onset schizophrenia using DSM-III-R criteria. All had been referred for speech and language services because of apparent communication problems. Standardized tests and formal measures were used to identify impairment in discrete areas of communication, including pragmatics, receptive and expressive vocabulary and syntax, abstract language, auditory processing, and speech production. Results showed that these discrete areas were variably involved, with pragmatics, prosody, auditory processing, and abstract language having the greatest involvement. The communication deficits identified in the early-onset group closely resembled the phenomenology reported in studies of the communication characteristics of adults with schizophrenia. This comparison thus lends further support to the presence of the same disorder as seen in adults. The roles of gender, mental retardation, and seizure disorders are also discussed as additional risk factors in the development of communication problems and schizophrenia.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1987

Reward value of prosodic features of language for autistic, mentally retarded, and normal children.

The present study pursued hypotheses relevant to prosodic abnormalities in the expressive language of autistic children. An operant paradigm was employed to measure the intrinsic reinforcing value of a verbally presented story for autistic, mentally retarded, and normal groups controlling for chronological age and performance mental age. Results suggested that both autistic and mentally retarded children could perceive prosodic cues, although only mentally retarded children are able to use them in their expressive language. It was also suggested that linguistic stimuli may have less intrinsic reinforcement value for autistic and mentally retarded children than for normal children. Implications for future research and treatment were discussed.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed1985

Behavioral treatment approaches to pathological unsocialized physical aggression in young children.

This paper presents some hypotheses regarding the motivation of pathological unsocialized physical aggression in children and also reviews behavioral treatment. Tentative leads were offered as to extrinsic and intrinsic determinants. Among the most promising of these were parent-child interactive and attributive factors, and deficits in information processing in social situations. It was hypothesized that some of these factors might not be specific to pathological unsocialized physical aggression but are characteristic of children with behavior problems. Under this hypothesis, few studies were found which employed appropriate control groups. It was also hypothesized that the study of extrinsic and intrinsic factors for pathological unsocialized physical aggression may improve the design of treatment programs.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1984

Stimulus overselectivity in autistic and mentally retarded children--a research note.

Groups of autistic and mentally retarded children were compared for the degree of stimulus overselectivity manifested during test probes after discrimination learning. Results demonstrated that stimulus overselectivity was a function of diagnostic category when groups were equated for performance IQ and mental age. Procedures used to obtain IQ as well as discrimination learning rate were also shown to be equivalent. Pulse rate response suggested that the test probes may be assessing performance during the early trials of a transfer problem for both groups of children. Implications for 'one-look' models of discrimination learning were discussed.

Arousal↗
PubMed1981

Comparison of auditory stimulus processing in normal and autistic adolescents.

This experiment investigated the possibility that autistic adolescents may avoid speech communication with the world around them by "tuning out" or perceptually suppressing auditory speech stimuli. The tune-out auditory suppression hypothesis was investigated using the subject's own speech as the stimulus under three perceptual-motor conditions: with speech in a delayed auditory feedback (DAF) mode, with a white noise masking speech mode, and with speech in a normal, quiet listening mode. Five autistic adolescents were compared with six normal controls on speech time duration and sound level. DAF increased the speech sound pressure level (SPL) and increased speech time duration for both groups.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1977

Bedtime soliloquies and linguistic competence in autism.

This study investigates the linguistic competence of an autistic child by means of her bedtime soliloquies. It suggests the usefulness of such monologues as a diagnostic tool and addresses the question of the interrelationship between echolalia and language development. Three bedtime soliloquies of an eight-year-old echolalic autistic child are analyzed along the dimensions of echolalia versus propositional speech, types of ungrammaticality produced, and analysis of connected discourse. The results are compared with those of a normal child reported earlier in the literature. The present analysis demonstrates the difficulties in the judgement of propositional versus echolalic speech. The types of ungrammaticality were found to be useful indicators of apparent differences between the acquisition process in the normal and the autistic child. They revealed that the autistic child may use specific linguistic strategies only minimally utilized by the normal child. The discourse analysis points up additional differences as well as similarities in the way the autistic subject organizes her utterances in connected discourse. It also shows that the autistic child has specific but limited linguistic competence. It is hypothesized that the autistic subject acquires more functional, useful language by a process of gradually breaking down echolalic patterns. In terms of therapy, these findings would support the use of echolalia as a basis for language training.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed1976

Self-injurious behavior in schizophrenic and retarded children.

Self-injurious behavior is a problem with some children who are primarily nonverval and low-functioning. This behavior has resulted in management difficulties far out of proportion to its incidence. In the present paper, we have considered possible operant and respondent paradigms instrumental in the acquisition and maintenance of several different topographies of self-injurious behavior. Support for these paradigms was gathered from existing epidemiological literature dealing with humans and primates and from the literature concerned with treatment of self-injurious behavior. Immediate outcome and results of subsequent follow-up were presented as a function of type of intervention, the nature of positive reinforcement utilized, and the topography of the self-injurious response involved. Implications were drawn for future research and treatment.

Attention↗
PubMed1975

Language patterns of adolescent autistics.

The language samples of seven verbal autistic adolescents were analyzed. Linguistic deficits were compared to characteristics reported for preteen autistics and described structurally. Only four subjects demonstrated linguistic impairments. These clustered primarily in the area of prosodic features, semantic cooccurrence constraints and general disfluency. No such clustering had been reported for the preteen population. No correlation between linguistic deficits, IQ, and age was found. However, performance on the Seashore Test for Musical Ability correlated highly with linguistic performance. Results suggest that (a) autism includes liguistically, and possibly etiologically, distinct subtroups; (b) the basic linguistic deficits in autism may be more specific than thought previously; and (c) perception of prosodic features may be crucial for decoding and encoding linguistic signals. Autistic children may be lacking in this ability.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1975

Language in childhood psychosis: a review.

Childhood psychosis is a group of disorders characterized by numerous behavioral abnormalities, the most significant of which may well be in the area of language. Absence, delay, or deficit in linguistic development are frequently contributing factors to the retardation often associated with childhood psychosis. The literature on language in childhood psychosis covering the general characteristics of the linguistic deficits, the importance of language in diagnosis and prognosis, mother-child linguistic interaction, and intervention programs is reviewed. Recent psycholinguistic studies in normal development point up the present inadequacies or lack of structural linguistic studies in childhood psychosis. Some assumptions about innate linguistic capacities prerequisite to normal development are discussed and a hypothesis relating to a dysfunction in these capacities in childhood psychosis as well as directions for further research are proposed.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed1975

Non-Gaussian behavior of the EEG in Down's syndrome suggests decreased neuronal connections.

Computer analyses of the electroencephalograms of normal children, and children with Down's syndrome who were mentally retarded, revealed differences in the distribution of amplitude between the two groups. Normal children, in the early postnatal period, generate EEG's which have a non-Gaussian distribution of amplitude that becomes increasingly Gaussian before one year of age and remains so throughout subsequent development. Conversely, the EEG's of children with Down's syndrome exhibit highly non-Gaussian properties at all ages studied. The EEG's of two mentally retarded autistic children did not show this property, so it is not merely a concomitant of mental retardation. The first-order Gaussian distribution may reflect the degree of inteneuronal coupling; since an increased number of connections on any neuron implies decreased functional dependence of that neuron on any other particular single neuron, the present evidence, which indicates stronger interneuronal coupling in mongoloids, suggests that Down's syndrome may be associated with incomplete postnatal development of interconnections between cortical neurons.

Autistic Disorder↗