PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

W von Suchodoletz

Publications and source records attributed to W von Suchodoletz.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

[Validity of a short form of the ELFRA-2 (German Version of the CDI-Toddler Form) for early identification of late talkers].

BACKGROUND: Parents' questionnaires are assumed to be reliable instruments for early identification of language retardation. The general use of the ELFRA-2 in practice, however, is limited by its length. The goal of the study was to construct and to evaluate a short version. SUBJECTS AND METHOD: The ELFRA-2 was sent to 1397 parents shortly before their child's second birthday. The return rate of the questionnaire was 71%. Questionnaires of monolingual German speaking children were included in the study (n=866) and randomly divided into two samples. From the first sample the most informative word categories were extracted by means of regression analysis and were used to compose a short form. With the second independent sample the validity of the short version was determined. RESULTS: By means of stepwise regression analysis within the first sample a short version consisting of 42 items was developed. The correlation between scores of the short and the long version was high (r=0.95) and the classification (no language retardation vs. late talker) was congruent for most children. The sensitivity and the specifity of the short form were 83% and 97%, respectively. For the prediction of language impairment at the age of three years the short and the long version reached similar detection rates. CONCLUSIONS: The results show that the validity of the short and the long form are comparable with respect to detection of late talkers. The time necessary to complete the short version allows its application during standard check-up examinations of children at the age of two years, and also to immediately discuss its result with the parents. Before the short form can be applied in pediatric practice, however, a standardization is necessary.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed2006

[Television in a child's bedroom--a possible risk factor for expressive language impairment in 5- and 6-year-old children].

OBJECTIVE: There are a number of established risk factors for expressive language-impairment. Does reading aloud with children reduce the risk? Are extensive TV viewing and a TV set in the child's bedroom associated with an increased risk in preschool kids? PATIENTS AND METHODS: Testing for expressive language impairment was carried out as part of the school entrance health examinations in four Bavarian districts. Testing included: correct use of the plural, comparative/superlative forms, syntax, verb flexion and use of articles (a maximum of 5 mistakes could be made). Parents were asked to answer a questionnaire on a number of biographic, sociodemographic and lifestyle factors potentially related to expressive language impairment. RESULTS: The participation rate in the 4 districts was 88.3 % on average. Complete data were acquired for 3234 children. The prevalence for expressive language impairment (more than one mistake) was 12.2 (95 % CI: 11.3-13.2 %). Children who did not speak German predominantly at home were more often affected than children of German nationality: 44.4 % (95 % CI: 32.3-54.6 %) versus 9.9 % (95 % CI: 8.9 %-10.8 %). Logistic regression analyses identified only a TV set in the child's bedroom as an independent risk factor for expressive language impairment: OR 1.82 (95 % CI: 1.15-2.88). CONCLUSIONS: Possession of an own TV in a child's bedroom appears to be an important, independent risk factor for expressive language impairment in preschool children.

Child↗
PubMed2006

Auditory language comprehension in children with developmental dyslexia: evidence from event-related brain potentials.

In the present study, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were used to compare auditory sentence comprehension in 16 children with developmental dyslexia (age 9-12 years) and unimpaired controls matched on age, sex, and nonverbal intelligence. Passive sentences were presented, which were either correct or contained a syntactic violation (phrase structure) or a semantic violation (selectional restriction). In an overall sentence correctness judgment task, both control and dyslexic children performed well. In the ERPs, control children and dyslexic children demonstrated a similar N400 component for the semantic violation. For the syntactic violation, control children demonstrated a combined pattern, consisting of an early starting bilaterally distributed anterior negativity and a late centro-parietal positivity (P600). Dyslexic children showed a different pattern that is characterized by a delayed left lateralized anterior negativity, followed by a P600. These data indicate that dyslexic children do not differ from unimpaired controls with respect to semantic integration processes (N400) or controlled processes of syntactic reanalyses (P600) during auditory sentence comprehension. However, early and presumably highly automatic processes of phrase structure building reflected in the anterior negativity are delayed in dyslexic children. Moreover, the differences in hemispheric distribution of the syntactic negativity indicate different underlying processes in dyslexic children and controls. The bilateral distribution in controls suggests an involvement of right hemispherically established prosodic processes in addition to the left hemispherically localized syntactic processes, supporting the view that prosodic information may be used to facilitate syntactic processing during normal comprehension. The left hemispheric distribution observed for dyslexic children, in contrast, suggests that these children do not rely on information about the prosodic contour during auditory sentence comprehension as much as controls do. This finding points toward a phonological impairment in dyslexic children that might hamper the development of syntactic processes.

Child↗
PubMed2004

[Significance of auditory processing deficits for the pathogenesis of reading and spelling disorders].

OBJECTIVE: It has been claimed that children with dyslexia show auditory processing deficits and a training of auditory perception is recommended as a therapy. this study addresses the question whether a causal connection between auditory perception and dyslexia can be proven empirically. METHOD: 27 dyslexic children with average intelligence and normal hearing and 31 controls were examined. The auditory perception ability was judged with non-linguistic (pitch, tone duration, sound discrimination tasks) and verbal (speech in noise, compressed speech) tasks. In addition auditory short-term memory, nonverbal IQ, spelling and language ability were assessed. RESULTS: Group differences were found in tone processing tasks, but not in sound discrimination or auditory verbal tasks. Despite significant main effects in tone processing tasks the individual values of the dyslexic children lay predominantly in the range of the controls. In addition, there was no correlation between tone processing and spelling ability. CONCLUSION: Dyslexic children do not show remarkable deficits in verbal auditory processing. Auditory low level deficits can only be observed within a small subgroup. There is no evidence for central auditory dysfunction as a cause of dyslexia. The relevance of auditory processing training for treatment programmes for dyslexia should be questioned.

Agraphia↗
PubMed2004

[Trial of time processing training in children with reading and spelling disorders].

OBJECTIVE: It has been suggested that training in temporal processing may significantly improve language processing and reading skills. However, improvement effects of training on language impairment or dyslexia have not been proven so far. In the present study a temporal processing training was evaluated. METHOD: The participants of the present study were 42 children (5th graders) of a special school for children with reading and spelling problems. Children of one class (n = 21) were assigned to a training group (n = 21), the other class to a control group. Children in the training group took part in a training program consisting of auditory and visual order threshold and sound localisation tasks, over a period of eight weeks. We determined the order thresholds, sound localisation ability and reading and spelling performance of all children before and after the training period. Six months later all subjects were re-tested. RESULTS: Auditory and visual order thresholds decreased significantly more in the training group than in the control group. However, these changes were not accompanied by improvements in reading or spelling skills. CONCLUSIONS: In the present study no training effects on reading and writing performance were observed by using a program including temporal processing tasks. It is questionable whether training programs of temporal processing are useful methods in therapy of dyslexic children.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

[Speech and language development disorders in children].

Despite their frequency and clinical relevance, disturbances in the acquirement of language skills are not infrequently overlooked or are recognized too late, in particular when the problem is speech understanding, or when behavioral disturbances predominate. Diagnostic guidelines differentiate between circumscribed articulation disorders and expressive and receptive speech problems. The diagnostic work-up must take account of the changes in symptoms occurring during the course of the child's development. Mental comorbidity may be observed in every second speech-disordered child. For the operationalized establishment of speech performance--also during the course of treatment--greater use should be made of standardized test procedures. In order to early recognize speech acquisition disorders, the regular use of pediatric routine diagnostic should be practiced. With regard to management, direct treatment of the child--especially when very young--should taken second place to training of the parents on language-furthering behavior.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2002

Automatic processing of tones and speech stimuli in children with specific language impairment.

It is well known from behavioural experiments that children with specific language impairment (SLI) have difficulties discriminating consonant-vowel (CV) syllables such as /ba/, /da/, and /ga/. Mismatch negativity (MMN) is an auditory event-related potential component that represents the outcome of an automatic comparison process. It could, therefore, be a promising tool for assessing central auditory processing deficits for speech and non-speech stimuli in children with SLI. MMN is typically evoked by occasionally occurring 'deviant' stimuli in a sequence of identical 'standard' sounds. In this study MMN was elicited using simple tone stimuli, which differed in frequency (1000 versus 1200 Hz) and duration (175 versus 100 ms) and to digitized CV syllables which differed in place of articulation (/ba/, /da/, and /ga/) in children with expressive and receptive SLI and healthy control children (n=21 in each group, 46 males and 17 females; age range 5 to 10 years). Mean MMN amplitudes between groups were compared. Additionally, the behavioural discrimination performance was assessed. Children with SLI had attenuated MMN amplitudes to speech stimuli, but there was no significant difference between the two diagnostic subgroups. MMN to tone stimuli did not differ between the groups. Children with SLI made more errors in the discrimination task, but discrimination scores did not correlate with MMN amplitudes. The present data suggest that children with SLI show a specific deficit in automatic discrimination of CV syllables differing in place of articulation, whereas the processing of simple tone differences seems to be unimpaired.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed2000

Stability of mismatch negativities in children.

OBJECTIVES AND METHODS: Mismatch negativities (MMN) to frequency and duration changes in a series of repetitive tones and to two different consonant-vowel syllables (ba and ga, standard da) were recorded in a test and retest session in 15 children aged 7-11 years. Reliability within one session and stability between the sessions of MMN amplitudes and the ERP-components P1 and N1 were determined by correlation coefficients. RESULTS: Mean amplitudes of the grand averages showed a decrease of MMN during the second test session in a late latency window (400-500 ms) for the frequency MMN and of the MMN elicited by speech stimuli. The individual stability reached significance only for the duration deviant and one of the syllables. Compared to results found in adults with similar stimulus conditions the stability of the MMN in children seems to be somewhat lower. The components P1 and N1 to both stimulus types (tone and speech), however, showed a high reliability and individual stability. CONCLUSION: While MMN is a useful tool to study processing deficits in groups of children, as e.g. in language-impaired children, MMN as a individual diagnostic measure should be interpreted very cautiously.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

[Perception of stress by mothers of children with language development disorders].

Subject of this study is the maternal stress as a result of the disabilities of language impaired children. The report concentrates on the influence of the children disabilities and the maternal coping strategies on the stress in the families. The study is based on an inquiry of 98 mothers with speech and language impaired children. Nearly 50% of the mothers suffer from stress because of their children' disabilities. Special caregiving demands, family conflicts, anxiety about the child future, depressive mood, aggressive feeling or deception were often experienced by the mothers as a direct consequence of their child's problems. The correlation of this specific maternal stress with general stress factors was insignificant. The maternal stress was more due to the attention deficits and the behavioural problems of the children than to the language delay. An increased level of stress was hardly related to the severity of the impairment, but to the maternal coping strategies. Mothers applying emotion focused coping strategies experienced more stress than those who predominantly used problem focused strategies. The results prove that mothers of children with even minor disabilities feel overstrained by their children' disorders. During counseling experts should attach more importance to deal with the needs and wishes of mothers and families of language impaired children. Reduction of family stress can be achieved by intervention programs helping the mothers to improve their psychological resources.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

[Reliability of parameters of cognitive evoked P3 potentials].

Reliability of event-related P3 parameters. Various parameters of the P3 wave were tested for reliability and test-retest stability. To this end, event-related P3 waves were evoked in 21 subjects during visual and auditory oddball tasks. The protocol was repeated one to two weeks later. Amplitude, latency and area between P3 and baseline were estimated by different procedures. The stability within and between sessions was assessed with the split-half method and a measure of test-retest reliability, respectively. A literature review revealed that latency estimation is most commonly done by computer-aided peak measurement, but determining peak parameters visually after interpellating superimposed artifacts turned out to be significantly more reliable. Interrater reliability for this visual inspection was very high if preestablished rules were employed. Amplitude and area were measured reliably by both computer-aided procedures and visual inspection. The area was quite stable both within and between sessions. Area can serve as a measure of cerebral activation and should therefore be determined. Based on the results recommendations are made about analyzing components of event-related potentials. The need to control for error variance is emphasized. This is the only way to improve methods enough that they will be suitable for use in single case diagnosis.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

[Landau-Kleffner syndrome].

The Landau-Kleffner syndrome is characterized by the combination of acquired aphasia and epilepsy. Disturbances appear at an age between 2 and 7 years. The prognosis of epilepsy is favourable, but the outcome of aphasia is different. A 15-year old boy is described as one who is totally unable to communicate through speech even 11 years after onset of aphasia. Diagnostics, aetiology, pathophysiology and new therapeutic possibilities of the syndrome are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1988

[Relations between psychological stress and EEG correlations].

In the present study inquiries have been made about the changes EEG cross-correlation in mental activities is subject to. The EEG recordings were made at rest, in visual and acoustical response, when reading and in the solution of an acoustical differentiation problem. In conjunction with plain reflex processes a decline in the intrahemispherical correlation was observed. During complex-structured psycho-request situations dissimilar changes in the EEG correlation have occurred on the scalp. Between the cerebral regions functionally essential for the solution of the problems, an increase in the bio-electric correlation and between other cerebral areas a decline were registered. The findings in conclusion come to realize that the topographic EEG cross-correlation analysis is appropriate to give an insight into the present situation of cerebral functional organization.

Arousal↗
PubMed1988

[Possibilities and limits of the diagnosis of specific learning disorders with neurophysiologic methods of study].

EEG correlation analyses were conducted with children with and without specific learning weaknesses. Reduced left parietal correlation was found in children with dyslectic problems, and in children with adjustment and concentration problems, reduced bioelectric correlation. The frequent evidence of brain injury criteria suggests a link with general affectations of correlation but not specifically with cerebral correlation affections. It would appear to be appropriate to employ computer-assisted EEG correlation analysis, together with frequency analysis and the examination of evoked potentials in objective neurometric diagnosis where children with learning weaknesses are involved.

Cerebral Cortex↗