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PubMed1998

Story comprehension in children with ADHD.

A wealth of research is available examining children's story comprehension. However, little attention has been directed toward understanding the story comprehension of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The present paper attempts to integrate the developmental literature on children's story comprehension with the little that is known about the story comprehension processes of children with ADHD. This review is guided by a network model of story representation that emphasizes the structure of causal and enabling relations between story events. Examination of the available studies indicates that children with ADHD lag behind their peers in their understanding of causal relations, and that their attentional problems may contribute to difficulties in understanding factual information in the preschool years and causally related information in the elementary years. Some evidence also is presented suggesting that children with ADHD are less effective in taking advantage of story structure features in guiding their recall of story events. Suggestions for future research are offered that would elaborate our knowledge of the developmental progression in the processing of complex information by children with ADHD.

Age Factors↗

PubMed1999

The effect of Arabic vowels on the reading comprehension of second- and sixth-grade native Arab children.

This study investigated the effect of Arabic vowels on the reading comprehension of native Arabic speakers. This issue has not been addressed yet. Two groups of native Arabic speakers were randomly sampled, one from two elementary schools in the Haifa area, and the other from two elementary schools in Nazareth. Both groups in both experiments read Arabic texts in two reading conditions, vowelized and unvowelized; the older group (n = 74) answered 10 multiple-choice comprehension questions about each story, and the younger group (n = 71) answered seven multiple-choice comprehension questions. The results revealed that vowels were a significant facilitator of reading comprehension in both age groups. Considering these results, reading in Arabic orthography is not an autonomous word recognition process. An alternative approach is suggested for reading Arabic.

Arabs↗

PubMed2002

Information processing speed and sentence comprehension in Parkinson's disease.

This study tests the hypothesis that sentence comprehension difficulty in Parkinson's disease (PD) is related in part to altered information processing speed that plays a crucial role in grammatical processing. The authors measured information processing speed in 32 PD patients without dementia using a lexical list-priming paradigm in which the interstimulus interval (ISI) between the prime and the target varied. Sentence comprehension accuracy was also assessed in 22 of these patients. Sentence comprehension accuracy for object-relative center-embedded sentences was impaired in a subgroup of PD patients. This subgroup of PD patients primed at an abnormally long ISI. Similarly, only PD patients who primed at a long ISI had greater difficulty understanding sentences with an object-relative clause than a subject-relative clause. Findings suggest that slowed information processing speed contributes to sentence comprehension difficulty in PD.

Aged↗

PubMed1995

Perspectives of chronic pain: an evaluative comparison of restrictive and comprehensive models.

The authors compare theoretical perspectives of chronic pain using a restrictive comprehensive categorization. Four of the perspectives (mind-body dualism, psychological, radical operant--behavioral, and radical cognitive) are categorized as restrictive. The other 4 perspectives (International Association for the Study of Pain, gate control, nonradical operant--behavioral, and cognitive-behavioral) that incorporate multiple facets are categorized as comprehensive. On the basis of empirical support, practical application, and issues concerning potential research design problems, the restrictive perspectives could be rejected for not providing a model in which chronic pain can be thoroughly investigated. The comprehensive perspectives, however, demonstrate greater potential for serving that role. Nonetheless, the need for additional theory development by the comprehensive perspectives is noted.

Chronic Disease↗

PubMed1977

Extended comprehension practice applied to an aphasic patient.

A 47-year-old aphasic patient was given extensive practice in the comprehension of single lexical items. Training was begun one month postonset and was discontinued four months postonset. Production practice was not administered during the treatment period. Comprehension and production improved as measured by a number of language assessment tests. The findings of this case study suggest that comprehension practice results in the improvement of verbal production. Discussion of the comprehension approach as a method of language training is included.

Aphasia↗

PubMed1986

A comprehension monitoring program for language-impaired children.

Four language-impaired children (5:10-8:2) participated in an intervention program designed to improve their comprehension monitoring skills. A set of audiotaped adequate and inadequate messages was presented through the baseline and treatment phases of a multiple-baseline across subjects design, with the dependent variable being the percentage of inadequate messages that were verbally queried. Results revealed rapid increases in verbal queries of five types of inadequate messages in conjunction with progress through the comprehension monitoring treatment program. High levels of comprehension monitoring were maintained following a nontreatment interval of 3-6 weeks. Facilitation of comprehension monitoring skills appears to be a feasible and fruitful adjunct to traditional language intervention objectives.

Child↗

PubMed1979

Relationship between pictorial interpretation and comprehension of three spatial relations in school-age children.

Effects on spatial term comprehension as the result of transformations in the stimulus dimensions of six pictures containing the same three figures were explored using Piaget's concept of spatial perspective. A Modified Test of Pictorial Space (MTPS), adapted from Hudson's (1960) studies on non-Western pictorial perception strategies, was administered to 200 children, aged 6 yrs 5 mos to 11 yrs 3 mos. The purpose of the investigation was to gather data on (1) pictorial interpretation as a function of variations in perceptual depth cue complexity and transformations in conceptual perspective and (2) order of acquisition in the comprehension of two sets of spatial terms referring to perceptual object knowledge and more advanced conceptual knowledge of object relations. Significant age and IQ, but not sex, interactions were found for MTPS performance. Data analyses also supported predicted orders of acquisition and indicated that transformation of conceptual perspective better differentiated among the age span than did either perceptual depth cue complexity or comprehension of spatial terms. Findings are discussed in terms of their methodological and substantive implications for constructing and interpreting pictorially-based language comprehension tasks.

Age Factors↗

PubMed1980

Language comprehension in sensorimotor stages V and VI.

A cross-sectional study of language comprehension in relation to cognitive functioning in 48 to 10-to-21 month old children, 4 at each month of age, revealed significant correlations between comprehension and five sensorimotor subscales. Age, however, was the only significant predictor in multiple regression analyses adding either age or sensorimotor subscale in second. In specific instances in which sensorimotor tasks tapped hypothetical prerequisites to specific language comprehension items, the two domains corresponded closely; but the cognitive domain was not always the first to be passed. Comprehension items were ordered from easy to hard as follows: 1) understanding single words for present people or objects; 2) for actions; 3) for absent people or objects; 4) understanding two words for the semantic relations possessor-posession, action-object, and agent-action; 5) understanding three words for agent-action-object. Implications for the Cognition Hypothesis are discussed.

Age Factors↗

PubMed1984

Reflectivity bias in picture-pointing grammatical comprehension tasks.

Two studies, one correlational and one experimental, supported the hypothesis that 4- and 5-year-olds' performance on a picture-pointing grammatical comprehension task administered under standard procedures is highly influenced by reflectivity style. In the first study, a substantial correlation was obtained between reflectivity and picture-pointing grammatical comprehension task performance. This correlation was significantly greater than that between reflectivity and object-manipulation grammatical comprehension task performance. In the second study, a reflectivity-promoting but grammatically irrelevant modification in the administration of the picture-pointing task resulted in significantly improved comprehension scores and a significantly lower correlation with reflectivity.

Age Factors↗

PubMed1991

The role of target word stress in auditory comprehension by aphasic listeners.

The present investigation was designed to determine the influence of stressed word prosody on auditory comprehension by listeners with aphasia. Paragraph-length narratives were computer-edited to yield two conditions. In one condition, both the target words and the surrounding context were prosodically neutral; in the second condition, target words were stressed and the surrounding contexts were prosodically neutral. The paragraph-length stimuli were presented to 10 aphasic listeners and their comprehension was tested. Analysis revealed that prosodic information carried only by stressed target words, within paragraph-length stimuli, did not provide significant comprehension benefits to aphasic listeners. The comprehension improvement typically observed when paragraph-length narratives are stressed is, therefore, most likely due to prosodic cues that precede stress-bearing target words.

Adult↗

PubMed1992

Young children's idiom comprehension: trying to get the picture.

Young children (3.5-6.5 years of age) were tested for their comprehension of 10 common idioms in context and no-context conditions. Results revealed a significant linear trend for children to make more literal responses with increasing age. Children of this age did not find the story contexts helpful in interpreting the idioms. A range of comprehension scores was found among the individual idioms, but semantic transparency (as judged by adults) was not related to comprehension. Child-internal and methodologic variables influencing idiom comprehension are discussed.

Child↗

PubMed2000

Mechanisms of discourse comprehension impairment after right hemisphere brain damage: suppression in lexical ambiguity resolution.

Normal comprehension skill is linked with the proficiency of a suppression mechanism, which functions to dampen mental activation that becomes irrelevant or inappropriate to a final interpretation. This study investigated suppression and discourse comprehension in adults with right brain damage (RBD). To index suppression function, 40 adults with RBD and 40 without brain damage listened to sentence stimuli that biased the meaning of a sentence-final lexical ambiguity (e.g., SPADE), then judged whether a probe word (e.g., CARDS) fit the overall sentence meaning. Probes represented the contextually inappropriate meanings of the ambiguities and were presented in two conditions: 175 ms and 1000 ms post-stimulus. The same probes were used with unambiguous comparison stimuli. Probe judgment response times indicated that only the group without brain damage suppressed inappropriate interpretations over time. In a multiple regression analysis, suppression function added significantly to predicting performance on a general measure of narrative discourse comprehension for participants with RBD. The discussion addresses how suppression deficits may account more broadly for comprehension difficulties after RBD; it also considers several unresolved issues concerning the suppression construct and the suppression deficit hypothesis.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

Bovine chromosome 4 workshop: consensus and comprehensive linkage maps.

The report of the bovine chromosome 4 (BTA4) workshop is presented. Six laboratories contributed a total of 30,168 informative meioses from 62 loci. Twenty-two loci were typed by at least two independent laboratories and were used to construct a consensus linkage map of BTA4. The remaining 40 loci were subsequently incorporated into a comprehensive map. The sex-averaged consensus map covered 131.4 cM. The female map was 124.3 cM in length, while the male map was 134.3 cM. The comprehensive sex-averaged map spanned 141.6 cM. The length of the female and male comprehensive maps were 123.1 cM and 156.4 cM, respectively. Average genetic distance between loci was 6 and 2.3 cM for the consensus and comprehensive linkage maps, respectively.

Animals↗

PubMed2002

Consensus and comprehensive linkage maps of bovine chromosome 24.

This study describes development of a consensus genetic linkage map of bovine chromosome 24 (BTA24). Eight participating laboratories contributed data for 58 unique markers including a total of 25 409 meioses. Eighteen markers, which were typed in more than one reference population, were used as potential anchors to generate a consensus framework map. The framework map contained 16 loci ordered with odds greater than 1000:1 and spanned 79.3 cM. Remaining markers were included in a comprehensive map relative to these anchors. The resulting BTA24 comprehensive map was 98.3 cM in length. Average marker intervals were 6.1 and 2.5 cM for framework and comprehensive maps, respectively. Marker order was generally consistent with previously reported BTA24 linkage maps. Only one discrepancy was found when comparing the comprehensive map with the published USDA-MARC linkage map. Integration of genetic information from different maps provides a high-resolution BTA24 linkage map.

Animals↗

PubMed1999

Comprehensive Breast Centers: Priorities and Pitfalls.

Comprehensive breast centers are developed for a variety of reasons, but the major motivations are usually to reduce psychological morbidity, develop an interdisciplinary team, provide comprehensive services in a patient-focused manner, improve clinical and emotional outcomes, and develop an organized "system" of care. However, the development of "comprehensive" breast centers presents far more of a challenge than a breast-imaging center and must be undertaken with great care and commitment. If the medical staff and operational issues are not appropriately identified and addressed, the long-term success will be threatened. Each breast center is different, but some of the principal priorities and pitfalls are described. The priorities relate to breast subspecialization, access and coordination, prospective treatment planning, and comprehensive programmatic services. Among the many potential pitfalls, the focus in this article is operational and OncoPolitics.

Journal Article↗

PubMed1990

Teaching reading comprehension skills to spina bifida children.

Thirteen children with spina bifida (mean age 11 yrs 11 mths) and a mean reading comprehension reading deficit of 10.5 mths were enrolled into a remedial programme. The withdrawal single case study methodology was used (baseline--5 weeks, treatment--5 weeks, withdrawal--12 weeks). Each child was seen twice a week for 15 minutes during both the baseline and treatment stages. A teaching programme based on a close technique was utilized only during the treatment stage. The technique involved teaching each child a strategy for systematically examining a text for meaning. A halving of the comprehension deficit was observed by the end of the treatment stage, with a mean regression of almost 3 months at the end of the withdrawal stage. No relationship between IQ and gains in reading comprehension was observed. The results may indicate that, in part, reading comprehension deficits are performance deficits which, in turn, may be mediated by attentional strategies.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1979

Comprehension and memory of prose materials by young and old adults.

Twenty-seven young (X- = 27.3 years) and twenty-seven old (X- = 67.7 years) female volunteers participated in a study of the effect of vocabulary level upon memory and comprehension of prose materials. Comprehension was measured by presenting five multiple choice questions simultaneously with half of the prose passages. Memory was measured with the rest of the materials by presenting questions only after a passage was completed and removed from sight. The results indicated that age-related differences varied inversely with vocabulary levels but did not interact with type of task. No significant differences were found between age groups at the highest vocabulary level. The parallel findings for the two tasks suggest that inadequate comprehension represents one major factor underlying age-related differences in the retention of meaningful materials. A second memory task, not dependent upon accuracy of comprehension, indicated age-related differences at all vocabulary levels. This suggests that old adults may also hve deficits in the ability to maintain in store and/or retrieve meaningful materials.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Resistance of grammatical impairment to computerized comprehension training in children with specific and non-specific language impairments.

BACKGROUND: Receptive language impairments in school-age children have a poor prognosis, yet there is a dearth of research on effective interventions. AIMS: Children's responses to a computerized grammatical training program were evaluated to consider whether repeated responding to spoken sentences with variable semantic content and the same syntactic structure would lead to consistent and fluent comprehension. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Children with receptive language impairments aged from 8 to 13 years were randomly assigned to three groups: Group S (n = 12) responded to reversible sentences in a computerized game, using speech stimuli with pauses before critical phrases. Group M (n = 12) had the same stimuli acoustically modified to lengthen and amplify dynamic portions of the signal. Group U (n = 9) was an untrained control group. On average, children in groups S and M completed over 1000 training trials, focusing on training comprehension of reversible sentences. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Although responses speeded up over the course of training, and most children performed well above chance, accuracy typically remained below 95% correct for constructions such as above/below and reversible active/passive. Trained groups did not differ from untrained children on language or auditory outcomes. There was no evidence that acoustically modified speech input enhanced comprehension. CONCLUSIONS: Rote training of comprehension of reversible sentences does not seem to be an effective approach to remediating such problems. For most children, the pattern of performance suggested that the problem was not a lack of syntactic knowledge, bur rather limited processing capacity that led to failures of on-line computation of meaning.

Adolescent↗