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PubMed1981

Sensorimotor skills and language comprehension in autistic children.

The objectives of this study were to examine the level of sensorimotor concepts of young autistic children and to relate these concepts to language comprehension. A sample of 16 autistic children with a mean mental age of 24.8 months was administered a standardized scale of sensorimotor intelligence and of receptive language. The autistic children demonstrated surprisingly sophisticated sensorimotor skills, particularly object permanence. While their initial performance was inferior to that of normal controls matched on mental age, particularly in their use of objects in combination, the difference between groups diminished on the second test administration. On the receptive language measure, the autistic children were less able to identify words correctly. The sensorimotor behavior of autistic children who demonstrated language comprehension did not differ from those who showed no language comprehension, except that the former group tended to use an object as an instrument somewhat more frequently. The fact that the autistic children were so impaired in language even with fairly good sensorimotor skills suggests that these skills, particularly object permanence, play a minor role in their language acquisition.

Age Factors↗

PubMed1980

Social class differences in children's comprehension of adult language.

Twenty-five mothers of all social class levels were asked to tell, as if to a 6-year-old child, the stories suggested by several cartoon picture sequences. These stories, tape-recorded, were played to a hundred 6-year-old white male children of high and low social class levels, who were then asked standard comprehension questions about their content. Analysis of the comprehension scores revealed significant main effects of social class of adult speaker and of social class of child listener but no interaction of these two variables. Further analysis of transcriptions of the stories revealed two characteristics, namely the factual information included in the stories and the use of nonstandard grammar, which seemed to mediate the effects of both social class and speaker IQ on comprehension.

Adult↗

PubMed1989

Body image and comprehension of body part names.

The relation between awareness of body topology and auditory comprehension of body part names was studied in 22 aphasic subjects. Two nonverbal tasks--human figure drawing and placement of individual body parts in relation to a drawn face--were compared with two auditory tests of body part comprehension. The two nonverbal and the two verbal tasks were closely correlated with each other, but there was no relation involving either of the verbal tests with either of the nonverbal tests. Selection errors in the auditory comprehension tasks were predominantly semantically based and equally distributed between functionally analogous parts and parts related by location on the body.

Aged↗

PubMed1980

Seriators' and nonseriators' comprehension of comparative adjective forms.

The relationship between comprehension of relational adjective forms and seriation ability was assessed for 60 children aged 4-6. Three groups, operational seriators, intuitive seriators, and nonseriators, were given a test measuring comprehension of affirmative and negative comparative and equative forms. Results indicated that operationals understood more forms than intuitives and that intuitives comprehended more than nonseriators. When age differences between groups were minimized, the latter but not the former difference was preserved. This suggests that significant growth in linguistic comprehension accompanies the emergence of the ability to order objects by size. Analysis of errors indicated that nonseriators interpreted statements dichotomously and ignored the standard more than seriators. Findings help to clarify the relationship between linguistic and cognitive development for parallel underlying structures.

Child↗

PubMed1981

Comprehension and production of the /-ez/ plural allomorph.

Children's knowledge of morphological elements has traditionally been tested using Berko-type production tasks. Failure to respond correctly in this task may reflect production constraints independent of underlying linguistic knowledge. Accordingly, a detailed comparison of the comprehension of one morphological unit, the /-ez/ plural allomorph, was investigated. Two groups of subjects were tested; (1) those who produced this allomorph correctly and (2) those who failed to produce it. For the subjects as a group, the results indicated that children who could produce the /-ez/ allomorph in nonsense word contexts performed significantly better than children who were unable to produce this allomorph. An analysis of individual performance indicated that almost all of the subjects who produced the /-ez/ allomorph correctly reliably comprehended it. A little more than half of the subjects who failed to produce it evidenced reliable comprehension. The conclusion was drawn that comprehension learning precedes production learning and that production-type tasks may consistently underestimate linguistic knowledge.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed1993

Comprehension and expression of affect in language-impaired children.

Eight children with developmental language impairment (LI) and eight age-, sex-, socioeconomic-status-, and I.Q.-matched controls were given tests of comprehension and expression of affective intent in spoken language and through facial expression. The LI children performed significantly more poorly than did controls in both comprehension and spontaneous expression of vocal affect. On tasks involving emotional facial expression, the opposite results were observed: The LI children were more dramatic in their expression of facial affect than were the controls. Children with language impairment appear to have a deficit in affective comprehension and expression that is modality-specific, i.e., limited to vocal affect. The heightened range of affective facial expression that they demonstrate may be a compensatory mechanism to offset their difficulties with vocal affect.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1991

Authorial intentions and metaphor comprehension.

Three experiments investigated the role of authorial intentions in metaphor comprehension. In these studies, subjects read metaphoric (e.g., "A family album is like a museum"), literal (e.g., "An art gallery is like a museum"), and anomalous (e.g., "A tortoise shell is like an art gallery") comparisons and rated their degree of meaningfulness (Experiment 1), made speeded decisions as to whether each phrase was meaningful or not (Experiment 2), or wrote out interpretations of each comparison statement (Experiment 3). The subjects were told that the comparisons were written either by famous 20th century poets or by a computer program that randomly generated the statements from a list of words. Our general hypothesis was that knowing that intentional agents (the poets) authored the different comparisons should facilitate subjects' comprehension of the metaphors. Experiment 1 showed that subjects rated both metaphoric and literal comparisons as being more meaningful in the poet condition than when these statements were supposedly written by computer. Experiment 2 demonstrated that subjects were faster in making their meaningfulness judgments for metaphors in the poet condition than in the computer context, but that subjects were also slower in rejecting anomalous comparisons when these were supposedly written by the poets. Experiment 3 indicated that subjects produced more meanings or interpretations for comparisons presumably written by poets than by computer. These results highlight the importance of implied, authorial intentions in understanding metaphorical statements. We discuss the implications of this work for psycholinguistic theories of figurative language comprehension, as well as for theories of literary interpretation.

Adult↗

PubMed1977

Comprehensive community mental health center- business community relationship: a reexamination.

In this paper the belief that nonprofit service organizations and profit-motivated organizations should function separately from each other is questioned. Several of the advantages inherent from a cooperative relationship between comprehensive community mental health centers and the business community for the worker, mental health professional, comprehensive community mental health center, and business are discussed. Possible negative emotional responses against this new alliance are presented and dispelled. A joint effort between comprehensive community mental health centers and the business community is anticipated to develop with the common goal being the promotion of mental health.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗

PubMed1979

Comprehension skill levels and prevalence of maladaptive behaviors in autistic and mentally retarded children. A statistical study.

A statistical study on the comparison of the comprehension skill levels between the group with and the group without each maladaptive behavior of nine items was done for autistic and mentally retarded children. Results indicated that the group of the autistic children with hyperactivity or withdrawal had slightly, not significantly, lower comprehension skill levels than the group of those without each of these maladaptive behaviors. On the other hand, the correlation between the prevalence of hyperactivity or withdrawal and lower comprehension skill levels was seen more clearly, with statistically significant differences, rather among the mentally retarded children.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Comprehensive two-dimensional liquid chromatography.

Having nearly exhausted the possibilities for generating peak capacity through improvements in column technology, chromatographers are increasingly looking to alternative ways of maximising chromatographic separation. In recent years there has been increasing activity in the field of comprehensive multidimensional separations to meet analysis demands. Comprehensive two-dimensional liquid chromatography (LCxLC) approaches offer high peak capacity which leads to significantly improved analytical performance over single-column liquid chromatography. There are several closely related avenues available for achieving an LCxLC separation and this review pays special attention to the different valve-based interfaces that have been used to comprehensively couple the first and second dimension columns in LCxLC systems. A brief discussion of column choices for selected applications and the conditions employed is also presented.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2001

Scoring corporate environmental reports for comprehensiveness: a comparison of three systems.

Corporate annual environmental reports can be judged by the comprehensiveness of their coverage; this paper uses three published comprehensiveness scoring systems to judge 28 such reports (mostly dated 1998) from large US corporations. Earlier (nominally 1996) reports from the same companies were previously scored using one or two of the same systems, and the published results are compared with scores from the current round of reports. The scores of all three scoring systems are significantly correlated for the 1998 environmental reports, indicating that to some degree they are scoring the same features, but with quite a lot of scatter between the scores of one of the systems and those of the other two. There is, however, no correlation between the scores on the 1996 reports and the 1998 reports using the same systems on both. Evidently, most of the 1998 reports were not prepared with the intent of maximizing scores from any of the three scoring systems. Although the three systems achieve similar ranking of the 1998 reports for environmental comprehensiveness, the average normalized scores of one of the systems is significantly higher than those of the other two, reflecting a shorter list of topics and one more in keeping with the practices of the report writers. Because the scoring systems measure the number of topics covered and the depth of discussion rather than the quality of environmental performance, maximum scores could be obtained even with poor performance.

Conservation of Natural Resources↗

PubMed2005

In conclusion: the promise of comprehensive cancer control.

THE PROMISE OF COMPREHENSIVE CANCER CONTROL: Operationally, comprehensive cancer control (CCC) brings together diverse experts and interested partners to review together the cancer experience of their community, to identify key areas in need of improvement, to develop collaborative approaches to address individual and system changes and strategies to meet the needs of the population, and to combine resources - fiscal, relational, and intellectual - to maximize positive outcomes. Specific positive outcomes related to CCC are as follows: Comprehensive cancer plans; A cadre of collaborating partners; Support for the continuum of cancer-related functions and needs; New opportunities to learn and build skills; Coordinated appeals for federal, state, and private resources; Combined strategies to address major system changes that individual programs could not hope to address on their own; and Greater impact than single programs or partners could accomplish alone. A NUMBER OF FACTORS CAN AT TIMES IMPEDE SUCCESS: Sustainability; Resources; and Competition. Continuing the extraordinary progress of the past 5 years will fundamentally alter the trajectory of cancer and the burden of this disease in the United States. The readers are challenged to add their voices, skills, resources, perspectives, connections, and passion to this remarkable effort.

Health Planning↗

PubMed1995

When passives are easier than actives: two case studies of aphasic comprehension.

We outline a range of previous theoretical accounts of agrammatic comprehension in patients with Broca's aphasia. Specific attention is paid to patterns of preserved and impaired understanding of reversible actives and passives. We note that no prior account will allow for the existence of patients who show better comprehension of passives than actives. In three experiments, we compare and contrast the performance of two patients whose syntactic comprehension ability is in complementary distribution. The first patient (M.H.) performs well on simple actives, active questions, and active existentials, but is below chance on their corresponding passives. The second patient (B.M.) is at chance on simple actives, active questions and active existentials while scoring significantly above chance on their respective passives. We interpret both patterns of response in terms of the distinction drawn by Case theory between structural and inherent Case. The first patient's grammar cannot assign either structural or inherent Case and she must accordingly apply a non-linguistic linear strategy to assign thematic roles in all sentences. The second patient (B.M.) has a specific impairment of structural Case; he can accordingly not interpret actives (where Case is assigned configurationally) but can interpret passives (where Case is assigned lexically).

Adult↗

PubMed1996

Comprehension of reversible sentences in "agrammatism": a meta-analysis.

The functional source(s) of agrammatic aphasic patients' difficulty comprehending semantically reversible active and passive sentences was investigated in a meta-analysis of published sentence/picture matching data from patients with agrammatic production. The analysis revealed approximately equal distributions of three distinct patterns of performance on active and passive voice sentences relative to what would be expected by chance: both structures comprehended better than chance; both structures comprehended no better than chance; active voice sentences comprehended better than chance, while passive voice sentences were comprehended at levels no better than (or worse than) chance. These results are in conflict with explanations of aphasic sentence comprehension failure in which a single pattern of relative performance on active and passive voice structures is asserted to be characteristic of the comprehension of all agrammatic speakers. They also highlight the difficulty of identifying any single causal factor to account for sentence comprehension failure in patients with "agrammatic" sentence production. Results are interpreted with regard to the role of data from aphasic patients in the testing of hypotheses about the organization of normal language processes.

Aphasia, Broca↗

PubMed1979

Comprehension training with aphasic subjects: the development and application of five automated language programs.

Automated comprehension training was utilized to present five original language programs to seven aphasic adults. Subjects were required to attend to visual and auditory stimuli and to solve problems through language comprehension by pressing transparent panels over four pictured choices. Subjects were pre- and posttested with an automated probe containing those linguistic structures presented in the training programs. Results indicated significant improvement in the comprehension of certain linguistic structures as measured by performances on repeated program trials and by probe testing. Qualitative information relative to program construction and administration is included in the discussion.

Adult↗

PubMed1980

Assessment of language comprehension of 6-year-old deaf children.

Sixty-five 6-yr-old children from the New York State Schools for the Deaf were given the assessment of children's language comprehension (ACLC), administered orally and manually, along with a specially designed test of receptive language, the syntax screening test. The responses on the ACLC were analyzed according to selected word types. The test stimuli were analyzed and classified into a hierarchy of linguistic complexity to evaluate the children's comprehension of various linguistic structures. Results show that comprehension of word types (nouns, verbs, etc.) and linguistic structure can be orderly, producing a hierarchy of complexity similar to that found in normally hearing children. However, performance was about 3 yr behind that of normally hearing peers.

Child↗

PubMed1984

Influence of written form on reading comprehension in aphasia.

Reading comprehension of 20 aphasic patients was systematically assessed using equivalent stimuli written in both print and cursive form. A Single-Word-to-Picture Matching task and a Sentence-to-Picture Matching task were employed. Performances of the aphasics were not uniformly facilitated by one written form over the other. Furthermore, the reading comprehension of the majority of individual patients was not influenced by written form. Four of the subjects, however, did appear to display real performance discrepancies when reading cursive versus print, particularly on the Sentence-to-Picture Matching task. Two of these patients performed better when reading cursive, while two performed better when reading print. Reevaluation of two of these patients 6 mo after initial testing revealed that they continued to display the same performance patterns originally demonstrated. Clinical implications of these results for the evaluation and treatment of reading comprehension in aphasia are discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed1984

The influence of reward on comprehension testing of 2-year-old children.

A procedure was devised in which a reward was hidden under the stimulus picture representing the correct answer to a comprehension task. Both accuracy and test-retest reliability of the responses of 34 2-yr-old children were measured. Eight items tested comprehension of plural allomorphs /s/ and /z/, and eight evaluated the comprehension of word order in reversible subject-verb-object active sentences. The effects of the rewarded search procedure varied, depending on sex and the language structure that was tested. In those cases where the procedure significantly affected responses, the difference was in the direction of improved accuracy and reliability.

Child Language↗