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PubMed2005

Schizophrenia and second language acquisition.

Language acquisition involves brain processes that can be affected by lesions or dysfunctions in several brain systems and second language acquisition may depend on different brain substrates than first language acquisition in childhood. A total of 16 Russian immigrants to Israel, 8 diagnosed schizophrenics and 8 healthy immigrants, were compared. The primary data for this study were collected via sociolinguistic interviews. The two groups use language and learn language in very much the same way. Only exophoric reference and blocking revealed meaningful differences between the schizophrenics and healthy counterparts. This does not mean of course that schizophrenia does not induce language abnormalities. Our study focuses on those aspects of language that are typically difficult to acquire in second language acquisition. Despite the cognitive compromises in schizophrenia and the manifest atypicalities in language of speakers with schizophrenia, the process of acquiring a second language seems relatively unaffected by schizophrenia.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Accessing word meaning in two languages: an event-related brain potential study of beginning bilinguals.

Twenty-eight native-English speakers enrolled in beginning and intermediate university Spanish courses participated in a mixed language semantic categorization task in which critical words were presented in English (L1) and Spanish (L2) and repetitions of these words (within- and between-languages) were presented on subsequent trials (i.e., immediate repetition). Event-related potentials were recorded to all items allowing for comparisons of the N400 component to repetitions within- and between-languages as well as to words presented for the first time. Three important findings were observed in this sample of participants during relatively early stages of acquiring a second language. First, in the typical N400 window (300-500ms), between-language repetition (translation) produced a smaller reduction in N400 amplitude than did within-language repetition. Second, the time-course of between-language repetition effects tended to be more extended in time and differed as a function of language with L2-L1 repetitions producing larger priming effects early (during the typical N400 window) and L1-L2 repetitions producing larger priming effects later (during windows after the typical N400). Third, a greater negativity in the ERP waveforms was observed when the word on the directly preceding trial was from the other language. Within the time frame of the N400, this language switch effect arose only when the target word was Spanish and the preceding word English (i.e., L1-L2). The results are discussed within the framework of current models of bilingual lexical processing.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1996

Completeness of reporting of trials published in languages other than English: implications for conduct and reporting of systematic reviews.

BACKGROUND: Lately, the number of systematic reviews published has increased substantially. Many systematic reviews exclude trials published in languages other than English. However, there is little empirical evidence to support this action. We looked for differences in the completeness of reporting between trials published in other languages and those published in English, to see whether the exclusion of trials published in other languages is justified. METHODS: We compared completeness of reporting, design characteristics, and analytical approaches of 133 randomised controlled trials (RCTs) published in English between 1989 and 1994 and 96 published in French, German, Italian, or Spanish during the same time. RCTs were identified by hand searching of journals (seven in English and six in the other languages). FINDINGS: We found no significant differences between trials published in English and other-language trials for any single item in the completeness of reporting scale (randomisation, double-blinding, withdrawals), or for the overall score (percentage of maximum possible score 51.0% for trials in English, 46.2% for trials in other languages; 95% CI for difference -1.1 to 10.5). Other-language trials were more likely than English-language trials to have adult participants, to use two or more interventions, and to compare two or more active treatments without an untreated control group. Trials in other languages were less likely to report a clearly prespecified primary outcome or any rationale for sample size estimation. INTERPRETATION: These results provide evidence for inclusion of all trial reports, irrespective of the language in which they are published, in systematic reviews. Their inclusion is likely to increase precision and may reduce systematic errors. We hope that our findings will prove useful to those developing guidelines and policies for the conduct of reporting of systematic reviews.

Adult↗

PubMed1997

Language bias in randomised controlled trials published in English and German.

BACKGROUND: Some randomised controlled trials (RCTs) done in German-speaking Europe are published in international English-language journals and others in national German-language journals. We assessed whether authors are more likely to report trials with statistically significant results in English than in German. METHODS: We studied pairs of RCT reports, matched for first author and time of publication, with one report published in German and the other in English. Pairs were identified from reports round in a manual search of five leading German-language journals and from reports published by the same authors in English found on Medline. Quality of methods and reporting were assessed with two different scales by two investigators who were unaware of authors' identities, affiliations, and other characteristics of trial reports. Main study endpoints were selected by two investigators who were unaware of trial results. Our main outcome was the number of pairs of studies in which the levels of significance (shown by p values) were discordant. FINDINGS: 62 eligible pairs of reports were identified but 19 (31%) were excluded because they were duplicate publications. A further three pairs (5%) were excluded because no p values were given. The remaining 40 pairs were analysed. Design characteristics and quality features were similar for reports in both languages. Only 35% of German-language articles, compared with 62% of English-language articles, reported significant (p < 0.05) differences in the main endpoint between study and control groups (p = 0.002 by McNemar's test). Logistic regression showed that the only characteristic that predicted publication in an English-language journal was a significant result. The odds ratio for publication of trials with significant results in English was 3.75 (95% CI 1.25-11.3). INTERPRETATION: Authors were more likely to publish RCTs in an English-language journal if the results were statistically significant. English language bias may, therefore, be introduced in reviews and meta-analyses if they include only trials reported in English. The effort of the Cochrane Collaboration to identify as many controlled trials as possible, through the manual search of many medical journals published in different languages will help to reduce such bias.

Bias↗

PubMed2003

Language lateralization in female patients with schizophrenia: an fMRI study.

Gender differences in schizophrenia are among the most consistently reported findings in schizophrenia research. However, the biological substrate underlying these gender differences is still largely unknown. Differences in language lateralization between men and women may underlie some gender differences in schizophrenia. In previous functional imaging studies, language lateralization was found to be decreased in male schizophrenia patients as compared to healthy males, which was due to enhanced language activation of the right hemisphere as compared to the healthy males. It could be hypothesized that decreased language lateralization in schizophrenia is gender specific, i.e. decreased lateralization in male patients and normal lateralization in female patients. To test this hypothesis, language activation was measured in 12 right-handed female patients with schizophrenia and 12 healthy females, and compared to findings in 12 male patients and 12 male controls of an earlier study. Language lateralization was significantly lower in the female patients (0.44) as compared to the female controls (0.75), which was due to increased activation of the right-sided language areas (patients: 19 voxels; controls: 8 voxels), while left hemisphere activation was similar in patients and controls. When these data are compared to the male patients and controls, both patient groups had lower lateralization than their healthy counterparts, but there was no difference between male and female patients. In both sexes, decreased lateralization resulted from increased right hemispheric language activation, which suggests a failure to inhibit nondominant language areas in schizophrenia. These findings indicate that lower language lateralization in women is not likely to underlie gender differences in schizophrenia.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Language for emotions in adolescents with externalizing and internalizing disorders.

This study compared the structure and quality of emotion language in adolescents with externalizing disorders (N = 21), internalizing disorders (N = 18), and without a behavioral or emotional disorder (N = 16). Emotion language was elicited in response to vignette material prototypical for anger/sadness and fear, to autobiographical experiences, and to an actual emotional challenge. The findings reveal different emphases in the emotion language of internalizing and externalizing youth rather than a relative weakness for externalizing adolescents. Overall, clinical adolescents used fewer emotion terms that were semantically specific for anger, sad, or fear than typical adolescents. The results also show that emotion language is affected differentially for externalizing and internalizing adolescents depending on the emotion domain. Internalizing youth's emotion language to anger/sad events used inner-directed terms, situational references, and reduced intensity while their representation of emotions in response to salient threatening material was dominated by terms with a cognitive focus. Externalizing adolescents' emotion language responses to anger/sad events were more outer directed and intense, and their emotion language in a salient threat situation more orientated to direct affective terms. The results suggest that examining emotion language for specific emotion domains in adolescents with specific disorders will better clarify the role of emotion language in the regulation of emotions than approaches that globalize emotion language competencies or deficits.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1998

Delayed language onset as a predictor of clinical symptoms in pervasive developmental disorders.

DSM-IV states that Asperger Disorder may be distinguished from Autistic Disorder by a lack of a delay in early language development. The aim of this study was to establish whether the presence or absence of early language delay would predict autistic symptomatology in children diagnosed with a PDD/autism spectrum disorder. Forty-six language-delayed and 62 normal language onset individuals (M age 11 years) were compared on ICD-10 research criteria and DSM-IV criteria, receptive language, and developmental history variables. Retrospective data were also obtained to determine whether language onset predicted autism symptomatology when young (< 6 years). We found that early language delay predicts more autistic symptomatology when young, but not at an older age. Early language delay is also associated with developmental motor milestone delays and lower receptive language abilities. The results question the use of early language delay as a valid discriminating variable between PDD subgroups.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

How do highly proficient bilinguals control their lexicalization process? Inhibitory and language-specific selection mechanisms are both functional.

The authors report 4 experiments exploring the language-switching performance of highly proficient bilinguals in a picture-naming task. In Experiment 1, they tested the impact of language similarity and age of 2nd language acquisition on the language-switching performance of highly proficient bilinguals. Experiments 2, 3, and 4 assessed the performance of highly proficient bilinguals in language-switching contexts involving (a) the 2nd language (L2) and the L3 of the bilinguals, (b) the L3 and the L4, and (c) the L1 and a recently learned new language. Highly proficient bilinguals showed symmetrical switching costs regardless of the age at which the L2 was learned and of the similarities of the 2 languages and asymmetrical switching costs when 1 of the languages involved in the switching task was very weak (an L4 or a recently learned language). The theoretical implications of these results for the attentional mechanisms used by highly proficient bilinguals to control their lexicalization process are discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1997

Deficits in auditory temporal and spectral resolution in language-impaired children.

Between 3 and 6 per cent of children who are otherwise unimpaired have extreme difficulties producing and understanding spoken language. This disorder is typically labelled specific language impairment. Children diagnosed with specific language impairment often have accompanying reading difficulties (dyslexia), but not all children with reading difficulties have specific language impairment. Some researchers claim that language impairment arises from failures specific to language or cognitive processing. Others hold that language impairment results from a more elemental problem that makes affected children unable to hear the acoustic distinctions among successive brief sounds in speech. Here we report the results of psychophysical tests employing simple tones and noises showing that children with specific language impairment have severe auditory perceptual deficits for brief but not long tones in particular sound contexts. Our data support the view that language difficulties result from problems in auditory perception, and provide further information about the nature of these perceptual problems that should contribute to improving the diagnosis and treatment of language impairment and related disorders.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed2003

Parallel extinction risk and global distribution of languages and species.

There are global threats to biodiversity with current extinction rates well above background levels. Although less well publicized, numerous human languages have also become extinct, and others are threatened with extinction. However, estimates of the number of threatened languages vary considerably owing to the wide range of criteria used. For example, languages have been classified as threatened if the number of speakers is less than 100, 500, 1,000, 10,000, 20,000 or 100,000 (ref. 3). Here I show, by applying internationally agreed criteria for classifying species extinction risk, that languages are more threatened than birds or mammals. Rare languages are more likely to show evidence of decline than commoner ones. Areas with high language diversity also have high bird and mammal diversity and all three show similar relationships to area, latitude, area of forest and, for languages and birds, maximum altitude. The time of human settlement has little effect on current language diversity. Although similar factors explain the diversity of languages and biodiversity, the factors explaining extinction risk for birds and mammals (high altitude, high human densities and insularity) do not explain the numbers of endangered languages.

Altitude↗

PubMed2002

Neural systems underlying British Sign Language and audio-visual English processing in native users.

In order to understand the evolution of human language, it is necessary to explore the neural systems that support language processing in its many forms. In particular, it is informative to separate those mechanisms that may have evolved for sensory processing (hearing) from those that have evolved to represent events and actions symbolically (language). To what extent are the brain systems that support language processing shaped by auditory experience and to what extent by exposure to language, which may not necessarily be acoustically structured? In this first neuroimaging study of the perception of British Sign Language (BSL), we explored these questions by measuring brain activation using functional MRI in nine hearing and nine congenitally deaf native users of BSL while they performed a BSL sentence-acceptability task. Eight hearing, non-signing subjects performed an analogous task that involved audio-visual English sentences. The data support the argument that there are both modality-independent and modality-dependent language localization patterns in native users. In relation to modality-independent patterns, regions activated by both BSL in deaf signers and by spoken English in hearing non-signers included inferior prefrontal regions bilaterally (including Broca's area) and superior temporal regions bilaterally (including Wernicke's area). Lateralization patterns were similar for the two languages. There was no evidence of enhanced right-hemisphere recruitment for BSL processing in comparison with audio-visual English. In relation to modality-specific patterns, audio-visual speech in hearing subjects generated greater activation in the primary and secondary auditory cortices than BSL in deaf signers, whereas BSL generated enhanced activation in the posterior occipito-temporal regions (V5), reflecting the greater movement component of BSL. The influence of hearing status on the recruitment of sign language processing systems was explored by comparing deaf and hearing adults who had BSL as their first language (native signers). Deaf native signers demonstrated greater activation in the left superior temporal gyrus in response to BSL than hearing native signers. This important finding suggests that left- temporal auditory regions may be privileged for processing heard speech even in hearing native signers. However, in the absence of auditory input this region can be recruited for visual processing.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

Language lateralization in monozygotic twin pairs concordant and discordant for handedness.

An unexpectedly high percentage of monozygotic twin pairs is discordant for handedness. Some of these twins show mirror-imaging of several ectodermally derived features. Both features of discordant left-right asymmetry may be caused by relatively late monozygotic twinning, when the original embryo has already lost its bilateral symmetry. Language lateralization is related to handedness and may therefore also be altered during the development of embryological asymmetry in some monozygotic twins. Language lateralization was measured with functional MRI in 12 monozygotic twin pairs who were concordant for handedness and in 13 monozygotic twin pairs discordant for handedness. Lateralization indices were calculated from individual language activation patterns. Correlations were calculated to test intra-pair resemblance for language lateralization. The intra-pair correlation for language lateralization was significant in the handedness-concordant group, but not in the handedness-discordant group. In the handedness-discordant group, five twin pairs were also discordant for cerebral dominance; the other twin pairs of discordant handedness exhibited remarkable similarity in language lateralization. The high intra-pair correlation for language lateralization in the handedness-concordant twins suggests a genetic basis for language lateralization. However, in monozygotic twin pairs of discordant handedness, discordance for language dominance occurs in a significant number of twins. Discordant language dominance may be caused by a relatively late time of splitting of the original embryo, which disrupts the normal development of left-right asymmetry.

Female↗

PubMed2000

Language hemispheric dominance in patients with congenital lesions of eloquent brain.

OBJECTIVE: In 90% of normal subjects, the left hemisphere is dominant for language function. We investigated whether congenital lesions of the left perisylvian regions altered cortical language representation in right-handed individuals. METHODS: Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we studied language hemispheric dominance in five right-handed adult patients with congenitally acquired arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) originating from left hemispheric cortical language regions. The AVMs had not caused neurological symptoms during early development, but patients presented as adults with migraine, seizure, or minor hemorrhage. Results obtained from the AVM patients were contrasted to those from right-handed brain-injured stroke patients recovering from aphasia and to those from right-handed normal subjects. RESULTS: During silent picture naming and verb generation tasks, cortical language networks lateralized primarily to the right hemisphere in the AVM group, compared with the left hemisphere in the normal group. This right hemisphere-shifted language network in the AVM group exceeded the shifts toward right hemispheric dominance found in the stroke group. CONCLUSION: Patients with AVMs affecting the left perisylvian regions recruited the right hemisphere into language processing networks during early development, presumably in response to congenitally aberrant circulation. This early right hemisphere recruitment in the AVM patients exceeded the similar process in the brains of stroke patients whose left cortical language networks were damaged in adulthood. Our data provide evidence of effective plasticity in the developing human brain compared with the mature brain response to injury. Knowledge of cortical language representation should assist presurgical planning in patients with developmental anomalies affecting apparently language-dominant brain regions.

Adult↗

PubMed2000

Autism and developmental receptive language disorder--a follow-up comparison in early adult life. II: Social, behavioural, and psychiatric outcomes.

This paper focuses on general social functioning in two groups of young men, one with autism and one with developmental receptive language disorders, who were first assessed at the ages of 7-8 years. At that time, although matched for nonverbal IQ (mean 92-93) and expressive language, the Language group showed significantly fewer social and behavioural problems. At follow-up, when aged on average, 23 to 24 years, the Autism group continued to show significantly more impairments in terms of stereotyped behaviour patterns, social relationships, jobs, and independence. However, problems in all these areas were also common in the Language group. Many still lived with their parents, few had close friends or permanent jobs, and ratings of social interaction indicated abnormalities in a number of different areas. On a composite measure of social competence only 10% of the Language group was assessed as having severe social difficulties compared to 74% of the Autism group. Nevertheless, 65% were rated as having moderate social problems and only 25% were rated as being of near/normal social functioning. Two individuals in the Language group, but none in the Autism group, had also developed a florid paranoid psychosis in late adolescence. As in the follow-up of cognitive and linguistic functioning (see Mawhood et al., 2000, this volume, pp. 547-559), discriminant function analysis, which had clearly distinguished between the groups as children, now showed much greater overlap between them. Regression analysis indicated that although early language ability appeared to be related to outcome in the Autism group, there was little association between any measures of childhood functioning and prognosis in the Language group. Theoretically, these findings have implications for our understanding of the nature of autism and other pervasive language disorders, and of the relationship between them. Practically, they demonstrate the very persistent problems experienced by individuals with developmental language disorders, and their need for much greater help and support than is presently available.

Activities of Daily Living↗

PubMed2000

Relation of cortical language distribution and cognitive function in surgical epilepsy patients.

PURPOSE: To investigate the relation between the number and spatial distribution of language sites and specific patient-and epilepsy-related variables. METHODS: Patients with stimulation-induced reading or naming errors from anterior or inferior temporal cortex (i.e., atypical temporal language sites) were compared with those with language sites confined to Wernicke's area (WA) in the posterosuperior temporal and inferior parietal perisylvian area. In a consecutive series of 44 left hemisphere language dominant patients with complex partial seizures before left temporal lobectomy, correlations were compared between cortical language distribution and measures of cognitive function. RESULTS: Patients with atypical temporal language sites (group 1) had significantly fewer years of education that did patients with language sites in WA (group 2). Patients in group 1 had poorer verbal learning and fluency than did patients in group 2. Patients with IQ <80 were significantly more likely to have multiple sites where stimulation disrupted language than did patients with normal IQ. Number of language sites had significant negative correlations with full-scale IQ, and measures of confrontation naming, verbal fluency, and immediate verbal memory. CONCLUSIONS: Language cortex has a wider spatial distribution in epilepsy surgery patients with lower intelligence, poorer education, and worse verbal and memory skills.

Adult↗

PubMed2007

Role of functional MR in determining language dominance in epilepsy and nonepilepsy populations: a Bayesian analysis.

PURPOSE: To determine the role of functional magnetic resonance (MR) imaging in assessing hemispheric language dominance in epilepsy and nonepilepsy populations. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A Bayesian analysis study was performed. The study was based on data from the published literature; thus, institutional review board approval was not required. The literature was reviewed to obtain pretest probabilities and likelihood ratios, which were analyzed to determine the posttest probability of language dominance by using functional MR imaging. Pretest probabilities of different hand dominances in epilepsy and nonepilepsy populations were obtained from the largest studies available in the literature. Likelihood ratios were derived from the sensitivity and specificity of functional MR imaging by using electrocortical stimulation (ECS) and the Wada test as reference standards. RESULTS: Likelihood ratios for functional MR in determining language dominance were 9.3 and 12.3 with ECS and the Wada test as reference standards, respectively. Use of functional MR increased the final posttest probabilities of hemispheric language dominance in epilepsy and nonepilepsy populations. In the nonepilepsy population, regardless of hand dominance, there was very high posttest probability (>or=96%) of a correlation between functional MR hemisphere activation and definite left-hemisphere language dominance. In the epilepsy population with right-hand dominance or ambidexterity, there was very high posttest probability (>or=95%) of a correlation between functional MR hemisphere activation and definite left-hemisphere language dominance. In the left-handed nonepileptic subjects, there was high posttest probability (81%-83%) of a correlation between functional MR hemisphere activation and definite right-hemisphere language dominance. In the left-handed epilepsy population, there was high posttest probability (80%-97%) of a correlation between functional MR hemisphere activation and definite left-hemisphere language dominance. In the epilepsy population with ambidexterity, there was high posttest probability (80%-87%) of correlations between functional MR hemisphere activation and both definite right-hemisphere and bilateral language dominance. CONCLUSION: Use of functional MR increases importantly the posttest probabilities of hemispheric language dominance in multiple subgroups of individuals with and without epilepsy.

Bayes Theorem↗

PubMed2002

Learning and the evolution of language: the role of cultural variation and learning costs in the Baldwin effect.

The Baldwin effect has been explicitly used by Pinker and Bloom as an explanation of the origins of language and the evolution of a language acquisition device. This article presents new simulations of an artificial life model for the evolution of compositional languages. It specifically addresses the role of cultural variation and of learning costs in the Baldwin effect for the evolution of language. Results show that when a high cost is associated with language learning, agents gradually assimilate in their genome some explicit features (e.g., lexical properties) of the specific language they are exposed to. When the structure of the language is allowed to vary through cultural transmission, Baldwinian processes cause, instead, the assimilation of a predisposition to learn, rather than any structural properties associated with a specific language. The analysis of the mechanisms underlying such a predisposition in terms of categorical perception supports Deacon's hypothesis regarding the Baldwinian inheritance of general underlying cognitive capabilities that serve language acquisition. This is in opposition to the thesis that argues for assimilation of structural properties needed for the specification of a full-blown language acquisition device.

Algorithms↗

PubMed1995

Matching words to concepts in two languages: a test of the concept mediation model of bilingual representation.

A categorization paradigm was used to investigate the relations between lexical and conceptual connections in bilingual memory. Fifty-one more fluent and less fluent English-French bilinguals viewed category names (e.g., vegetable) and then decided whether a target word (e.g., peas) was a member of that category. The category names and target words appeared in both English and French across experimental conditions. Because category matching requires access to conceptual memory, only relatively fluent bilinguals, who are able to directly access meaning for their second language, were expected to be able to use category information across languages. The performance of less-fluent bilinguals was expected to reflect reliance on lexical-level connections between languages, requiring translation of second-language words. The results provided evidence for concept mediation by more-fluent bilinguals, because categorization latencies were independent of the language of the category name. However, the performance of less-fluent bilinguals indicated that they did not follow a simple lexical translation strategy. Instead, these subjects were faster at categorizing words in both languages when the language of the category name matched the language of the target word, suggesting that they were able to access limited conceptual information from the second language. A model of the development of concept mediation during second language acquisition is described.

Adult↗