SEARCH · PubMed Health
Explore indexed PubMed citations for clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health research. Read source abstracts and follow each citation to its original PubMed record.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
BACKGROUND: Perisylvian syndrome refers to a variety of clinical manifestations associated to lesions in the perisylvian or opercular regions. Polymicrogyria is the most common structural malformation found. The syndrome may be inherited and the clinical spectrum includes subtle language disturbances on one end and more severe characteristics such as prominent pseudobulbar signs and refractory epilepsy on the other end. Other studies have already associated perisylvian polymicrogyria with developmental language disorders or specific language impairment. AIM: to describe the language deficits of four members of a family with Perisylvian Syndrome, and to correlate these deficits to neuroimaging data. METHOD: The patients underwent neuroimaging investigation, psychological assessment using the Weschler Intelligence Scales, and specific speech-language evaluation. The following tests were used for the assessment of vocabulary, phonology, syntax, pragmatics, reading and writing: Thematical Pictures of Yavas, ABFW-Child Language Test, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), and other specific protocols. RESULTS: Magnetic resonance imaging revealed perisylvian polymicrogyria in all of the subjects, with varied locations and extensions. Speech-language assessment indicated significant oral and written language deficits in all of the subjects. CONCLUSION: The obtained data indicate that language impairment can co-exist with reading deficits in members of the same family. Neuroimaging findings reveal cortical alterations that are associated to specific language impairments within the spectrum of the Perisylvian Syndrome. Another important aspect evidenced by this study is the similarities in the language profiles of siblings and mother, suggesting that a variety of linguistic manifestations exist within the spectrum of the syndrome. Perisylvian polymicrogyria can be one of the neurobiological malformations involved in the manifestation of these deficits.
Language is a function of culture. Within the African culture traditional and faith healers play an essential role in counseling the community on various personal and communal health- and life-related conditions. This kind of practice is particularly observed among the native populations, among those less affected by Western influences, and among those who have less opposition from Western and Asian religions. It is in this context that diagnosis and treatment of the bilingual child with potential language disorders were examined from the point of view of the African culture. The present study examines the degree to which the traditional or/and faith healers diagnose and explain the nature of the child's problem to the parent(s). The impact of the African traditional healer is compared to the diagnosis made by the modern medical practitioner who adheres to the Cartesian dualism model which seeks to treat the patient by applying medical and surgical procedures. Speech-language pathologists need to recognize and consider the healer's impact on any child with a potential language disorder.
Autosomal Dominant Rolandic Epilepsy with Speech Dyspraxia (ADRESD) is a rare disorder which highlights the relationship between Benign Rolandic Epilepsy (BRE) and speech and language disorders. Subtle speech and language disorders have recently been well characterised in BRE. ADRESD is associated with long term, more severe speech and language difficulties. The time course of rolandic epilepsy in ADRESD is typical of that of BRE. ADRESD is inherited in an autosomal dominant manner with anticipation. It is postulated that the anticipation may be due to an, as yet unidentified, triplet repeat expansion in a gene for rolandic epilepsy. BRE follows complex inheritance but it is possible that ADRESD may hold some valuable clues to the pathogenesis of BRE.
A group of 16 children, aged from 8 to 14 years, with learning disabilities, were studied by means of a series of conventional and sensitized audiological tests, including recording of the late cognitive electrical responses (P300). They had no otolaryngological or neurological complaints but expressive language disorders (difficulties in speaking and/or writing), receptive language disorders (difficulties in reading and text comprehension), and lack of concentration and/or restlessness. Their audiograms, speech discrimination and immitance tests were normal. The P300 responses, as compared with those found in 20 normal controls within the same age group, occurred at significantly longer latency periods.
Narratives were produced by groups of language-disordered and nonimpaired children ages 9:0-11:4 (years:months) in story generation and story retelling tasks. The stories were analyzed in terms of the number of story grammar components, number of complete episodes, relative frequency of story components, and story length. For both groups of children, the results indicated strong overall homogeneity between story generation and story retelling. The retold narratives were longer and contained more story grammar components and complete episode structures for both groups of children. Clause length within complete episodes differentiated story generation from story retelling for the language-disordered children but not for the control group. The clinical advantages of using story retelling in language assessment are discussed.
Research indicates that children with speech and language disorders probably are at greater risk for developing emotional and behavior problems. A retrospective review of referral patterns on a child psychiatric inpatient service suggested that some children with speech and language disorders were either being missed or referred late in their hospital stay. A four-part procedure was developed to screen children for speech or language problems at admission to a child psychiatric inpatient service. A pilot study of the new method showed promise as a screening procedure (estimated sensitivity = 81%; estimated specificity = 90%). The four-part screening method, referral guidelines and clinical implications are presented.
The neuropsychological records of 56 patients operated for clipping were studied. Almost every patient remained autonomous and without invalidating motor defect. The present study was aimed at specifying the type and frequency of neuropsychological sequelae and, to a lesser extent, the role of various pathophysiological factors. A main concern was to examine to what extent and at what post-operative interval the neuropsychological assessment can predict the intellectual and socioprofessional outcome of each individual patient. The neuropsychological assessment performed beyond the acute phase showed evidence of intellectual sequelae in about two thirds of the patients. Only one case of permanent anterograde amnesia was observed, probably due to unavoidable inclusion of a hypothalamic artery in the clip during surgery. Transient anterograde amnesia and confabulations were occasionally observed, generally for less than three weeks. A common finding was impaired performance on memory and/or executive tests. In a minority of patients, language disorders, visuoperceptive and visuoconstructive disabilities were found, probably in relation with hemodynamic changes at distance from the aneurysm. Global impairment of intellectual function was not uncommon in the acute post-operative phase but it evolved in most cases towards a more selective impairment, for instance restricted to executive and memory functions, in the chronic phase. The neuropsychological investigation carried out 4 to 15 weeks post-operatively provided satisfactory information about possible long-lasting intellectual disturbances and professional resumption. In particular, persistent global intellectual impairment, persistent amnesia and confabulations 4-15 weeks post-operative were associated with cessation of professional activity; executive and memory impairment, behavioral disturbances such as those encountered in patients with frontal lobe damage were associated with a decreased probability of full-time employment. Pre- and post-operative angiography were not good predictors of long-term cognitive outcome: normal angiography was not necessarily followed by normal neuropsychological outcome, conversely abnormal angiography could be found together with normal neuropsychological outcome. By contrast, there was a relationship between left-lateralised abnormalities on post-operative angiography and occurrence of language disorders; similarly, there was a relationship between side of craniotomy and type of deficits, that is language disorders versus visuoperceptive-visuoconstructive impairments.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
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.
A recent study by Slaghuis. Lovegrove and Davidson (1994) found that visual and language processing differences were concurrent in a group of preadolescent dyslexic. In the present study, two experiments are reported that investigate the concurrence and continuity of visual and language processing differences in groups of young and adult dyslexics on a measure of visual processing and a measure of phonological coding. The visual processing task in the present experiments was a measure of Ternus apparent movement which was used as an index of the duration of visible persistence. Ternus apparent movement is multistable and provides two mutually exclusive and easily distinguishable percepts for the observer, referred to as 'element' and 'group' movement, that are highly dependent on the temporal interval between frame 1 and frame 2 of the display. The language processing task in the present experiments was a test of phonological coding measured using a non-word test of 100 orthographically legal non-words. The results of the first experiment showed that in comparison to normal readers the young dyslexic participants showed a significant reduction in Ternus 'group movement' and a significant reduction in the pronunciation of non-words. In a second experiment, Ternus apparent movement and performance on the non-word test was measured in groups of adult dyslexic and normal readers in order to investigate whether the visual and language processing differences found in young dyslexics were also present in adult dyslexics. The results showed that adult dyslexics also have a significant reduction in Ternus 'group movement' and a significant reduction in the ability to pronounce non-words similar to that found in the young dyslexic group in Experiment 1. The significant reduction in Ternus 'group movement' in dyslexic participants was explained in terms of an increase in the duration of visible persistence and was shown to be consistent with evidence for a transient system disorder. The combined results show that visual and language processing difference are concurrent in dyslexia and continue into adulthood.
This is a case study on an adolescent who demonstrated multiple articulation errors. In particular, an acoustic analysis was performed on the same features as those investigated by Kent and Forner (1980) in children with normal articulation and by Glasson (1984) in speech- and language-disordered children. The results of the analysis were compared to the data obtained by Kent and Forner and Glasson. Our subject demonstrated longer phrase durations and more variability than any of the groups with whom he was compared. In addition, he displayed an interaction between syntactic and articulatory performance.
BACKGROUND: In the Gironde region, the physicians of the Mother and Infant Welfare department in charge of the 3- to 4-year-old childrens' health checkup have set up a public health approach which led to new practical methods of screening tests in 1999. These have been used to evaluate the children's health problems of that age group in the region. POPULATION AND METHODS: This study concerned 12,421 children born in 1995, attending the nursery schools of Gironde, who underwent a health checkup (visual and hearing screening test, language and behaviour exploration) in 1999. RESULTS: Among them, 5,208 children failed screenings. One child out of six had language disorders, one child out of seven presented amblyopia, one out of eight suffered from behavioral problems and one child out of nine from a hearing defect. Furthermore, one out of three children who failed the test had several problems. CONCLUSION: This study has enabled us to objectify the frequency of the troubles and their association, this information being particularly useful for evaluating these children's health needs and to help improve their healthcare management.
Using a play-based methodology and a symptom checklist, this study investigated idiom comprehension in 26 children aged between 6-11 who were considered to have semantic-pragmatic difficulties. This group was compared with two groups of mainstream children and a group of children with (other) language disorders not primarily of a semantic or pragmatic nature. The results indicate that the children with semantic-pragmatic difficulties did, as a group, demonstrate significantly fewer appropriate idiomatic interpretations and significantly more inappropriate interpretations than did any of the other three groups. However, the higher level of inappropriate scores in the semantic-pragmatic difficulties group reflected a large number of 'fuzzy' actions rather than significantly higher rates of literality. This may indicate an awareness among these children that the literal meaning is inappropriate in the absence of adequate idiom vocabulary. It may also reflect difficulty in retrieving known idioms from memory and/or in selecting the most appropriate meaning from several possibilities in context. Despite relative weakness, the children with semantic-pragmatic difficulties displayed appropriate interpretations considerably more often than they evidenced inappropriate ones. Within-group analysis reveals that the children diagnosed with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism performed less well than did those diagnosed with 'semantic-pragmatic disorder'. Nevertheless, both of these subgroups encompassed a considerable range of comprehension ability with regard to the 12 common idioms tested. Analysis of the play task performance and symptom checklist suggests that this variation probably reflects differences in the critical semantic and pragmatic skills underpinning idiom comprehension. These include flexibility of thought, theory of mind, attention to context, prosody and overall coherence, as well as the ability to integrate world knowledge and current contextual information to guide inferencing. In combination with definition task data and broader knowledge of symptomatology, the play task may be used to identify the sites and sources of idiom comprehension breakdown in individual children. It is probable that idiom comprehension in this group of children with semantic-pragmatic difficulties was facilitated by the inclusion of only concrete idioms and by the visual support provided by the play set. Nevertheless, the moderate to age-appropriate ability displayed by this group in this context suggests that the characterization of children with semantic-pragmatic difficulties as predominantly literal needs to be revised. Rather than seeking a blanket characterization of an essentially heterogeneous group, it may be more useful to consider idiom comprehension a secondary manifestation of semantic and/or pragmatic difficulties. Since the children who exhibit these difficulties vary in symptomatology and, probably, in aetiology, it follows that they will also vary with respect to idiom comprehension and the reasons for its breakdown.
INTRODUCTION: Schizophrenia is a severely disability causing syndrome, what tend to chronically alter living project of great number of young people and its families. It is affected multiple cognitive functions, as executive capacity, explicit memory, working memory or perceptive integration. In the last years, neurocognitive rehabilitation techniques of this functions coming from the experience with brain damage patients has been applied to schizophrenia. DEVELOPMENT: Present work revised: a). cognitive deficits that can be considered as nuclear in the genesis of schizophrenia symptoms and b). recovery or substitution strategies of that deficits, that can be generalized to a better psychosocial functioning of the patient. It is proposed that attention control deficit (ACD), defined as the inadequate assignation of attention recourses during cognitive processing, results in attention processing of redundant information and a lack of attention recourses to process new information. Some explaining models are presented for subjective and perceptive symptoms, language disorders and executive disorders in schizophrenia. Possibilities of neurocognitive rehabilitation in schizophrenia are discussed, especially by the utilisation of implicit learning methods, that don't need attention processing. Some recommendations are made for the implementation of cognitive rehabilitation in the general framework of psychosocial and occupational rehabilitation.
The existence of an aphasia-like language disorder in psychotic speech has been the subject of much debate. This paper argues that a discrete language disorder could be an important cause of the disturbance seen in psychotic speech. A review is presented of classical clinical descriptions and experimental studies that have explored the similarities between psychotic language impairment and aphasic speech. The paper proposes neurolinguistic tasks which may be used in future studies to elicit subtle language impairments in psychotic speech. The usefulness of a neurolinguistic model for further research in the aetiology and treatment of psychosis is discussed.
The purpose of this investigation was to compare the ability of nurses and parents to detect speech and language disability. The methodology included development and validation of a parent questionnaire to detect speech and language disability in 398 3-year-old English-speaking children. The parent questionnaire and a standard developmental screen administered by child health nurses were compared with a gold standard (a speech and language assessment). International criteria for screening tools were applied. The tools were comparable in performance. A simple parent questionnaire, completed without professional assistance, was a viable alternative to professional screening. Parents' education and parity had no influence on their ability to detect language disorders. Although size of sibship had no association with the occurrence of speech and language disability, third-born children were more likely to have a speech and language disability than any other birth order.
The thesis of this article is that deficits in language and communication contribute to behavior problems in childhood. Mentally retarded children show a range of deficits in language and communication compared with normals; they are also at increased risk for behavior problems. The evidence suggests that these deficits are quantitative rather than qualitative. In addition, these linguistic deficits may contribute independently to the development of behavior disorders insofar as the linguistic deficit interferes with the child's ability to make himself understood or to understand others.