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PubMed1994

History of in utero cocaine exposure in language-delayed children.

To determine whether children with language delays are more likely to have been exposed to cocaine in utero than children with normal language development, a case-control study was undertaken. Based on routine office screening in our primary-care clinic over a 1-year period, we identified 29 consecutive children, aged 24 to 48 months, as language-delayed. They were compared with an approximate 2:1 match of children without language delay who had been seen in the clinic on the same days and who were of similar age. There was more reported cocaine use during pregnancy (six of 29, 21%) among the language-delayed children than among the controls (five of 71, 7%). This difference is statistically significant (P < 0.05, chi 2 = 3.92; odds ratio = 3.4 +/- 2.2). Discriminant analysis revealed that both cocaine and nicotine exposure were associated with delayed language development--with an unexpected negative, i.e., an antagonistic, protective, interactive effect (F[3,96] = 4.66, R2 = 12.7%, P < .005); neither gender nor caretaker contributed to language development in this sample. These results suggest that children with language delay detected in a clinical setting are more likely to have been exposed in utero to cocaine than children with normal language development. Prenatal cocaine exposure should be a risk factor in monitoring development in children.

Case-Control Studies↗

PubMed2004

Neurobiology of specific language impairment.

This review summarizes what is known about the neurobiology of specific language impairment. Despite its name, specific language impairment is frequently not specific. It is common to find associated impairments in motor skills, cognitive function, attention, and reading in children who meet criteria for specific language impairment. There is evidence that limitation in phonologic working memory may be a core deficit in specific language impairment. Both genetic and environmental factors have been shown to be important etiologic factors in specific language impairment. Structural neuroimaging studies suggest that atypical patterns of asymmetry of language cortex, white-matter abnormalities, and cortical dysplasia may be associated with specific language impairment. Abnormalities in the later stages of auditory processing have been demonstrated using auditory event-related potentials. Functional neuroimaging may cast further light on the neurobiology of specific language impairment and serve as a means of developing and evaluating therapy. A better understanding of the neurobiology of specific language impairment is critical for the rational development of therapeutic strategies to treat this common disorder.

Brain↗

PubMed1993

The riddle of the right hemisphere's contribution to the recovery of language.

Although it is generally acknowledged that the right hemisphere plays some role in the recovery of language in aphasic patients, the exact nature of this role is still controversial. According to the model of right hemisphere language proposed by Zaidel, the right hemisphere should selectively contribute to the recovery of language comprehension (and in particular of lexical comprehension) but not to the recovery of language production. According to the model of right hemisphere language proposed by Gazzaniga, on the contrary, no language function is selectively supported by the right hemisphere, but the contribution of this hemisphere to the recovery of language varies widely from one individual to another. The aim of this paper is to try and clarify this problem, starting from the basic clinical observations which have given a preliminary shape to the whole issue, and passing then to a survey of results obtained following more recent and specific lines of research. The following conclusions are reached: (1) although the right hemisphere plays (at least in some patients) a definite role in the recovery from aphasia, a greater role is usually played by the undamaged areas of the left hemisphere; (2) the right hemisphere's contribution to the recovery of language seems to concern more the receptive than the expressive components of speech; and (3) the extent of the right hemisphere's contribution varies widely from one individual to another, probably due to individual differences in the hemispheric representation of language.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

When do false memories cross language boundaries in English-Spanish bilinguals?

To determine whether false memories cross language boundaries, we presented English-Spanish bilinguals with conceptually related word lists for five study-test trials. Some lists were heard in English, some in Spanish, and they were then followed by a recognition memory test composed of studied words, conceptually related nonstudied critical words, and unrelated words presented in the same language used at study or in a different language. Even though participants were instructed to recognize only previously heard words, they falsely recognized both same-language and different-language critical words. With practice, participants increased their accurate recognition of list words and decreased their false recognition of critical words when the study-test language was the same, and they decreased their false recognition of list words and critical words when the language differed. False memories can cross language boundaries when participants rely on conceptual representations from the word lists, but these errors decrease over trials as participants increasingly rely on language-specific lexical representations.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

The association between impact factors and language of general internal medicine journals.

BACKGROUND: We sought to determine the associations between journal country of origin and language and journal impact factor of general medicine journals. METHODS: For each "Medicine, General and Internal" journal listed in the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Journal Citation Reports (JCR), the 2003 impact factor, language (ie, English, multiple languages [including English], or non-English), and country of origin (ie, US or non-US) were determined. The mean log impact factors of the journals by language, country of origin, and a combination of country of origin and language were compared. RESULTS: Of the 102 "Medicine, General and Internal" journals listed in the ISI JCR, 41 (40%) were published in the US and 83 (81%) were published in English. English-language journals had a significantly greater 2003 mean log impact factor than non-English journals and journals originating in the US had a significantly greater impact factor than journals originating elsewhere. However, the mean log impact factor of English-language journals originating in the US did not differ significantly from that of English-language journals originating elsewhere. CONCLUSION: Journal impact factor is more associated with journal language (ie, English versus non-English), rather than journal country of origin.

Bibliometrics↗

PubMed1999

Age-related language characteristics of children and adolescents with fragile X syndrome.

In addition to moderate-to-severe mental retardation (MR), the fragile X [fra(X)] mutation produces significant impediments in speech and language. Severe delays in speech and language have been demonstrated in both adult males and young individuals with the fra(X) mutation. Having observed longitudinal declines in IQ scores in young males with fra(X) and given the relationship between cognitive ability and language skill, we wanted to determine whether speech-language deficits in young males with fra(X) were age-related in ways comparable with those observed in cognitive deficits. We examined a small sample (n = 16) of children and adolescents, ages 6-17 years, using the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamental-Preschool (CELF-P). The CELF-P is used to evaluate language deficits in preschool children and assesses receptive and expressive language ability. It is standardized for children ages 3-7 years and provides age-normed standard scores. To evaluate changes in language scores, we converted raw scores into age-equivalents. Results indicate that males with fra(X) have significantly lower age equivalent scores compared with females. A cross-sectional analysis of males' age-equivalent scores reveals that a plateau is reached at approximately 48 months. Our findings suggest that, as with IQ and adaptive behavior scores, language development in young, fully mutated fra(X) individuals appears to reach a plateau as they age.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1975

[Role of the frontal lobes in language. (A neuropsychological and experimental study)].

An experimental study carried out on 30 patients suffering from localised frontal lesions (16 left, 9 right, 5 bilateral lesions) using a battery of twenty tests (17 language tests and 3 visuo-spatial tests) showed: 1) frontal lesions disturb verbal control; 2) these disturbances seem to be proportionate to the extent of the lesion, that is, the area of the frontal lobe put out of action. As a result, there is a diversity of conditions ranging from quasi mutism in the extensive lesions, to an impossibility of producing accurate propositional and appropriate language indicating shades of meaning, in limited lesions; 3) the most frequently encountered disorder is characterised by an elementary level of language being well preserved but with difficulty of even impossibility in producing complex propositional language. This disorder, already obvious in spontaneous language, can be easily shown by means of appropriate verbal tests. 4) It seems to us of the utmost importance to emphasize that this syndrome appears irrespective of the side affected by the lesion. In fact, we have found that in 10 of the tests involved in our study which do in fact require replies which are appropriate to situations of a certain degree of complexity, similar failures were recorded for left frontal lesions (10 cases) and for right frontal lesions (11 cases). These findings prove that both the frontal lobes have a part to play in the exercise of verbal control. 5) It should however be emphasized that, in our group, the most serious deterioration in language was observed in left or bilateral frontal lesions. The same characteristics were found in these cases: elementary language better than propositional language but the level of achievement possible was very low being limited to brief replies which gave little information although they were usually correct. These findings justify the conclusion that a syndrome exists: disturbances in verbal control caused by frontal lesions. The function of the frontal lobes in language and verbal control in normal subjects is discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Motivations and attitudes affecting high school students' choice of foreign language.

There are some foreign languages that enjoy great status in the United States, while other foreign languages are rarely represented at the high school level. The present study explored the following questions: Why do students choose to take a particular foreign language? Do students gravitate toward it because it is widely thought to be the easiest language to learn or because they perceive greater career opportunities with proficiency in this particular language, or is it simply because there are more classes offered? As long as foreign language study is elective in high schools and as long as a variety of languages are offered, the answers to these questions will remain important for foreign language educators, especially in schools where the various language programs compete with one another for student enrollments and the programs' ultimate survival.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Universals of language maintenance, shift and change.

Since Greenberg the recognition of linguistic universals has been the backbone of language typology. Earlier Garvin had already divided universals into absolute and potential ones, the former uncontested cornerstones of linguistic theory, the latter commonly accepted generalizations among experienced professionals. The 'universals' to be discussed here are of the latter type: tried and tested principles of language maintenance and of language change, whose applicability has been established in numerous language contact and conflict situations in different communities. Among the principles displayed and discussed are the following: Fishman's 'intergenerational dislocation' of language reproduction; Haugen's 'dialect fragmentation' of languages vs. Garvin's 'unification' and standardization; Fishman's claim of the complementary distribution of language functions as a guarantee of stable bilingualism; Wölck's disparate distribution of minority language maintenance along the social scale. Evidence for those and some other 'universals' of language maintenance and change will be provided from a 30-year longitudinal survey of Quechua-Spanish bilingualism in Peru; from Seneca-English bilingualism in New York; from studies of diglossia in Scotland and North Germany, of German-Hungarian bilingualism in Hungary from the Ladin survey in Italy and the Sorbian Project in Germany, and from the EUROMOSAIC survey.

Anthropology, Cultural↗

PubMed1988

Oral and written language abilities of XXY boys: implications for anticipatory guidance.

Previous studies of XXY boys suggest that they are at risk for certain communication disorders involving oral and written language. In this study, the language, reading, and spelling skills of a group of 14 XXY boys identified during neonatal cytogenetic screening were compared with those of a group of 15 control children. The two groups were matched for age, grade, race, parity, birth weight, parental age and education, and socioeconomic status. The mean age of the XXY group was 9 years 7 months and that of the control group was 9 years 3 months. The mean academic grade level for both groups was at the transition between third and fourth grade. There was selective reduction in verbal IQ scores for the XXY group and no significant differences apparent between groups for performance IQ scores. The decrease in verbal IQ was associated with a reduced full-scale IQ and also with significant problems in expressive language, auditory processing abilities, and auditory memory. Word-finding difficulties and problems in the production of syntax were major components of the specific expressive language deficit. Except for difficulties in the understanding of complex sentence structures, the receptive language skills of XXY boys did not differ significantly from those of the control group. These reductions in speech and language abilities correlated with decreased achievement by the XXY group on a variety of reading and spelling tasks. These results suggest that difficulty learning how to read and spell may be due to a preexistent language disability. Early attention to such expressive language problems may be essential to ameliorate secondary maladaptive behaviors due to chronic language-related learning disabilities.

Auditory Perceptual Disorders↗

PubMed1983

Brain organization for language: clues from sign aphasia.

Since sign language conveys many grammatical relations by manipulating spatial relations, its study provides a unique opportunity to investigate cerebral specialization for language. Three deaf signers with damage to the left hemisphere were administered an array of formal sign language tests and a linguistic analysis of their spontaneous signing was performed. All three signers showed aphasia for sign language. Strikingly, in these patients, differential damage within the left hemisphere appeared to lead to selective impairment of the structural layers of sign language (e.g. lexicon versus grammar). These data provide the first demonstration of grammatical breakdown in sign language. Importantly, the language impairments of these patients stood in marked contrast to their relatively intact capacities to process nonlanguage visual-spatial relationships. These results suggest that the two cerebral hemispheres of deaf signers can develop separate specializations for linguistic and for visual-spatial processing, even for a visual-spatial language. They further suggest that the left hemisphere has an innate predisposition for language.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Pro-nominal reference skills of second and fourth grade children with language impairment.

UNLABELLED: Pro-nominal referencing was evaluated in a sample of 569 children comprising four diagnostic subgroups: typical language (TL), specific language impairment (SLI), nonspecific language impairment (NLI), and typical language with low nonverbal IQ (LNIQ). Participants generated oral narratives in second grade and again in fourth grade. The narratives of the females in the TL group included a significantly higher rate of pro-nominal references than the narratives of both the males in the TL group and the females in the NLI group. A higher percentage of complete pro-nominal references was found in the TL group compared to the SLI group. These findings suggest that pro-nominal referencing measures are not sensitive enough to differentiate school-aged children with typical language development from those with language impairment. LEARNING OUTCOMES: The reader will: (1) become familiar with narrative language measures and (2) learn how groups of children with varying language and cognitive profiles perform on measures of referential cohesion.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed1999

A longitudinal study of the relation between language and theory-of-mind development.

Fifty-nine 3-year-olds were tested 3 times over a period of 7 months in order to assess the contribution of theory of mind to language development and of language to theory-of-mind development (including the independent contributions of syntax and semantics). Language competence was assessed with a standardized measure of reception and production of syntax and semantics (the Test of Early Language Development). Theory of mind was assessed with false-belief tasks and appearance-reality tasks. Earlier language abilities predicted later theory-of-mind test performance (controlling for earlier theory of mind), but earlier theory of mind did not predict later language test performance (controlling for earlier language). These findings are consistent with the argument that language is fundamental to theory-of-mind development.

Child Language↗

PubMed1985

Constructive comprehension abilities exhibited by language-disordered children.

Constructive comprehension abilities were compared in a group of 12 language-disordered children (second graders) and two groups of children acquiring language normally (12 second graders matched to the language-disordered subjects on nonverbal cognitive skills and 12 kindergartners matched on language comprehension). Differences were examined in proficiency of the children in constructing spatial and causal inferences associated with short stories presented in a Verbal Task and Picture Task. The language-disordered group scored significantly lower on inference items than the cognitively matched control group of second graders on both tasks. A conditional analysis indicated that even when the language-disordered subjects appropriately answered the relevant premise items, they were significantly less likely than the second-grade controls to correctly respond to inference items on both tasks. There was no significant difference between the language-disordered and kindergarten children for either the overall or conditional analysis. The finding that language-disordered children evidenced difficulty in inference construction for both verbal and pictorial material was interpreted as being indicative of a cognitive deficit.

Child↗

PubMed1995

The Adelaide preschool language unit: results of follow-up.

OBJECTIVE: To determine educational, social and behavioural functioning of children who had been involved in a preschool language intervention programme between 1982 and 1990. METHODOLOGY: Fifty children who attended the Unit were available for follow-up. The children were divided into three groups: (i) language disorder; (ii) speech disorder; and (iii) mixed speech and language disorder. A psychologist administered educational, cognitive and social behavioural tests. Speech, language and articulation were assessed by a speech pathologist. RESULTS: Cognitively, the 'mixed' speech and language group obtained lower scores than the speech and language disorder children; results on educational tests were also generally lower. All three groups were significantly underachieving in areas of language, reading, spelling and arithmetic relative to their performance IQ. No socialization problems were found. CONCLUSIONS: Severe speech and language disorders in young children, even after periods of intensive intervention, have a significant effect on later educational achievement even when children appear to be 'coping' in their educational settings.

Child↗

PubMed2005

Seizure focus affects regional language networks assessed by fMRI.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the degree of language dominance in patients with left and right hemisphere seizure foci compared to normal volunteers using a fMRI reading comprehension task. METHODS: Fifty patients with complex partial epilepsy, aged 8 to 56 years and 33 normal volunteers, aged 7 to 34 had fMRI (1.5 T) and neuropsychological testing. Participants silently named an object described by a sentence compared to a visual control. Data were analyzed with region of interest (ROI) analysis based on t maps for inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), midfrontal gyrus (MFG), and Wernicke area (WA). Regional asymmetry indices (AIs) were calculated [(L - R)/(L + R)]; AI > 0.20 was deemed left dominant and AI < 0.20 as atypical language. RESULTS: Left hemisphere focus patients had a higher likelihood of atypical language than right hemisphere focus patients (21% vs 0%, chi2 < 0.002). Left hemisphere focus patients, excluding those with atypical language, had lower regional AI in IFG, MFG, and WA than controls. Right hemisphere focus patients were all left language dominant and had a lower AI than controls in WA and MFG, but not for IFG. AI in MFG and WA were similar between left hemisphere focus/left language patients and right hemisphere focus patients. Patients activated more voxels than healthy volunteers. Lower AIs were attributable to greater activation in right homologous regions. Less activation in the right-side WA correlated with better verbal memory performance in right focus/left hemisphere-dominant patients, whereas less strongly lateralized activation in IFG correlated better with Verbal IQ in left focus/left hemisphere-dominant patients. CONCLUSIONS: Patients had lower asymmetry indices than healthy controls, reflecting increased recruitment of homologous right hemisphere areas for language processing. Greater right hemisphere activation may reflect greater cognitive effort in patient populations, the effect of epilepsy, or its treatment. Regional activation patterns reflect adaptive efforts at recruiting more widespread language processing networks that are differentially affected based on hemisphere of seizure focus.

Adaptation, Physiological↗

PubMed1996

Whole language and deaf bilingual-bicultural education--naturally!

This position paper discusses how the tenets of Whole Language and Deaf Bilingual-Bicultural Education complement each other. It stresses that Whole Language is based on natural processes through which children can translate their constructs of personal experiences, observations, and perspectives into modes of communication that include written language and, in the present case, American Sign Language. The paper is based on two emphases: (a) Whole Language emphasizes a two-way teaching/learning process, teachers learning from children, and vice versa; and (b) Deaf Bilingual-Bicultural Education emphasizes American Sign Language as a language of instruction and builds on mutual respect for the similarities and differences in the sociocultural and socioeducational experiences and values of Deaf and hearing people. Both Whole Language and Deaf Bilingual-Bicultural Education attempt to authenticate curriculum by integrating Deaf persons' worldviews as part of educational experience.

Canada↗

PubMed2002

Otitis media in early childhood in relation to children's school-age language and academic skills.

OBJECTIVE: To examine whether otitis media with effusion (OME) and associated hearing loss during the first 4 years of life are related to the language development and academic achievement of children between 4 years of age and second grade. METHODS: In a prospective cohort study, 83 black children, primarily from low-income families and recruited from community-based child care programs, were examined repeatedly between the ages of 6 months and 4 years for the presence of OME and hearing loss, both when well and when ill with OME. Children's child-rearing environments at home were assessed annually from infancy through second grade, whereas children's language and academic skills were assessed repeatedly between 4 years of age and second grade. RESULTS: We did not find in our longitudinal analyses a relationship between OME and hearing loss during the first 4 years of life and later academic skills in early reading and recognition of words heard. We did find that children with greater incidence of OME and hearing loss during the first 4 years of life scored lower in verbal math problems between kindergarten and second grade, even after partialing out important background factors. Children with more OME tended to score lower in math at the younger ages but caught up once they entered school. Follow-up analyses indicated also that children with more OME during the first 2 years of life scored lower in expressive language during the preschool and early elementary school years but caught up by second grade. In contrast, children from homes that were rated as more stimulating and responsive scored higher on every measure of language and academic skills than did children from less responsive homes. The home environment was related more strongly to all of the outcomes examined than was OME or hearing loss. CONCLUSIONS: There was no evidence of a significant relationship between a history of OME or hearing loss and children's later academic skills in reading or word recognition during the early elementary school years. Children with greater incidence of OME and hearing loss scored lower in math and expressive language at the younger ages but caught up in math with their peers on entering school and in expressive language by second grade. Furthermore, a child's home environment was more related to early math and expressive language skills than was OME or hearing loss, and the home environment continued to be predictive of all of the language and academic outcomes through second grade. These study results should be interpreted cautiously when generalizing to other populations.

Age Factors↗