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PubMed2002

Brain signatures of artificial language processing: evidence challenging the critical period hypothesis.

Adult second language learning seems to be more difficult and less efficient than first language acquisition during childhood. By using event-related brain potentials, we show that adults who learned a miniature artificial language display a similar real-time pattern of brain activation when processing this language as native speakers do when processing natural languages. Participants trained in the artificial language showed two event-related brain potential components taken to reflect early automatic and late controlled syntactic processes, whereas untrained participants did not. This result challenges the common view that late second language learners process language in a principally different way from native speakers. Our findings demonstrate that a small system of grammatical rules can be syntactically instantiated by the adult speaker in a way that strongly resembles native-speaker sentence processing.

Adult↗

PubMed1995

Integration of speech with natural language understanding.

The integration of speech recognition with natural language understanding raises issues of how to adapt natural language processing to the characteristics of spoken language; how to cope with errorful recognition output, including the use of natural language information to reduce recognition errors; and how to use information from the speech signal, beyond just the sequence of words, as an aid to understanding. This paper reviews current research addressing these questions in the Spoken Language Program sponsored by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). I begin by reviewing some of the ways that spontaneous spoken language differs from standard written language and discuss methods of coping with the difficulties of spontaneous speech. I then look at how systems cope with errors in speech recognition and at attempts to use natural language information to reduce recognition errors. Finally, I discuss how prosodic information in the speech signal might be used to improve understanding.

Cognition↗

PubMed2002

The impact of developmental visuospatial learning difficulties on British Sign Language.

There has been substantial research interest in recent years in the relationship between the development of language and cognition, especially where dissociations can be seen between them. Williams syndrome, a rare congenital disorder characterized by a fractionation of higher cortical functions, with relatively preserved language but marked difficulties with visuospatial constructive cognition, has been extensively studied. The case of Heather, who is remarkably similar to the characteristic phenotype of Williams syndrome in physical appearance and cognitive abilities, but who is also congenitally deaf and a user of British Sign Language, provides the first opportunity to explore the consequences of specific visuospatial learning difficulties on the linguistic system when the language used is visuospatial. Heather shows a pattern of impaired drawing ability and visual form discrimination, but preserved ability to discriminate faces. She has a large vocabulary in British Sign Language, and overall presents a picture of relative competence in British Sign Language grammar. However, she shows specific deficits in those areas of British Sign Language which directly rely on spatial representations for linguistic purposes. A number of theories as to the nature of her impairments and those found in Williams syndrome are discussed, using models of the relationship between language and visuospatial cognition based on data from this unique case.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Autism and autism risk in siblings of children with specific language impairment.

BACKGROUND: Several studies have shown that family members of children with autism have elevated rates of spoken and written speech and language problems. AIMS: This study asked whether there was also a greater rate of siblings with autism among probands with specific language impairment. METHODS & PROCEDURES: The probands in this study were 158 children with specific language impairment and 132 children with normal language status. These probands had 522 siblings who were examined for risk of autism using the Autism Behavior Checklist. Siblings found to be at risk were then examined using the Autism Diagnostic Interview--Revised and the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-G. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: A concentration of siblings with risk for a diagnosis of autism was found in association with probands who had poor spoken language skills. Four siblings of the 522 (0.8%) met the diagnostic standards for autism. All the probands of these siblings had spoken language scores below -1 SD and three had diagnoses of spoken language impairment. CONCLUSIONS: These data provide additional support for a familial association between autism and spoken language impairment.

Autistic Disorder↗

PubMedDate not supplied

False belief and sentence complement performance in children with specific language impairment.

BACKGROUND: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have language abilities not commensurate with other cognitive abilities. This pattern makes the SLI population of interest when investigating the relationship between language and theory of mind. One view regarding this relationship is that theory of mind develops independently of language, but certain language skills are required to meet the demands of tasks used to measure theory of mind, such as false belief. Another view is that language development facilitates theory of mind development, and specifically, that mastery of sentence complement structures is necessary for false belief. AIMS: The study asked (1) if children with SLI can succeed on false belief, despite their language deficits, when the linguistic demands of the false belief task are low, and (2) if performance on sentence complement structures predicts false belief performance. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Fifteen children with SLI, 15 children matched for age and 15 children matched for language comprehension level participated in a false belief task with four conditions of differing linguistic complexity, and a test of sentence complementation understanding. Spontaneous production of sentence complements was also measured. Group differences for false belief and sentence complementation, and condition differences for false belief, were tested non-parametrically. Partial correlation analysis, log-linear analysis, and Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney tests were used to explore relationships among the complementation and false belief measures for all children and for each group. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Children with SLI performed similarly to age-matched peers on false belief when linguistic complexity of the task was low, and performed more poorly than age-matched peers on understanding of sentence complements. For all children, sentence complement performance was correlated with false belief (controlling for age), and those who performed well on sentence complements had higher mean rates of false belief success. Log-linear analysis showed the sentence complement-false belief relationship to hold for a condition with relatively low linguistic demands. CONCLUSIONS: The study provides evidence that children with SLI can perform at age-appropriate levels when false belief tasks are less demanding, and that mastery of sentence complementation is a predictor of false belief ability.

Child Development↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Children with speech and language disability: caseload characteristics.

BACKGROUND: There has been no previous incidence survey of children referred to a speech and language therapy service in the UK. Previous studies of prevalence of specific communication difficulties provide contradictory data from which it is difficult to plan speech and language therapy service provision. Reliable data are needed concerning the nature and severity of impairments as well as the age and source of referral and the effects of cultural and socio-economic profiles of the population served. AIMS: To describe referrals received between January 1999 and April 2000 by the paediatric speech and language therapy service of Middlesborough Primary Care Trust, an area of social deprivation. METHODS & PROCEDURES: All referrals were offered an initial assessment appointment within 8 weeks of referral. Standardized tests and quantitative measures of communication difficulties, determined by age, were undertaken. Population and case history information was also gathered. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: The incidence rate of referrals who attended for assessment in a single year was calculated as 16.3% for primary communication disability and 14.6% for speech/language disability. Of the 1100 referrals, 14.9% failed to attend and 9.8% had normal functioning. The distribution of disorder type was dysfluency 5.3%, voice or nasality disruption 2.0%; receptive language difficulties 20.4%, expressive language difficulties 16.9% and speech difficulties 29.1%. A further 0.7% had special educational needs and 0.9% had speech and language impairment but refused consent. The majority of referrals were between 2 and 6 years old, more boys than girls were referred, and socio-economic status matched that of the local population. Both gender and socio-economic status affected diagnosis. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the Middlesborough data, the estimated national incidence rate of referrals who attend for assessment and who have speech and language disability is 85 000-90 000 children per year (14.6% of births). While findings from only one Primary Care Trust must be treated cautiously, they provide paediatric speech and language therapy services managers with information that might guide service planning.

Child↗

PubMed2025

The impact of tokenizer selection in genomic language models.

MOTIVATION: Genomic language models have recently emerged as a new method to decode, interpret, and generate genetic sequences. Existing genomic language models have utilized various tokenization methods, including character tokenization, overlapping and nonoverlapping k-mer tokenization, and byte-pair encoding, a method widely used in natural language models. Genomic sequences differ from natural language because of their low character variability, complex and overlapping features, and inconsistent directionality. These features make subword tokenization in genomic language models significantly different from both traditional language models and protein language models. RESULTS: This study explores the impact of tokenization in genomic language models by evaluating their downstream performance on 44 classification fine-tuning tasks. We also perform a direct comparison of byte pair encoding and character tokenization in Mamba, a state-space model. Our results indicate that character tokenization outperforms subword tokenization methods on tasks that rely on nucleotide-level resolution, such as splice site prediction and promoter detection. While byte-pair tokenization had stronger performance on the SARS-CoV-2 variant classification task, we observed limited statistically significant differences between tokenization methods on the remaining downstream tasks. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: Detailed results of all benchmarking experiments are available in https://github.com/leannmlindsey/DNAtokenization. Training datasets and pretrained models are available at https://huggingface.co/datasets/leannmlindsey. Datasets and processing scripts are available at doi: 10.5281/zenodo.16287401 and doi: 10.5281/zenodo.16287130.

Natural Language Processing↗

PubMed1999

Language dominance in neurologically normal and epilepsy subjects: a functional MRI study.

Language dominance and factors that influence language lateralization were investigated in right-handed, neurologically normal subjects (n = 100) and right-handed epilepsy patients (n = 50) using functional MRI. Increases in blood oxygenation-dependent signal during a semantic language activation task relative to a non-linguistic, auditory discrimination task provided an index of language system lateralization. As expected, the majority of both groups showed left hemisphere dominance, although a continuum of activation asymmetry was evident, with nearly all subjects showing some degree of right hemisphere activation. Using a categorical dominance classification, 94% of the normal subjects were considered left hemisphere dominant and 6% had bilateral, roughly symmetric language representation. None of the normal subjects had rightward dominance. There was greater variability of language dominance in the epilepsy group, with 78% showing left hemisphere dominance, 16% showing a symmetric pattern and 6% showing right hemisphere dominance. Atypical language dominance in the epilepsy group was associated with an earlier age of brain injury and with weaker right hand dominance. Language lateralization in the normal group was weakly related to age, but was not significantly related to sex, education, task performance or familial left-handedness.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

PubMed2005

Arabic sign language: a perspective.

Sign language in the Arab World has been recently recognized and documented. Many efforts have been made to establish the sign language used in individual countries, including Jordan, Egypt, Libya, and the Gulf States, by trying to standardize the language and spread it among members of the Deaf community and those concerned. Such efforts produced many sign languages, almost as many as Arabic-speaking countries, yet with the same sign alphabets. This article gives a tentative account of some sign languages in Arabic through reference to their possible evolution, which is believed to be affected by the diglossic situation in Arabic, and by comparing some aspects of certain sign languages (Jordanian, Palestinian, Egyptian, Kuwaiti, and Libyan) for which issues such as primes, configuration, and movement in addition to other linguistic features are discussed. A contrastive account that depicts the principal differences among Arabic sign languages in general and the spoken language is given.

Arab World↗

PubMed2005

Prenatal cocaine exposure and children's language functioning at 6 and 9.5 years: moderating effects of child age, birthweight, and gender.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether prenatal cocaine exposure (PCE), or the interaction between PCE and contextual variables, is associated with children's language at age 6 and 9.5 years, adjusting for relevant covariates. METHODS: Analyses were based on 160 low-income, urban children from a prospective study who completed a standardized language assessment at 6 and 9.5 years. PCE was determined using neonatal meconium assays and maternal self-report. RESULTS: Significant interaction effects of PCE on language outcomes were found in multivariate longitudinal analyses using generalized estimating equations (GEE). Children with PCE had lower receptive language than unexposed children at 6 but not at 9.5 years, lower expressive language if they had lower birthweight, and lower expressive and total language if they were female. Other risk (e.g., violence exposure) and protective factors (e.g., preschool experience) were related to language outcomes regardless of PCE status. CONCLUSIONS: Age, birthweight, and gender moderated the relation between PCE and school-aged children's language.

Age Factors↗

PubMed2003

Language delay in a community cohort of young children.

OBJECTIVE: To document the prevalence of expressive language delay in relation to age and gender in 12- to 39-month-old children. To document the characteristics, particularly social competence and emotional/behavioral problems, related to deficits in expressive language. METHOD: Parents of an age- and sex-stratified random sample of children born at Yale New Haven Hospital between July 1995 and September 1997 who lived in the New Haven Meriden Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area were enrolled when their children were 12 to 39 months of age (79.8% participation;N = 1,189). The main outcome for these analyses is expressive language delay measured by the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory, short forms. RESULTS: Expressive language delays range from 13.5% in 18- to 23-month-olds to 17.5% in children 30 to 36 months of age. By 18 to 23 months, children are more likely to experience delays if they come from environments characterized by low education, low expressiveness, poverty, high levels of parenting stress, and parents who report worry about their children's language problems. When social competence is adjusted for in the multivariable model, behavior problems are no longer associated with language delay, suggesting that poor social competence rather than behavior problems may be the critical early correlate of low expressive language development. CONCLUSIONS: Expressive language delays are prevalent problems that appear to be associated with poor social competence. Given that such problems may be risk factors for social and emotional problems, early identification is critical.

Catchment Area, Health↗

PubMed2003

Twins as a natural experiment to study the causes of mild language delay: II: Family interaction risk factors.

BACKGROUND: Twins tend to lag behind singletons in their language development, but the causes were unknown. METHOD: Ninety-six twin pairs from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), for whom birth was after at least 33 weeks of gestation, were compared with 98 pairs of singletons, no more than 30 months apart in age. Parental qualities and family interaction were assessed through standardised questionnaires and interviews and both structured and unstructured observations in the home at 20 months and 36 months. The possible causal role of postnatal family influences was assessed through five criteria: i) the feature had to differ between twins and singletons; ii) individual differences in that feature had to relate to individual differences in language level within the sample of singletons and of twins; iii) the feature as measured at 20 months had to predict language as assessed at 36 months; iv) that had to apply after controlling for language level at 20 months; and v) introduction of the predictive feature into an overall model had to obliterate the twin-singleton difference in language level. RESULTS: Patterns of parent-child interaction and communication met these five criteria. The maternal factors all concerned aspects of interaction that were broadly concerned with communication: encouraging the child to speak, providing elaborating comments, engaging in reading to the child and talking about the story and its illustrations. The HOME inventory findings provided similar findings with respect to responsiveness, involvement and level of experiences involved. Family features that might have been influential, but which were not, included parental depression, breast-feeding, family size, and style of sibling interaction. CONCLUSION: Patterns of parent-child interaction and communication within the normal range have environmentally mediated effects on language and account for twin-singleton differences in language developmently. The results indicate the value of a natural experiment in testing competing causal hypotheses, and show the role of environmental factors as influences on language variations within the normal range, for both twins and singletons.

Breast Feeding↗

PubMed2004

Screening for language delay in the United Arab Emirates.

BACKGROUND: Developmental language delay (DLD) is frequent among two- and three-year-olds but little is known about this condition in the Arabian Peninsula. This paper forms part of a multipurpose community psychiatric survey conducted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The findings regarding the prevalence and psychosocial correlates of DLD are reported here. METHODS: A total of 694 children, representative of the UAE 3-year-old population were screened using the Denver Developmental Screening Test (DDST) and the language screening procedure as used by Westerlund and Sundelin. RESULTS: Of the 694 children screened for DLD at 3 years of age, 69 children (9.9%; CI 7.8-12.4) were found to have delays in the language sector of DDST. A total of 45 (6.5%; CI 4.3-8.7) were identified as having general language disability, both in comprehension and expression as per the language screening procedure. Language delay was found to be associated with rural living, mother being from a different nationality, non-involvement of domestic help in child care, family history of language delay, obstetric and perinatal problems and presence of behavioural problems in the child. Using stepwise multiple logistic regression analysis, two factors emerged as important with regard to general language delay, which were previous non-UAE nationality of the mother and total monthly income of the family. CONCLUSION: The pattern and correlates of DLD found in this survey are in line with those reported by other surveys, but some unique socio-cultural risk factors specific to this community were identified. The implications of these findings to screening and referral for further evaluation and intervention are discussed.

Child Behavior Disorders↗

PubMed2005

The role of speech rhythm in language discrimination: further tests with a non-human primate.

Human newborns discriminate languages from different rhythmic classes, fail to discriminate languages from the same rhythmic class, and fail to discriminate languages when the utterances are played backwards. Recent evidence showing that cotton-top tamarins discriminate Dutch from Japanese, but not when utterances are played backwards, is compatible with the hypothesis that rhythm discrimination is based on a general perceptual mechanism inherited from a primate ancestor. The present study further explores the rhythm hypothesis for language discrimination by testing languages from the same and different rhythmic class. We find that tamarins discriminate Polish from Japanese (different rhythmic classes), fail to discriminate English and Dutch (same rhythmic class), and fail to discriminate backwards utterances from different and same rhythmic classes. These results provide further evidence that language discrimination in tamarins is facilitated by rhythmic differences between languages, and suggest that, in humans, this mechanism is unlikely to have evolved specifically for language.

Animals↗

PubMed1987

A longitudinal study of children with developmental language delay at age three: later intelligence, reading and behaviour problems.

A large sample of Dunedin (New Zealand) children were assessed at age three to identify those with language delay. 2.6 per cent were defined as delayed in verbal comprehension only, 2.3 per cent as delayed in verbal expression only, and 2.3 per cent as delayed in both ('general language delay'). Most of these children, and the remainder of the sample, were assessed for intelligence, reading and behaviour problems at ages seven, nine and 11. Those in every language-delay group had significantly lower mean IQs and lower mean reading scores than the remainder of the sample. They also more often had a low IQ or a lower reading score at ages seven and nine and a lower Verbal and Full-scale IQ at 11. The groups with delayed verbal comprehension and general language delay had significantly more behaviour problems than the remainder of the sample. The group with general language delay was consistently the most disadvantaged in later intelligence, reading and behaviour. Two of the language-delay groups (comprehension and general language) had significantly higher scores on a family disadvantage index. The results of this study confirm the importance of early language delay as a predictor of lower than average intelligence and reading ability and increased behaviour problems.

Child↗

PubMed2005

Effects of limited English proficiency and physician language on health care comprehension.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the effect of limited English proficiency on medical comprehension in the presence and absence of language-concordant physicians. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: A telephone survey of 1,200 Californians was conducted in 11 languages. The survey included 4 items on medical comprehension: problems understanding a medical situation, confusion about medication use, trouble understanding labels on medication, and bad reactions to medications. Respondents were also asked about English proficiency and whether their physicians spoke their native language. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: We analyzed the relationship between English proficiency and medical comprehension using multivariate logistic regression. We also performed a stratified analysis to explore the effect of physician language concordance on comprehension. Forty-nine percent of the 1,200 respondents were defined as limited English proficient (LEP). Limited English-proficient respondents were more likely than English-proficient respondents to report problems understanding a medical situation (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] 3.2/confidence interval [CI] 2.1, 4.8), trouble understanding labels (AOR 1.5/CI 1.0, 2.3), and bad reactions (AOR 2.3/CI 1.3, 4.4). Among respondents with language-concordant physicians, LEP respondents were more likely to have problems understanding a medical situation (AOR 2.2/CI 1.2, 3.9). Among those with language-discordant physicians, LEP respondents were more likely to report problems understanding a medical situation (AOR 9.4/CI 3.7, 23.8), trouble understanding labels (AOR 4.2/CI 1.7, 10.3), and bad medication reactions (AOR 4.1/CI 1.2, 14.7). CONCLUSION: Limited English proficiency is a barrier to medical comprehension and increases the risk of adverse medication reactions. Access to language-concordant physicians substantially mitigates but does not eliminate language barriers.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1995

Language function after temporal lobectomy without stimulation mapping of cortical function.

We studied 95 patients who underwent standard anterior temporal lobectomy (ATL) without stimulation mapping of language areas, using neuropsychological parameters of language function preoperatively and 1 year postoperatively [Boston Naming Test and Verbal Fluency, and the Information, Comprehension, Arithmetic, Similarities, Digit Span, and Vocabulary subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)]. Verbal IQ (VIQ), Performance IQ (PIQ), Full-Scale IQ (FSIQ), and Verbal Deviation Quotient were also evaluated, as were parameters of memory function. All patients had hemisphere dominance for language assessed by an intracarotid amytal test. Fifty-three patients had a left dominant (LHDL) ATL with a mean extent of lateral resection of 4.8 cm, and 10 had a left ATL with right or mixed hemisphere dominance (RHDL, MDL). Thirty-two patients had a right nondominant ATL. Seizure outcome was 57 and 59% seizure-free for LHDH and right nondominant group, respectively, 1 year after operation. Comparison of preoperative scores showed the LHDL group to have significantly lower scores than the right nondominant group for several parameters of language function and memory. The group undergoing left dominant ATL showed no significant loss of language function postoperatively and actually showed gains in many parameters. Standard ATL without stimulation mapping of language areas and with conservative lateral resection is safe for long-term language function. In addition, evidence shows preexisting language dysfunction in patients undergoing left dominant ATL.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1998

Selective amobarbital test for the determination of language function in patients with epilepsy with frontal and posterior temporal brain lesions.

PURPOSE: Selective amobarbital tests with selective temporary inactivation of the left frontal operculum and/or the left parietotemporal cortex were performed in 5 patients with left-hemispheric epileptogenic lesions in or adjacent to classical Broca's and/or Wernicke's area. The aim was to assess language functions in these brain regions before surgery, to tailor the surgery according to the individual functional importance of these brain regions, and to predict postoperative outcome. METHODS: Amobarbital was injected by transfemoral selective catheterization of the arteries supplying the target areas. Along with neuropsychological and neurological testing during the amobarbital procedure, EEG recordings were performed in all patients, and [99mTc]HMPAO-single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) in 2 patients. RESULTS: After the amobarbital injection into the left frontal opercular region, there was no recognizable language dysfunction in 3 patients. In these 3 patients, the lesions in or adjacent to the frontal operculum were completely resected without postoperative language impairment. In the remaining 2 patients, temporary language impairment after the amobarbital injection into the left frontoopercular and Wernicke's region, respectively, suggested language functions in these areas. Surgery was restricted to the left mesiotemporal lobe in 1 patient. In the other patient, the tumor infiltrating the frontal operculum was restrictively resected. Postoperatively, the first patient had no language impairment, but the latter had transient global aphasia, from which she recovered. CONCLUSIONS: Selective temporary amobarbital inactivation of brain regions that may be associated with language has clearly indicated the presence or absence of language functions in these regions. The test contributed substantially to planning of the surgical approach in each patient. The predictive value of the amobarbital test was demonstrated by the postoperative outcome.

Adolescent↗