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PubMed1999

The language of mental health nursing reports: firing paper bullets?

A great deal of the caring work of nursing is accomplished and mediated through language. This paper attempts to characterize some of this language in quantitative and stylistic terms in an attempt to characterize the genre of nursing report language. Nursing students (n = 26) and graduate nurses (n = 3) viewed a videotape of a person being interviewed by a psychiatrist and produced written reports. These showed a large proportion of words relating to the person and to feelings and needs, compared to existing databases of the English language in general. The language produced by the participants also contained many modal or modifying words and is similar to spoken rather than written English in terms of the proportion of lexical content. There was much diversity in their descriptions and the vocabulary used to refer to the client. Graduate nurses showed more scepticism of the evidence provided by the video and advocated more investigation and questioning of the client. The use of standard forms and techniques of expression suggests that these reports were assembled on a language production line. Finally, we advocate a more systematic approach to educating nursing students about the power of the language they use.

England↗

PubMed2002

Auditory event-related brain potentials in parents of children with specific language impairment.

Auditory event-related brain potentials evoked in response to tone stimuli and to speech stimuli were recorded in a group of parents of children with specific language-impairment and a group of parents of normally speaking children. The parents of the language-impaired children showed longer P3 latencies than the parental control group in the speech task requiring a phonological discrimination, but did not differ from the controls in the linguistically non-demanding tone discrimination task. The longer P3 latency was associated with a positive parental history of language delay. There were no group differences concerning the N1 component in any of the tasks. The findings indicate that parents of children with specific language impairment show signs of deficient late-stage perceptual higher order linguistic processing, whereas the earlier central sensory detection stage of the phonological information is no different from the controls. Our observations are particularly interesting with regard to a study of the children of these two parental groups, where the language-impaired children showed longer P3 latencies than controls in both a tone task and a speech task, whereas there were no differences between the children concerning the N1 component. We propose that deficient late-stage auditory higher order perceptual processing as indexed by the longer P3 latency to speech stimuli observed both in children with specific language-impairment and in their parents may represent a constitutional trait, contributing to the language acquisition difficulties in these children.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

[Are specific developmental language disorders caused by deficits in auditory perception?].

BACKGROUND: Specific language impairment is assumed to be caused by deficits in auditory perception and therefore the training of auditory abilities is recommended as a treatment. Our study focussed on the question of whether a correlation between language disorders and auditory perception abilities can be proven empirically. PATIENTS: 23 language impaired children and 52 controls aged 7 to 11 years were examined. METHOD: Auditory abilities were measured by means of a battery of nonverbal and verbal tests. The children had to identify tones of different frequencies, loudness, duration or patterns as well as every day sounds and mixtures of such sounds. Noise-overlaid, time-compressed and frequency-limited speech tasks, and binaural summation tasks were also used. In addition, phoneme discrimination ability and auditory memory were assessed. RESULTS: Language impaired children scored low on phoneme discrimination and auditory memory tests but not on nonverbal or verbal auditory perception tasks. There are significant correlations between their expressive language ability and their scores on phoneme discrimination, auditory memory and sound duration identification tests. CONCLUSIONS: The results do not support the assumption that developmental language disorders are associated with auditory perception deficits. However, there are indications that auditory memory and time processing are deficient. Thus, training of auditory perception does not appear to be a suitable treatment for language impaired children.

Audiometry, Pure-Tone↗

PubMed2002

Language skills in children with velocardiofacial syndrome (deletion 22q11.2).

OBJECTIVE: To further define the language profile of children with velocardiofacial syndrome (VCFS) and explore the influence of parental origin of the deletion on language. STUDY DESIGN: Children and adolescents with VCFS (n = 27) were group-matched for sex, age, and IQ with 27 children and adolescents with idiopathic developmental delay. Fifty-four typically developing control subjects were also included in the analyses investigating word association abilities. RESULTS: Children with VCFS had significantly lower receptive than expressive language skills, a unique finding when compared with IQ-matched control subjects. However, no significant differences in word association were detected. Children with a deletion of paternal origin score significantly higher on receptive language when compared with children with a deletion of maternal origin. CONCLUSIONS: The Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-III results suggest that children with VCFS show more severe deficits in receptive than expressive language abilities. Language skills of children with VCFS could be influenced by parental origin of the deletion and thus related to neuroanatomic alterations at the deletion site.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1990

Cognitive processing in specifically language-impaired children.

Eighteen language-impaired children and 25 non-language-impaired children were evaluated to investigate the relationship between language ability and selected aspects of the five-component problem-solving process defined by Kagan and Kogan (1970). Non-impaired children performed better than language-impaired children on nearly all components of the problem-solving process. Language-impaired children had particular difficulties in the areas of coding and hypothesis generation. In fact, coding ability was inversely related to the number of errors made in hypothesis evaluation. Coding ability was also positively correlated with language ability. The exact causal relationship between coding ability, language ability, and error-making in hypothesis evaluation is unclear; however, improving coding skills through training may increase automaticity and lead to improved performance in the higher levels of the problem-solving process.

Attention↗

PubMed2002

Language and mathematical problem solving among bilinguals.

Does using a bilingual's 1st or 2nd language have an effect on problem solving in semantically rich domains like school mathematics? The author conducted a study to determine whether Filipino-English bilingual students' understanding and solving of word problems in arithmetic differed when the problems were in the students' 1st and 2nd languages. Two groups participated-students whose 1st language was Filipino and students whose 1st language was English-and easy and difficult arithmetic problems were used. The author used a recall paradigm to assess how students understood the word problems and coded the solution accuracy to assess problem solving. The results indicated a 1st-language advantage; that is, the students were better able to understand and solve problems in their 1st language, whether the 1st language was English or Filipino. Moreover, the advantage was more marked with the easy problems. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed1987

Using language to parse the young damaged brain.

Functional distinctions within the language domain can be used to parse the young damaged brain. Parsing means resolving something into its component parts and describing them; parsing the young damaged brain with language involves selecting and grouping features of early brain damage according to how they sustain or disrupt the language performance of brain-injured children and adolescents. And the nature of neural representation for language can be inferred from such brain parsing. Three language factors concerned with lexical access were identified as discrete, that is, as isolable from other language functions in a brain-damaged population, and also as distinct, that is, as having a characteristic set of brain damage features that sustain or disrupt them. Criteria were also outlined for judging the lexical access factors as autonomous, that is, as able to maintain their boundaries with other language functions in the face of brain damage.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

The effect of context on communication: a study of the language and communication skills of adults with acquired brain injury.

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: To examine the effects of changing contexts on language and communication skills of adults with acquired brain injury. RESEARCH DESIGN: Repeated measures design. METHODS: Four adults with brain injury were observed in four contexts with pragmatic language and communication behaviours recorded. Contexts included baseline, two intervention phases (a 3-day camp and post-camp period) and 2-month follow-up. RESULTS: Participants demonstrated improvements in constructive language production during intervention phases. Results indicate structure, cueing and positive experiences created language which was observed to overcome the influence of organic damage. However, at follow-up, the language and communication levels returned to baseline levels. CONCLUSION: Clinically, these results have implications for the development of sustained interventions for language and communication skills in community-based rehabilitation programmes. Creating supporting contexts may serve as an effective means of improving language and communication behaviours, while also facilitating optimum community inclusion.

Adult↗

PubMed2000

Active participation of mothers during speech therapy improved language development of children with cleft palate.

Whole language intervention uses the principles of natural language learning, which consider language not as an independent system but as a system intimately related to other cognitive and social abilities. This paper compares the outcome of speech therapy given in different settings to two groups of children with cleft palate. Those in the first group were treated by the speech pathologist alone (control group), whereas those in the second group were treated by the speech pathologist but were also accompanied by their mothers (experimental group). The purpose of this study was to find out if including the mother as an active participant in speech therapy sessions would improve the language development of children with cleft palate who also had additional language delays. Both groups were evaluated before and after treatment to evaluate the advance of each group. The patients accompanied by their mothers had significantly better language skills compared with patients treated without their mothers. The results support the statement that language development is related to mother-child mode of daily life interaction in children with cleft palate.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed2006

Comprehension: an overlooked component in augmented language development.

PURPOSE: Despite the importance of children's receptive skills as a foundation for later productive word use, the role of receptive language traditionally has received very limited attention since the focus in linguistic development has centered on language production. For children with significant developmental disabilities and communication impairments, augmented language systems have been devised as a tool both for language input and output. The role of both speech and symbol comprehension skills is emphasized in this paper. METHOD: Data collected from two longitudinal studies of children and youth with severe disabilities and limited speech serve as illustrations in this paper. The acquisition and use of the System for Augmenting Language (SAL) was studied in home and school settings. Communication behaviors of the children and youth and their communication partners were observed and language assessment measures were collected. RESULTS: Two patterns of symbol learning and achievement--beginning and advanced--were observed. Extant speech comprehension skills brought to the augmented language learning task impacted the participants' patterns of symbol learning and use. CONCLUSIONS: Though often overlooked, the importance of speech and symbol comprehension skills were underscored in the studies described. Future areas for research are identified.

Child↗

PubMed2006

Laterality and language experience.

A meta-analysis was conducted on studies that examined hemispheric functional asymmetry for language in brain-intact monolingual and bilingual adults. Data from 23 laterality studies that directly compared bilingual and monolingual speakers on the same language were analysed (n = 1234). Variables examined were language experience (monolingual, bilingual), experimental paradigm (dichotic listening, visual hemifield presentation, and dual task) and, among bilinguals, the influence of second language proficiency (proficient vs nonproficient) and onset of bilingualism (early, or before age 6; and late, or after age 6). Overall, monolinguals and late bilinguals showed reliable left hemisphere dominance, while early bilinguals showed reliable bilateral hemispheric involvement. Within bilinguals, there was no reliable effect of language proficiency when age of L2 acquisition was controlled. The findings indicate that early learning of one vs. two languages predicts divergent patterns of cerebral language lateralisation in adulthood.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Prevalence and natural history of primary speech and language delay: findings from a systematic review of the literature.

The prevalence and the natural history of primary speech and language delays were two of four domains covered in a systematic review of the literature related to screening for speech and language delay carried out for the NHS in the UK. The structure and process of the full literature review is introduced and criteria for inclusion in the two domains are specified. The resulting data set gave 16 prevalence estimates generated from 21 publications and 12 natural history studies generated from 18 publications. Results are summarized for six subdivisions of primary speech and language delays: (1) speech and/or language, (2) language only, (3) speech only, (4) expression with comprehension, (5) expression only and (6) comprehension only. Combination of the data suggests that both concurrent and predictive case definition can be problematic. Prediction improves if language is taken independently of speech and if expressive and receptive language are taken together. The results are discussed in terms of the need to develop a model of prevalence based on risk of subsequent difficulties.

Child↗

PubMed1994

Multiple subpial transections in the language cortex.

Multiple subpial transections (MST) were made in language cortex in three patients with medically refractory partial epilepsy. All patients were mapped with extra-operative stimulation using subdural grids over the dominant temporal, frontal and parietal convexity. Two patients had anterior temporal lobectomy and MST in posterior language cortex. One patient who had undergone a previous frontal tumour resection had only MST over the frontoparietal convexity, including frontal and parietal language areas. Both patients with MST in the posterior language cortex had postoperative language dysfunction, which had improved significantly by 9 months after surgery. The patient with MST in frontoparietal language areas had improved language functions immediately postoperatively. The two men with anterior temporal lobectomies and MST are seizure-free at 1 year follow-up and the woman with frontoparietal MST has had a > 70% reduction in seizure frequency at 1 year follow-up.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Right hemisphere language functions and schizophrenia: the forgotten hemisphere?

This review highlights the importance of right hemisphere language functions for successful social communication and advances the hypothesis that the core deficit in psychosis is a failure of segregation of right from left hemisphere functions. Lesion studies of stroke patients and dichotic listening and functional imaging studies of healthy people have shown that some language functions are mediated by the right hemisphere rather than the left. These functions include discourse planning/comprehension, understanding humour, sarcasm, metaphors and indirect requests, and the generation/comprehension of emotional prosody. Behavioural evidence indicates that patients with typical schizophrenic illnesses perform poorly on tests of these functions, and aspects of these functions are disturbed in schizo-affective and affective psychoses. The higher order language functions mediated by the right hemisphere are essential to an accurate understanding of someone's communicative intent, and the deficits displayed by patients with schizophrenia may make a significant contribution to their social interaction deficits. We outline a bi-hemispheric theory of the neural basis of language that emphasizes the role of the sapiens-specific cerebral torque in determining the four-chambered nature of the human brain in relation to the origins of language and the symptoms of schizophrenia. Future studies of abnormal lateralization of left hemisphere language functions need to take account of the consequences of a failure of lateralization of language functions to the right as well as the left hemisphere.

Communication↗

PubMed2006

Stimulating language: insights from TMS.

Fifteen years ago, Pascual-Leone and colleagues used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate speech production in pre-surgical epilepsy patients and in doing so, introduced a novel tool into language research. TMS can be used to non-invasively stimulate a specific cortical region and transiently disrupt information processing. These 'virtual lesion' studies offer not only the ability to explore causal relations between brain regions and language functions absent in functional neuroimaging, but also spatial and temporal precision not typically available in patient studies. For instance, TMS has been used to demonstrate functionally distinct sub-regions of the left inferior frontal gyrus; to clarify the relationship between pre-morbid language organization and susceptibility to unilateral lesions and to investigate the contribution of both left and right hemisphere language areas in recovery from aphasia. When TMS is used as a measure of functional connectivity, it demonstrates a close link between action words and motor programmes; it suggests a potential evolutionary link between hand gestures and language and it suggests a role in speech perception for the motor system underlying speech production. In combination with functional neuroimaging, it can elucidate the circuits responsible for this involvement. Finally, TMS may even be useful for enhancing recovery in aphasic patients. In other words, TMS has already become an important tool for studying language at both the cognitive and neural levels, and it is clear that further developments in TMS methodology are likely to result in even greater opportunities for language research.

Aphasia↗

PubMed2005

Sign language recognition and translation: a multidisciplined approach from the field of artificial intelligence.

In recent years, research has progressed steadily in regard to the use of computers to recognize and render sign language. This paper reviews significant projects in the field beginning with finger-spelling hands such as "Ralph" (robotics), CyberGloves (virtual reality sensors to capture isolated and continuous signs), camera-based projects such as the CopyCat interactive American Sign Language game (computer vision), and sign recognition software (Hidden Markov Modeling and neural network systems). Avatars such as "Tessa" (Text and Sign Support Assistant; three-dimensional imaging) and spoken language to sign language translation systems such as Poland's project entitled "THETOS" (Text into Sign Language Automatic Translator, which operates in Polish; natural language processing) are addressed. The application of this research to education is also explored. The "ICICLE" (Interactive Computer Identification and Correction of Language Errors) project, for example, uses intelligent computer-aided instruction to build a tutorial system for deaf or hard-of-hearing children that analyzes their English writing and makes tailored lessons and recommendations. Finally, the article considers synthesized sign, which is being added to educational material and has the potential to be developed by students themselves.

Artificial Intelligence↗

PubMed2006

Culture, language, and patient safety: Making the link.

It has been well recognized internationally that hospitals are not as safe as they should be. In order to redress this situation, health care services around the world have turned their attention to strategically implementing robust patient safety and quality care programmes to identify circumstances that put patients at risk of harm and then acting to prevent or control those risks. Despite the progress that has been made in improving hospital safety in recent years, there is emerging evidence that patients of minority cultural and language backgrounds are disproportionately at risk of experiencing preventable adverse events while in hospital compared with mainstream patient groups. One reason for this is that patient safety programmes have tended to underestimate and understate the critical relationship that exists between culture, language, and the safety and quality of care of patients from minority racial, ethno-cultural, and language backgrounds. This article suggests that the failure to recognize the critical link between culture and language (of both the providers and recipients of health care) and patient safety stands as a 'resident pathogen' within the health care system that, if not addressed, unacceptably exposes patients from minority ethno-cultural and language backgrounds to preventable adverse events in hospital contexts. It is further suggested that in order to ensure that minority as well as majority patient interests in receiving safe and quality care are properly protected, the culture-language-patient-safety link needs to be formally recognized and the vulnerabilities of patients from minority cultural and language backgrounds explicitly identified and actively addressed in patient safety systems and processes.

Culture↗

PubMed1996

Brain processing of native and foreign languages.

We used positron emission tomography to study brain activity in adults while they were listening to stories in their native language, in a second language acquired after the age of seven, and in a third unknown language. Several areas, similar to those previously observed in monolinguals, were activated by the native but not by the second language. Both the second and the unknown language yielded distinct left-hemispheric activations in areas specialized for phonological processing, which were not engaged by a backward speech control task. These results indicate that some brain areas are shaped by early exposure to the maternal language, and are not necessarily activated by the processing of a second language to which they have been exposed for a limited time later in life.

Adult↗