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PubMedDate not supplied

Standardized test performance of children with a history of prenatal exposure to multiple drugs/cocaine.

Twenty-four children, age 14 to 50 months, with a history of prenatal exposure to multiple drugs including cocaine, were matched by adjusted birth age and sex to 24 children with no history of drug exposure. All children had been living in stable, drug-free environments from at least the age of 11 months. Tests administered included the Sequenced Inventory of Communicative Development-Revised (SICD), the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R). Results indicated significant differences between groups and genders on the SICD when age was covaried and between groups on the Bayley. No groups or genders differed on the PPVT-R. Many (45.8%) of the children in the drug-exposed group qualified for intervention services according to Washington state criteria. Subject characteristics, other than age, did not play a significant role in the findings of group differences. It is concluded that, due to the cumulative effects of prenatal history, these children should be considered at risk for language delay.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMedDate not supplied

A comparison of two phonological profiles: a tutorial.

The notion of "linguistic profile" as an alternative to standardized testing for speech and language disorders is discussed in this tutorial. Two specific examples of profiles, both for disordered phonology, are described, and readers are guided through their use. Finally, their relative strengths and weaknesses are assessed.

Humans↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Listening comprehension and recall abilities in adolescents with language-learning disabilities and without disabilities for social studies lectures.

Listening comprehension and recall abilities for social studies lectures were examined and compared in 20 adolescent males with language-learning disabilities (LLD) and 29 without disabilities (WD). Subjects viewed two social studies lectures with comparison and causation expository discourse structures and verbally responded to literal and inferential comprehension questions. Regardless of lecture type or question type, the group with LLD performed significantly more poorly than did the group WD. Both groups responded accurately to significantly more inferential questions for the causation lecture over the comparison lecture. Neither group demonstrated a significant difference with respect to their response accuracy for the literal questions across lecture types.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Effects of age and education on the lexico-semantic content of connected speech in adults.

One hundred and thirty-three subjects who considered themselves to be in good health described the bank robbery picture from an aphasia battery for French-speaking subjects. The subjects' connected speech was analyzed and various lexico-semantic measures were obtained. For the purposes of analysis, the subjects were grouped according to age and education level. Results demonstrated that subjects with fewer years of education produced less content than subjects with higher levels of education. Age also affected subjects' performance but only when considering efficiency, the number of content units as a function of time, and the number of different open-class words as a function of time. Older subjects tended to repeat the same content units (using mostly the same words) and comment on some word-finding difficulties they experienced. These behaviors may explain why older subjects were less efficient in the transmission of lexico-semantic information. The results emphasize how age can affect lexico-semantic performance, and add new data about the effects of education, which should be taken into consideration when assessing persons who may show signs of a language disorder.

Adult↗

PubMed1998

Language impairment in motor neurone disease.

Evidence from recent neuropsychological studies of patients with motor neurone disease (MND) has demonstrated that some patients have cognitive impairment. This challenges traditional teaching that MND is a disease with only motor symptoms. Language processing in MND patients has so far not been studied in any depth, but has only been touched upon as a part of general cognition. This study has assessed nine MND subjects on a range of standardised language assessments and compared their performance to that of nine control subjects. Although this is a small experimental sample of subjects, the results of this study indicate that language impairment is present in some patients with MND. The deficits are subtle and only exposed on formal testing. It is not possible to define the nature of the language impairment from this restricted set of data, but there was evidence of some deficits in a sub-group of MND patients on tasks involving naming, auditory comprehension of complex sentences, some semantic tests and spelling. The implications of these findings are discussed in relationship to the clinical management of patients with MND.

Aged↗

PubMed2001

Processing of rapid auditory information in epileptic patients with left temporal lobe damage.

The role of the temporal lobes in processing time-related (temporal) information was tested in a task of anisochrony (or irregularity) discrimination assessing the temporal processing of sequential auditory information according to different presentation rates or tempos (between 80 and 1000 ms inter-onset intervals, IOI). Epileptic patients with either left (LHA, n=8) or right (RHA, n=10) hippocampal atrophy participated in this study as well as six normal control subjects (NC). For all the subjects, an effect of tempo was obtained, thresholds deteriorating for the 80 ms IOI as compared to longer IOI (the latter conforming to Weber's law). Furthermore, there was a specific impairment of rapid anisochrony discrimination (80 ms IOI) for patients with LHA as compared to patients with a RHA and NC, whereas no significant deficit was observed in these patients for longer IOI. These findings are in agreement with studies carried out in patients with left-hemisphere damage associated with massive language disorders and suggest the specialisation of left medial temporal lobe structures in processing rapid sequential auditory information. However, these results might also be explained by an auditory memory deficit in the presence of left temporal lobe dysfunction, as opposed to a specific impairment of fast sequential temporal processing.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

Is autotopoagnosia real? EC says yes. A case study.

We report a case of pure autotopagnosia (AT) following a left subcortical vascular accident. The absence of any language disorder, general mental deterioration or other cognitive impairments in this patient allowed an in-depth study of AT. Several tests of body representation and object and animal representation, as well as tests assessing semantic skills were administered to verify current interpretations of AT. Results showed a clear-cut dissociation between defective performances in body representation tests and normal performances on tests involving other kinds of stimuli. The patient's performances were particularly defective on tests relying on visuo-spatial body representation, but her semantic and linguistic knowledge seemed to be spared. This dissociation between different aspects of body representation supports Sirigu et al.'s hypothesis that multiple, partially independent systems are involved in body knowledge. In agreement with this hypothesis, in the present patient AT seems be due to a deficit in a system that processes the structural properties and relative position of single body parts. The present results, reporting the first observation of a subject not affected by any cognitive impairment other than AT, strongly support the existence of a system specifically devoted to body representation.

Aged↗

PubMed2003

Word-category specific deficits after lesions in the right hemisphere.

A speeded lexical decision task was used to investigate word-category deficits in patients suffering from lesions in the right hemisphere and in neurological controls without cortical lesion. In all patients from one group (n = 12), the right frontal lobe was affected causing a left-sided hemiparesis. In the second group (n = 6), lesions primarily affected areas in the right inferior temporo-occipital lobes. Patients with motor deficits due to lesions in the spinal cord or in the periphery served as neurological controls (n = 9). Processing of three categories of words was investigated: verbs referring to actions (action verbs (acVs)); nouns with strong visual associations (visually-related nouns (viNs)); and nouns with both strong action and visual associations (bimodal nouns (biNs)). Stimulus categories were matched for word length and normalized lexical frequency. Error scores revealed a significant word category by patient group interaction. Patients with lesions in the right frontal lobe showed most severe deficits in processing action verbs, whereas those with lesions in their right temporo-occipital areas showed most severe deficits in processing visually-related nouns. Neurological controls did not show any differences between word categories. The double dissociation of the processing impairments seen in frontal versus temporo-occipital patients demonstrates that specific word-category deficits can arise from lesions in the right non-dominant hemisphere. An account for these results in terms of distributed neuronal systems representing words is offered.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Factors associated with atypical speech representation in children with intractable epilepsy.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between hemispheric speech dominance and several demographic and seizure variables in a large sample of children (N=75) who underwent the intracarotid amobarbital procedure (IAP) prior to surgery. The findings were similar to results previously reported in adults and children, suggesting that variables, such as age at seizure onset, laterality of seizure focus, location of seizure focus and handedness are related to the presentation of atypical speech representation in children with epilepsy. The impact of multiple variables in determining the risk for atypical speech dominance was also assessed. The results demonstrated an increased probability of atypical speech representation in children with a greater number of risk variables, suggesting the need for further investigations in this area.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1997

Lexical-semantic deficits in two patients with dominant thalamic infarction.

Two patients with dominant thalamic infarction, one in the tuberothalamic artery territory, the other in the paramedian artery territory, demonstrated language impairment limited to word retrieval difficulties in spontaneous language and structured naming tasks. Using a cognitive neuropsychological model of lexical processing developed in the study of patients with cortical lesions. We carried out a detailed investigation of their lexical abilities. Both patients demonstrated impairment restricted to oral and written picture naming and oral naming to definition and spared performance on tasks of lexical comprehension, oral word reading, and writing to dictation, as well as syntactic comprehension and production. Naming impairment disproportionately affected lower frequency words, and word substitutions often corresponded to objects that were semantically-related to target words. We propose that our patients' word retrieval impairments reflect a failure of thalamic input to effectively engage the cortical networks subserving lexical semantic processing, leading to degraded levels of activation as the semantic system interfaces with subsequent stages of lexical processing.

Aphasia↗

PubMed2003

How normal is grammatical development in the right hemisphere following hemispherectomy? The root infinitive stage and beyond.

We examined the morphosyntax of eight left hemispherectomized children at two different stages and compared it to MLU-matched normals. We found that the language of the hemispherectomies paralleled that of their MLU matches with respect to the specific morphosyntactic characteristics of each stage. Our findings provide strong evidence for the presence of functional categories in all early grammars and demonstrate that grammatical development, regardless of its neural substrate, is highly constrained by UG and follows a narrowly determined course. We discuss our findings within a neurobiological framework in which etiology defines the integrity of the remaining hemisphere, which in turn, determines its potential for linguistic reorganization and/or acquisition.

Brain↗

PubMed2003

Attentional resource and processing speed limitations during sentence processing in Parkinson's disease.

Several studies have suggested that patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) have sentence comprehension difficulty in part because of their limited executive resources. However, these assessments confound the executive resources contributing to sentence comprehension with the resources needed for task performance. In the present study, we used a word detection technique that minimizes task demands in order to evaluate attentional and processing speed resources during the comprehension of simple sentences without subordinate clauses and sentences containing subject-relative and object-relative center-embedded subordinate clauses. We found that PD patients have poor sensitivity to phonetic errors embedded in unbound grammatical morphemes, regardless of the clausal structure of the sentence, suggesting difficulty attending to grammatical morphemes. We also found that PD patients are significantly slowed in their sensitivity to phonetic errors in content words embedded in object-relative center-embedded sentences. Slowed sensitivity to content words in object-relative sentences was correlated with timed executive measures of planning. On a traditional measure of comprehension, these PD patients were impaired for sentences containing object-relative center-embedded clauses compared to sentences with subject-relative center-embedded clauses, and comprehension of object-relative sentences was correlated with executive measures. Our findings are consistent with the claim that limited executive resources for strategic attention and processing speed contribute to the sentence comprehension difficulties of PD patients.

Aged↗

PubMed2004

The development of morphosyntactic ability in atypical populations: The acquisition of tag questions in children with early focal lesions and children with specific-language impairment.

We examined the development of some features of morphosyntactic ability, specifically the acquisition of auxiliaries and use of agreement marking, along with sentence processing capacity. We used a conceptually simple task called the Tags Question Task, which is a method for evaluating a number of language processes in the production of a commonly used, familiar linguistic device. We compared the performance of children with early focal lesions (N=21), children with specific-language impairment (N=24), and typically developing children (N=24) matched in age and nonverbal ability; additional analyses involved comparisons of children matched on performance level. The data converge to support a "delayed" development of language behavior in our clinical groups, as overall patterns of performance and age-related changes on individual tag features and tag questions were strikingly similar in all three groups across a number of methods of comparison. Implications for theories of the development of brain-language relationships as they pertain to early focal brain damage, specific-language impairment, and the language acquisition process in typically developing children are discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Productive use of the English past tense in children with focal brain injury and specific language impairment.

In this study, 22 children with early left hemisphere (LHD) or right hemisphere (RHD) focal brain lesions (FL, n=14 LHD, n=8 RHD) were administered an English past tense elicitation test (M=6.5 years). Proportion correct and frequency of over-regularization and zero-marking errors were compared to age-matched samples of children with specific language impairment (SLI, n=27) and with typical language development (TD, n=27). Similar rates of correct production and error patterns were observed for the children with TD and FL; whereas, children with SLI produced more zero-marking errors than either their FL or TD peers. Performance was predicted by vocabulary level (PPVT-R) for children in all groups, and errors did not differ as a function of lesion side (LHD vs. RHD). Findings are discussed in terms of the nature of brain-language relations and how those relationships develop over the course of language learning.

Brain Injuries↗

PubMed2004

Grammaticality sensitivity in children with early focal brain injury and children with specific language impairment.

Grammaticality judgments and processing times associated with violation detection were examined in typically developing children, children with focal brain lesions (FL) acquired early in life, and children with specific language impairment (SLI). Grammatical sensitivity in the FL group, while below typically developing children, was above levels seen in children with SLI. Age effects were noted with developmental changes in sensitivity extending into adolescence. Developmental delays in grammatical processing were particularly pronounced for children with SLI, who showed sensitivity levels below those of younger typically developing children. Sensitivity to agreement violations was also protracted in the SLI group providing further evidence of the vulnerability of morphology, a pattern not unlike that seen in adult aphasics. Findings for the FL group provide compelling evidence of neural and behavioral plasticity in children with early unilateral brain injury. Moreover, results from these children underscore how very different compensatory organization may be compared to profiles seen in adult aphasics who have comparable lesions. In contrast, although it was expected that the SLI children would perform below the typically developing children, the disadvantage seen with respect to the FL group suggests that the underlying pathology responsible for SLI may be more pervasive and less plastic than the focal pathology of children with early brain damage.

Age Factors↗

PubMed1984

Speech development in young institutionalized retarded children under an early intervention procedure.

The author describes the speech development in 43 young institutionalized retarded children under a therapeutic-rehabilitative procedure which lasted two years. Retarded children not following the special rehabilitation program and normally developing children from the same institution were used as control groups. The development of speech in the rehabilitation group was significantly better than that of the retarded group, but not as good as that of the control group of normally developing children.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed1988

Transient aphasic episodes due to hypoglycemia.

A 58-year-old diabetic man suffered two episodes of hypoglycemia accompanied by isolated aphasia. Prompt resolution of the language disorder followed treatment with 50% glucose IV. The day following the first event the EEG demonstrated bitemporal delta activity, more prominent over the left hemisphere. EEG repeated two weeks after the second event showed residual left temporal slowing. The differential diagnosis between hypoglycemia and transient ischemic attacks in diabetic patients presenting with transient focal neurological deficit is emphasized.

Anomia↗

PubMed1982

[Severe infant myoclonic epilepsy (author's transl)].

Twenty children (15 males and 5 females) suffering from a particular type of myoclonic epilepsy were submitted to a longitudinal study. All children were neurologically normal. Familial antecedents existed for epilepsy in 25% of the cases (5/20) and for febrile convulsions in 15% (3/20). The first fit appeared with fever at the mean age of 6 months in all cases but one of clonic type. Frequent similar febrile or afebrile clonic seizures recurred in all subjects before the age of 12 months. At this time the EEG was normal in 14 cases and brief discharges of generalized spike-waves during ILS or during sleep were present in 6 cases only. Later, frequent non-febrile clonic unilateral or generalized fits, frequent atypical 'absences' often accompanied by jerks, high photosensitivity and non-epileptic erratic myoclonias appear. Nevertheless, atomic and/or tonic seizures did not appear. The evolution is characterized by the persistence of fits and the appearance of severe language disorder and light cerebellar and pyramidal signs. The authors present their results and discuss the nosological problems of this severe infant myoclonic epilepsy.

Electroencephalography↗