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Interactions of language and memory in deaf children and adults.

This article reviews theoretical and empirical issues concerning the relations of language and memory in deaf children and adults. An integration of previous studies, together with the presentation of new findings, suggests that there is an intimate relation between spoken language and memory. Either spoken language or sign language can serve as a natural mode of communication for young children (deaf or hearing), leading to normal language, social, and cognitive development. Nevertheless, variation in spoken language abilities can be shown to have a direct impact on memory span. Although the ways in which memory span can effect other cognitive processes and academic achievement are not considered in depth here, several variables that can have direct impact on the language-memory interaction are considered. These findings have clear implications for the education of deaf children.

Adult↗

Automatic sign language analysis: a survey and the future beyond lexical meaning.

Research in automatic analysis of sign language has largely focused on recognizing the lexical (or citation) form of sign gestures as they appear in continuous signing, and developing algorithms that scale well to large vocabularies. However, successful recognition of lexical signs is not sufficient for a full understanding of sign language communication. Nonmanual signals and grammatical processes which result in systematic variations in sign appearance are integral aspects of this communication but have received comparatively little attention in the literature. In this survey, we examine data acquisition, feature extraction and classification methods employed for the analysis of sign language gestures. These are discussed with respect to issues such as modeling transitions between signs in continuous signing, modeling inflectional processes, signer independence, and adaptation. We further examine works that attempt to analyze nonmanual signals and discuss issues related to integrating these with (hand) sign gestures. We also discuss the overall progress toward a true test of sign recognition systems--dealing with natural signing by native signers. We suggest some future directions for this research and also point to contributions it can make to other fields of research. Web-based supplemental materials (appendicies) which contain several illustrative examples and videos of signing can be found at www.computer.org/publications/dlib.

Algorithms↗

Mental development in polysomy X Klinefelter syndrome (47,XXY; 48,XXXY): effects of incomplete X inactivation.

The child with XXY or a variant form is a fertile ground for scientific investigation because of the homogeneity of the disorder and the increased prevalence of learning disorders associated with it. However, the research studies of boys with XXY (Klinefelter syndrome) have been plagued by a variety of factors from small sample size, methodological flaws, and ascertainment bias. In spite of these shortcomings, there remains some consistency to the neurobehavioral profile of this disorder. In general, the prenatal population of boys with XXY is less affected developmentally and is more academically successful than the boys identified through postnatal diagnosis. Boys with XXY often have decreased muscle tonus, delayed speech, and language skills with an increased incidence of reading differences and dyslexia. It does appear that social difficulties may be mediated by language processing problems and temperamental issues. The neurobehavioral and neurocognitive phenotype of boys with XXY places them at risk for school failure and secondary behavioral disturbances. Therefore, early evaluation and intervention is strongly recommended since the prognosis may be improved significantly with appropriate therapeutic intervention. The natural history of this disorder is not well defined from the neurodevelopmental, neuroimaging, and cytogenetic perspective. Further investigation into the effects and the relationships between parental origin and outcome may provide many answers regarding the variability of the disorder. Lastly, some promising theories have been postulated regarding the neurobiological etiology of this disorder, which requires more investigation if we are to understand the pathogenesis of this XXY and its effect on learning.

Aneuploidy↗

Linguistic approaches to biological sequences.

Biologists have long made use of linguistic metaphors in describing and naming cellular processes involving nucleic acid and protein sequences. Indeed, it is very natural to view the genetic 'text' and its sequential transliterations in these terms. However, a metaphor is not a tool, and it is necessary to ask whether the techniques used in analyzing other kinds of languages, such as human and computer languages, can in fact be of any use in tackling problems in molecular biology. This paper reviews the work of the author and others in applying the methods of computational linguistics to biological sequences.

Base Sequence↗

Vernacularization as an intellectual and social bridge. The Catalan translations of Teodorico's Chirurgia and of Arnau de Vilanova's Regimen Sanitatis.

This study analyzes the dissemination and readership of two medieval medical works in Catalan. Combining the use of diverse sources such as the manuscripts themselves, post-mortem inventories, and the prologues written by the translators, the study shows how the diffusion of these works exemplifies the two main audiences to which vernacular texts were addressed. These were, on the one hand, literate but not Latinate surgeons and other practitioners interested in the new medicine emanating from the emerging universities; and on the other, nobles and burghers interested in issues of health and disease and in natural philosophy in general. The framework for the study is the general process of consolidation of the new medical system which developed in late medieval Latin Europe.

General Surgery↗

[An exploratory study toward a theoretic construction of hope].

A written association test has been conducted to establish the concept, the meaning and the process of hope. The test consists of the major question: List of three words related to "hope". The question was given to 55 nurses (rehabilitation/cancer/internal medicine care wards units) and 61 patients. A total of 289 words have been collected, and the collection was analyzed with categorization by the value or meaning of listed words. The analysis yields three major categories, namely, componants of hope, metaphores/symbols, and synonyms. The three major categories may be further partitioned into subcategories. The results are significant to define the nature of the hope and process of the hope. These understanding will facilitate the development of effective methods of nursing or chronic or cancer patients disabled.

Attitude to Health↗

Two mathematically defined expressive language structures in humans and chimpanzees.

Two expressive language structures have been identified mathematically in humans and chimpanzees. The first was found by measuring the waiting times between the invocation of new words or symbols, which consistently yielded individually characteristic rate constants and descending exponential curves that reflect a stochastically lawful Poisson process. The second was discovered by calculating the cumulative informational complexity (entropy) of word usage, which in all cases was a deterministically lawful logarithmic function of the number of words used to a given point in a communicative sequence. Individual and species differences in how this law is obeyed also characterized the sample. The results from the apes resembled those from the works of human poets like Shakespeare. The findings speak for deep, natural, unlearned expressive language structures in apes that are comparable to those seen in humans.

Animals↗

The lexical nature of syntactic ambiguity resolution [corrected].

Ambiguity resolution is a central problem in language comprehension. Lexical and syntactic ambiguities are standardly assumed to involve different types of knowledge representations and be resolved by different mechanisms. An alternative account is provided in which both types of ambiguity derive from aspects of lexical representation and are resolved by the same processing mechanisms. Reinterpreting syntactic ambiguity resolution as a form of lexical ambiguity resolution obviates the need for special parsing principles to account for syntactic interpretation preferences, reconciles a number of apparently conflicting results concerning the roles of lexical and contextual information in sentence processing, explains differences among ambiguities in terms of ease of resolution, and provides a more unified account of language comprehension than was previously available.

Cognition↗

Target and biomarker exploration portal for drug discovery.

MOTIVATION: The discovery of novel drug targets and precision biomarkers remains a major challenge in drug development, with traditional differential expression analysis often overlooking key regulatory proteins. Here, we present a novel, web-based bioinformatics tool, the Target and Biomarker Exploration Portal (TBEP), designed to accelerate the drug discovery process by integrating large-scale biomedical data with network analysis techniques. RESULTS: TBEP harnesses machine-learning approaches to mine and combine multimodal datasets, including human genetics, functional genomics, and protein-protein interaction networks, to decode causal disease mechanisms and uncover novel therapeutic targets and precision biomarkers for specific phenotypes. A unique feature of the tool is its ability to process large-scale data in real-time, facilitated by an efficient cloud-based architecture. Additionally, the tool incorporates an integrated large language model (LLM), which assists researchers in exploring and interpreting complex biological relationships within the generated networks and multi-omics data using natural language (English). By offering an intuitive, interactive interface, the LLM enhances the exploration of biological insights, making it easier for scientists to derive actionable conclusions. This powerful integration of network analysis, multi-omics data, and LLM provides a robust framework for accelerating the identification of novel drug targets. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: The tool is publicly available at https://tbep.missouri.edu. The source code, documentation and installation instructions are available at GitHub repository: https://github.com/mizzoudbl/tbep.

Drug Discovery↗

[An evolutionary hypothesis on the absence of the Diego antigen (Di-a) in Chibcha Amerindians].

Diego blood group was studied in 141 Amerindian and Eskimo tribes from Alaska and Canada. Twenty six tribes (18%) did not show the Di-a antigen and 20 tribes (77%) were of the Chibcha linguistic Phyla. In the past, the Di-a absence has been related to several ecological factors such as climate and the presence of clines. I advance an alternative explanation regarding the loss of the Di-a allele in the Chibcha genetic divergence which occurred 6000-7000 years ago, as a consequence of random processes and not of natural selection. It is postulated that the Di-a allele is absent in this Amerindian groups only, and that the presence of the antigen in four tribes (Boruca, Ica, Kuna and Sumo) is due to gene flow across neighboring groups of different languages which carry the Di-a antigen.

Blood Group Antigens↗

A new concept in blepharoplasty.

Apart from what may be considered complications, the intervention of any aesthetic surgery can have undesired effects (scar sequelae, normal regional dynamic disorders, edema, iatrogenic acceleration of the aging process in the area). The orbital region is particularly sensitive to these undesirable effects due to its situation and the importance of the eyelids in facial sign language. The sum of these undesirable effects and not infrequent complications often place the plastic surgeon in a compromising situation. It is for this reason that in recent years we have made a special effort to analyze causes, to design new techniques, and to evaluate the combination of different techniques in an attempt to minimize these undesirable effects, so as to be able to offer patients more natural and safer results. It is with this intention that this paper records some anatomical and functional details of the eyelids, analyzes the physiology of the aging process, and examines some classic and modern techniques.

Eyelids↗

Impaired comprehension of raising-to-subject constructions in Parkinson's disease.

This paper describes an experiment which shows that roughly half of nondemented patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) have impaired comprehension of subject-to-subject and object-to-subject raising constructions (e.g., Susan seems to Bill to be tall and Susan is hard for Bill to catch), but have normal comprehension of the counterpart constructions (e.g., It seems to Bill that Susan is tall and It's hard for Bill to catch Susan). Several possible explanations for this pattern of performance are considered, including a parsing disorder, a syntactic-semantic linking disorder, a reduction of working memory capacity, slowed speed of syntactic processing, and difficulty with the experimental task. Although some of these explanations are arguably more plausible than others, the exact nature of the comprehension impairment remains unclear.

Aged↗

Developmental dyslexia in a regular orthography: a single case study.

This study of an adult case examined in detail with eye movement measures the reading speed problem which is characteristic for developmental dyslexia in regular orthographies. A dramatic length effect was found for low frequency words and for pseudowords, but not for high frequency words. However, even for high frequency words it was found that reading times were substantially prolonged although number of fixations did not differ. A neurocognitive assessment revealed no visual deficits (parallel processing, precedence detection, coherent motion detection) but speed impairments for certain verbal and phonological processes. We propose that the reading difficulties are phonological in nature, but these difficulties become manifest as inefficiency and not as inability.

Adult↗

Wisdom of the body.

Modern medicine still fails to explain processes that operate in self-healing diseases. We may thus distinguish between two kinds of processes that operate in the body: explained and unexplained. The latter operate in self-healing diseases, and are either ignored by medicine or called placebos. Hippocrates regarded such processes as the healing force of nature and the task of the physician was to assist the healing force. The unexplained processes in physiology were defined by Starling and Cannon as Wisdom of the Body (WOB). This concept is applied here for a rational treatment of processes involved in health and in disease. WOB is an attribute of live organisms. It directs growing plants toward sunshine, guides amebas away from noxious agents, and determines the behavior of higher animals. It is essential for individual survival and was molded by natural selection. During evolution, WOB encountered all diseases, knows how to heal itself, and anticipates all diseases. The main task of the WOB is to maintain health, and improve its quality. It controls processes in the body so as to make them healthier. The WOB has its own language and should be considered when examining patients.

Brain↗

Factors affecting the learning of foreign language vocabulary: imagery keyword mediators and phonological short-term memory.

In order to investigate the cognitive processes involved in learning Foreign Language (FL) vocabulary, this study evaluates different methods of instruction. It demonstrates that keyword techniques are effective for receptive learning but that repetition is a superior strategy for learning to produce the foreign word. Performance is optimal when learners combine both strategies. The nature of the keyword is crucial--whereas imageable noun keywords promote learning, verb keywords actually impede it. A theoretical analysis of the roles of phonological short-term memory, imagery, and lexical factors in FL vocabulary learning is presented.

Adolescent↗

Producing the magnum opus: a metaphor for nephrology nursing expertise acquisition.

AIM: This paper elucidates the nature of metaphor and the conditions necessary to its use as an analytic device in qualitative research, and describes how the use of metaphor assisted in the analytic processes of a grounded theory study of nephrology nursing expertise. BACKGROUND: The use of metaphor is pervasive in everyday thought, language and action. It is an important means for the comprehension and management of everyday life, and makes challenging or problematic concepts easier to explain. Metaphors are also pervasive in quantitative and qualitative research for the same reason. In both everyday life and in research, their use may be implicit or explicit. METHODS: The study using grounded theory methodology took place in one renal unit in New South Wales, Australia between 1999 and 2000 and included six non-expert and 11 expert nurses. It involved simultaneous data collection and analysis using participant observation, semi-structured interviews and review of nursing documentation. FINDINGS: A three stage skills-acquisitive process was identified in which an orchestral metaphor was used to explain the relationships between stages and to satisfactorily capture the data coded within each stage. CONCLUSION: Metaphors create images, clarify and add depth to meanings and, if used appropriately and explicitly in qualitative research, can capture data at highly conceptual levels. Metaphors also assist in explaining the relationship between findings in a clear and coherent manner.

Clinical Competence↗

Memory-based language processing: psycholinguistic research in the 1990s.

There are two main domains of research in psycholinguistics: sentence processing, concerned with how the syntactic structures of sentences are computed, and text processing, concerned with how the meanings of larger units of text are understood. In recent sentence processing research, a new and controversial theme is that syntactic computations may rely heavily on statistical information about the relative frequencies with which different syntactic structures occur in the language. In text processing, recent research has focused on what information the words and ideas of a text evoke from long-term memory quickly, passively, and at low processing cost. Research in both domains has begun to use the information that can be obtained from large corpora of naturally occurring texts.

Humans↗

Language production and thought disorder in schizophrenia.

The authors examined the relationship between language production (LP) processes and thought disorder. Thirty-nine schizophrenic or schizoaffective participants completed tasks measuring discourse planning, monitoring, and grammatical-phonological encoding, as well as an interview used to rate thought disorder. The authors found that different LP processes were differentially related to different thought disorder subtypes. Incompetent references were strongly and selectively related to discourse planning performance. In addition, word approximations-neologisms were strongly and specifically associated with grammatical-phonological encoding performance. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for understanding the multifaceted nature and etiology of thought disorder.

Adult↗