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Constraint questions: how can they be taught to children with special needs?

The current study was designed to determine whether efficient question-asking strategies can be taught to children who do not display them spontaneously. The relative efficacy of two different teaching techniques was compared to determine which would increase the quality of question asking. This study is descriptive in nature. Twenty-eight students served as subjects. The treatment took place during a 28-day time period and consisted of a pre-test, two teaching sessions and a post-test session, each 14 days apart. An array of 25 pictorial objects and animals was used to stimulate constraint questions, which are more efficient than hypothesis questions for information seeking. A major finding in this investigation was that 6-year-old children with special needs could be taught to ask constraint questions and generalise this strategy using a self-evaluative teaching method. The number of constraint questions asked increased significantly using this method in comparison to the modelling teaching method. The findings of this study contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between teaching methods and cognitive-linguistic strategy development.

Child↗

The persisting communicative difficulties of 'remediated' language-impaired children.

This study addresses the effiacy of dismissal criteria used by speech and language pathologists by investigating communicative functioning in children declared 'remediated'. A battery of measures comprising the Language Assessment and Remediation Procedure (LARSP); the Behavioural inventory of Speech Act Performances (BISAP); the BISAP Addendum and the Devereux School Behaviour Rating Scale (DESB) was conducted on five children with language impairment who had been declared 'remediated'. Findings for certain 'remediated' subjects revealed persisting problems. The results suggest that decisions about dismissal from therapy may, in some cases, be premature and point to the need for a broad-based perspective concerning remediation dismissal decisions. An additional study on larger populations and the use of designs which investigate long term outcomes would further inform clinical decision-making concerning dismissal from therapy.

Child↗

Concordance between teacher/therapist opinion and formal language assessment scores in children with language impairment.

As part of a wider study, 242 children attending language units attached to mainstream schools were assessed on a number of formal language assessments. In addition, each child's teacher was asked to state whether, for each of four areas of language difficulty, the participant exhibited this impairment. The four areas were: articulation, phonology, syntax/morphology and semantic/pragmatic impairment. This report compares test results between children thought by their teacher or therapist to show each impairment and those not thought clinically to show the difficulty. Investigations into suitable cut-off scores for the tests used were also examined using level of agreement between the two modes of assessment as criteria. For articulation, phonology and syntax/morphology, teacher opinion was found to discriminate significantly on at least some formal tests. However, for children with semantic/pragmatic impairment, no tests used identified their problems. Furthermore, by use of 25th centile cut-off scores, 66% agreement levels between teacher and test groupings were found in all but the group with semantic/pragmatic impairments. The importance and limitations of analysis of teacher-test concordance is discussed as well as the current lack of suitable formal assessment material for semantic and pragmatic language impairment.

Child↗

Bilingualism and specific language impairment in children attending language units.

Bilingual children were found to form a distinct subgroup within a large cohort of children with specific language-impairment (SLI) attending language units across England. They differed from the cohort as a whole, and from a language-matched monolingual 'control' group, on measures including language profile on entry to the unit, performance on standardised tests, emotional-behavioural state and probable future educational placement. This paper sets out the nature of these differences in more detail, and suggests some possible explanations for them.

Child↗

Normative Scottish data on the CELF-RUK: a pilot study.

There are relatively few standardised tests available for assessing language abilities in older children. A widely used test in Britain is the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Revised (CELF-R, Semel et al. 1987). One potential problem with its use in the UK is that the test has been standardised on American children. In this investigation, the CELF-RUK was administered to twenty Scottish language-normal children, aged 12;0-12;11 years. The results showed that the Scottish children's scores were significantly lower than the American standardisation sample scores for the expressive subtests but not significantly different for the receptive subtests. The results suggest that further research is needed before the test can be used confidently with Scottish children with language impairment.

Child↗

Specialised service to children with specific language impairment in mainstream schools.

The following report describes a three year project to develop, implement and evaluate a specialised speech and language therapy (SLT) service to children with specific language impairment (SLI) who attend mainstream schools and nurseries. The report describes how the service was set up and the package of care offered. A range of evaluation measures was designed and implemented and the results of these are discussed. The service aimed to enable key-workers to support children with SLI effectively within the context of the school environment. The results suggest that the package of care offered provided an effective and high quality service as judged by the parents, schools and therapists.

Child↗

A cytogenetic study in 120 Turkish children with intellectual disability and characteristics of fragile X syndrome.

We review the evidence for the frequency of the fragile X syndrome (FXS), other X-linked abnormalities, and other chromosomal disabilities of Turkish pediatric psychiatry outpatients with intellectual disability. Reported clinical features and genetic findings were used in cytogenetic screenings to estimate the prevalence of the fragile X (fra X) and other chromosomal aberrations in 120 patients with mental retardation, language disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity, or developmental delay, in comparison with 30 healthy children. Data on the clinical, intellectual and behavioral findings in 14 fra X positive children (11.7%) is presented. Ten of the 120 patients (8.3%) had enlargement of the heterochromatin region of chromosome 9. Other chromosomal aberrations and autosomal fragile sites (FS) were also observed. There was a statistically significant difference in the autosomal and X-linked FS between the study and control groups (p < 0.05). The tests for the fra X chromosome are likely to be of diagnostic benefit in young children with autism or developmental delay, particularly in speech, and who have large and prominent ears.

Case-Control Studies↗

[Contribution of John Hughlings Jackson to the understanding of epilepsy].

The figure of J.H. Jackson is one of the most relevant in the history of neurology. His longest period not only during his training but also during his professional plenitude took place in the National Hospital. Jackson was a great clinician, wrote many articles and gave a lot of lectures, but never wrote either a treatise or a monograph about his special field. He did not carry out animal experiments. He introduced in Britain the use of the ophthalmoscope in the neurological exploration and founded the journal Brain. He was specially interested in language disorders, paralysis, vertigo, mental disorders, cerebral tumours and above all epilepsy. He systematized what we today know as complex partial crisis, establishing the link between the function of the temporal lobe and the sensorial auras, automatism's, déjà-vu and jamais vu phenomena. He described the uncinate crisis, the topographic progression of the motor partial crisis and its posterior generalisation, establishing the motor pattern of cerebral cortex. The clinical observations of epileptic phenomena, with the influence of the evolutive ideas from Spencer, were the seeds for the elaboration of the evolutive development of the function of the nervous system. His theory about evolution and dissolution of the neurological functions was the starting point for Freud's clinical investigation. The Jacksonian set of ideas were experimentally proved by the neurophysiological work of Sherrington.

England↗

Familial dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB).

We report a rare familial case of dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). The patient was a man who died at the age of 51. His parents were first cousins. Among three siblings, two were diagnosed as probable cases of DLB, and one was a possible case, according to the clinical diagnostic criteria of the consortium on DLB. Following the patient's autopsy, he was found to have had DLB without neurofibrillary tangles or senile plaques (pure form of diffuse Lewy body disease). His other siblings have been followed for more than ten years. Although these patients with familial DLB displayed clinical variability, all three siblings showed progressive dementia of early onset and progressive language disorder with paraphasia and difficulty in finding words. Psychotic features were also seen in the three siblings. The patient's sister showed compulsive behavior, and the other two siblings showed symptoms of parkinsonism. Neuropathologically, in addition to the usual neuropathology of DLB, the autopsy findings showed numerous small spheroids in the stratum pyramidale from the subiculum to CA1 of the hippocampus. Significant neuronal loss in CA2-3 of the hippocampus was detected. Axonal flow disturbance may be involved in the hippocampal formations of this incidence of familial DLB.

Cerebral Cortex↗