Developmental Dysphasia Research Articles

An Automated Model for Child Language Impairment Prediction Using Hybrid Optimal BiLSTM

Children without obvious disabilities (hearing loss/low intellectual capacity) may have language skill development issues due to specific language impairment (SLI), a communication disorder. The SLI has a significant impact on a child's speaking, listening, reading, and writing abilities. SLI is typically known as development language disorder, developmental dysphasia, or language delay. Recently, machine learning as well as deep learning techniques have been quite effective in predicting the early stage of SLI, analyzing the disorder severity, and predicting the treatment efficiency. Existing approaches primarily exploited auditory indicators to diagnose communication disorders, frequently leaving out hidden information acquired in the temporal domain. To overcome this drawback, an optimized Bidirectional Long Short Term Memory (BiLSTM) architecture is presented in this paper to handle the speech dynamics. The Improved Hybrid Aquila Optimizer and Flow Directional algorithm known as IHAOFDA is integrated with the BiLSTM architecture to optimize the hyperparameters of the BiLSTM structure. When assessed using the information from the SLI children in the Laboratory of Artificial Neural Network Applications (LANNA) dataset, the proposed model performs better. The IHAOFDA-optimized BiLSTM architecture improves accuracy in classifying different severity levels such as mild, moderate, and severe.

Pragmatic Language Impairment: A Scientometric Review

Pragmatic language impairment (PLI) is a complex and wide-ranging condition affecting numerous individuals worldwide, yet its exact prevalence and scope remain uncertain due to its interconnections with other conditions and symptoms, such as neurodevelopmental disorders, learning disabilities, developmental dysphasia, and aphasia. This study presents a comprehensive review of PLI, tracing its historical, current, and future trajectories through the lens of both bibliometric and scientometric indicators. The study analysed a substantial corpus of 3852 documents related to PLI, including sources from Scopus, Web of Science, and Lens, spanning the period from 1977 to 2022. This investigation utilised advanced software tools such as CiteSpace 5.8.R3 and VOSviewer 1.6.18 to detect patterns, connections, and bursts in scholarly works related to PLI. Key findings of this review include the identification of major clusters in the PLI literature, which include social communication disorder, traumatic brain injury, autism spectrum disorder, and inferential meaning. These clusters represent significant sub-themes within the PLI research body, with repetitive mentions of autism spectrum disorder suggesting its critical overlap with PLI. Other noteworthy clusters included Asperger’s syndrome, behavioural problems, belief reports, and diagnostic observation schedule scores, all of which contribute to the nuanced understanding of PLI. The study provides a comprehensive overview of PLI development, drawing on theoretical, historical, and empirical evidence.

Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Children: Neuroplasticity and Possibilities of Nootropic Pharmacotherapy

Neurodevelopmental Disorders (NDD) are characterized by disturbances of the formation of cognitive functions, communication skills, behavior characteristics and / or motor skills, which are caused by abnormalities in the course of the processes of neuroontogenesis. Factors of the etiology and pathogenesis of NDD include genetic mechanisms, early damage to the developing brain, and adverse external influences. Most forms of NDD manifest themselves in the early stages of development and before the child begins school eduction. The most common NDD, with which medical doctors of various specialties constantly meet, include speech development disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Since disorders of neuroplasticity processes are considered among the mechanisms of the NDD pathogenesis, their therapy should be aimed at restoring and stimulating the neuroplasticity potential. Manifestations of NDD, undergoing age-related evolution, significantly disrupt normal life and have an adverse effect on various functional areas not only in children, but also in adolescents and adults. The increase in symptoms in patients with NDD at one age or another is not due to the progressive nature of cerebral changes, but to increased difficulties of adaptation with increasing loads, including educational, social, professional ones. Therefore, in most cases, they require many years of complex management and the use of pharmacotherapy, the prospects of which are primarily associated with nootropic drugs. The data of new studies on the effectiveness of nootropics in developmental dysphasia and ADHD are discussed, and possible mechanisms of the nootropics influence on neuroplasticity processes are considered.

Povezanost senzornog procesiranja dece sa razvojnom disfazijom sa sagorevanjem i samopoštovanjem roditelja

Introduction. Sensory processing difficulties can pose a risk for the development of language and speech disorders in the earliest period and require professional intervention and intense involvement of parents in homework with children with developmental dysphasia, which might cause parental burnout and lower level of their self-esteem when parents are not able to help, not only the children, but themselves too. Aim. The aim of the research was to examine the relationship between the sensory sensitivity of children with developmental dysphasia and the characteristics of parents. Method. The sample consisted of 50 parents of children aged 3 to 6 years. The following questionnaires were used in the research to assess the characteristics of sensory processing: The Child Sensory Profile 2, Parental Burnout Inventory, and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Measures of descriptive statistics and Pearson's correlation coefficient were used in data processing. Results. The results of the research show that the level of parental burnout is relatively low (parents showed a high level of personal accomplishment (M = 4.16, SD = .67), mild level of emotional exhaustion (M = 2.34, SD = .78) and low level of emotional distancing (M = 1.72, SD = .72), but also that they are characterized by lower self-esteem (M = 3.11, SD = .34). Also, self-esteem and burn-out are not related. On the Sensory Profile, subscales of behavior elements are highly correlated, while the intensity of correlations in subscales of the basic system of processing oscillates. There is a weak correlation between the general self-esteem of parents with subscales of body posture and behavior. Conclusion. The obtained results were discussed in the context of practical pedagogical implications, considering that if the difficulties in the child's functioning are not eliminated in the preschool period, the child's departure to school may be delayed, or long-term difficulties in learning may appear.

Therapy with Cogitum in children with speech disorders

Developmental dysphasia is a speech disorder with normal hearing and intelligence, which develops against the background of organic brain damage in the period up to 3 years of life. In addition to speech disorders in dysphasia, motor and coordinator, sensory (disturbances in sensitivity and perception), and psychopathological manifestations can be noted. Diagnosis of speech disorders is very difficult, requires the exclusion of hearing loss and mental illness. After a successful diagnosis, speech therapy correction, behavioral therapy and developmental sessions with a psychologist are necessary. In some cases, neurotrophic drugs are prescribed. This article analyzes our own data on the use of the drug “Cogitum” in 140 children in comparison with the control group (n = 40), who had the same classes as in the main group, but without the use of Cogitum. Improvement in group 1 was shown.

Speech dysorders in children with cognitive epileptiform disintegration aged 2-10

Cognitive epileptiform disintegration (CED) is a symptomatic complex of acquired cognitive disorders in children associated with severe epileptiform activity on the EEG in the absence of epileptic seizures. It is one of the reasons for developmental dysphasia, the cases of which rapidly increase. The aim of the study is to reveal the structure of speech disorders in children with CED.

Developmental dysphasia – functional and structural correlations

Developmental dysphasia – functional and structural correlations

SLINet: Dysphasia detection in children using deep neural network

A child has specific language impairment (SLI) or developmental dysphasia (DD) when the speech is delayed or has disordered language development for no apparent reason. As it may be related to loss of hearing, speech abnormality should be diagnosed at an early stage. The existing methods are mainly based on the utterance of vowels and have a high misclassification rate. This article proposes an automatic deep learning model that can be an effective tool to diagnose SLI at the early stage. In the proposed work, raw audio data is processed using Short-time Fourier transform and converted to decibel (dB) scaled spectrograms which are classified using the proposed convolutional neural network (CNN). This approach consists of utterances that contained seven types of vocabulary (vowels, consonant and different syllable Isolated words). A rigorous analysis based on different age-group was performed and a 10-fold Cross-Validation (CV) was done to test the accuracy of the classifier. A comprehensive experimental test reveals that 99.09 % of the children are correctly diagnosed by the proposed framework, which is superior when compared to state-of-the-art methods. The proposed scheme is gender and speaker-independent. The proposed model can be used as a stand-alone diagnostic tool that can assist automatic diagnosis of children for SLI and will be helpful for remote areas where professionals are not available. The proposed model is robust, efficient with low time complexity which is suitable for real-time applications.

Audio texture and age-wise analysis of disordered speech in children having specific language impairment

A child suffering from specific language impairment (SLI) or developmental dysphasia (DD) has delayed speech and disordered language development with no apparent reason. Unlike existing methods that use only acoustic features for screening, a new approach is proposed where the texture present in the pathological speech signal is captured by local binary patterns (LBP) from the joint time-frequency representation. The LBP extracts the latent information present in the temporal domain which is generally not captured by the standard audio features. Experiments were performed on a database having 4214 utterances from 44 healthy and 54 SLI subjects. Experimental results indicate that with the proposed system the classification accuracy rate of the system has been improved up to 13.1% if the LBP features are fused along with the traditional features with a highest average accuracy rate of 97.36% when a 5-fold cross validation is done.

Značaj porodičnih karakteristika za psihomotorni razvoj dece sa razvojnom disfazijom

Difficulties in sensory processing can be a risk for the development of language, speech, as well as cognitive and motor abilities in children. The aim of the research was to investigate the relationship between the sensory and psychomotor abilities of children with developmental dysphasia and the socio-demographic characteristics of their primary families. The consequences of different developmental difficulties affect not only the child, but the parents as well. Gender, education, number of children, and birth order are some of the characteristics which can be significant for diagnozing and treatment of the developmental difficulties caused by developmental dysphasia. The sample consisted of 47 parents of preschool children with developmental dysphasia diagnose, which were included in logopedic treatment. The Modified Sensory Profile and the questionnaire about socio-demographic characteristics of the family were used in the research. The data were processed by descriptive statistics, t-test for independent samples, and ANOVA. The results showed that there were statistically significant differences on the psychomotor dimensions of sensory processing relative to the educational level of parents, but also the order of birth and the number of children. The data indicate that there is a great need for a wider spectrum of opportunities for intervention and support for the parents of children with developmental dysphasia by offering them different training sessions, as well as by including them in the physical activities which focus on the coordination abilities and fine motorics, especially when it comes to the preschool children.

Developmental dysphasia in children: a comparison of the effectiveness of two modes of peptidergic nootropic therapy

To study the therapeutic efficacy of two treatment modes of peptidergic nootropic medication cortexin in children with developmental dysphasia aged 3-4 years. Ninety-four children with developmental dysphasia were divided into three groups. In group 1 (27 patients), cortexin was administered once a day intramuscularly for 10 days. After this course, the children were not prescribed drug therapy, a second examination was carried out 2 months after the start of treatment. In group 2 (40 patients), two courses of cortexin were administered at 1-month intervals, and the children were also followed up for two months. Control group 3 (27 patients) did not receive medication, but was also followed up for two months. All the parents were provided with recommendations for the stimulation of speech development in children. Before the study and two months later, speech development was assessed with special scales and questionnaires for parents. The increase ratio of the active vocabulary volume by 2 times or more was observed in group 2 (two courses of cortexin treatment) in 80.0% of patients (significant differences with groups 1 and 3, p<0.001), in 44.4% of group 1 (one course of cortexin), in 22.2% of the control group. Over a two-month period, the increase ratio in the active vocabulary and the number of uttered phrases in group 2 was 2.8 and 4.2 times, in group 1 2.3 and 3.6 times, respectively, in the control group it was only 1.4 and 1.5 times. Furthermore, the volume of active vocabulary in group 2 (42.4±3.6) became significantly larger (p=0.01) than in group 1 (31.7±5.6), although its initial values in group 1 (13.7±1.8) and group 2 (14.9±1.7) were similar. The results of the study confirm the higher effectiveness of two courses of the peptidergic nootropic medication cortexin in the pharmacotherapy of developmental dysphasia in children, aged 3-4 years, conducted over two months, compared with the indication of one treatment course.

Detection of Specific Language Impairment in Children Using Glottal Source Features

Developmental dysphasia, also known as specific language impairment (SLI), is a language disorder in children that involves difficulty in speaking and understanding spoken words. Detecting SLI at an early stage is very important for successful speech therapy in children. In this paper, we propose a novel approach based on glottal source features for detecting children with SLI using the speech signal. The proposed method utilizes time- and frequency-domain glottal parameters, which are extracted from the voice source signal obtained using glottal inverse filtering (GIF). In addition, Mel-frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC) and openSMILE based acoustic features are also extracted from speech utterances. Two machine learning algorithms, namely, support vector machine (SVM) and feed-forward neural network (FFNN), are trained separately for the MFCC, openSMILE and glottal features. A leave-fourteen-speakers-out cross-validation strategy is used for evaluating the classifiers. The experiments are conducted using the SLI speech corpus launched by the LANNA research group. Experimental results show that the glottal parameters contain significant discriminative information required for identifying children with SLI. Furthermore, the complementary nature of glottal parameters is investigated by independently combining these features with the MFCC and openSMILE acoustic features. The overall results indicate that the glottal features when used in combination with MFCC feature set provides the best performance with the FFNN classifier in the speaker-independent scenario.

Diffusion Tensor Imaging And Tractography In Autistic, Dysphasic, And Healthy Control Children.

BackgroundDiffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a powerful tool for investigating brain anatomical connectivity. The aim of our study was to compare brain connectivity among children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), developmental dysphasia (DD), and healthy controls (HC) in the following tracts: the arcuate fasciculus (AF), inferior frontal occipital fasciculus (IFOF), inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF), and uncinate fasciculus (UF).MethodsOur sample consisted of 113 children with a mean age 8.7±2.2 years (77 boys, 36 girls), divided into three subgroups: ASD (n=39), DD (n=36), and HC (n=38). The International Classification of Diseases, 10th ed. was used to make clinical diagnoses. DTI images were collected using a 1.5 T Phillips Achieva MR imaging system.ResultsDetailed analyses of fractional anisotropy (FA) revealed significant differences among the ASD, DD, and HC groups in the left AF (p=0.014) and right AF (p=0.001), the left IFOF (p<0.001) and right IFOF (p<0.001), the left ILF (p<0.001) and right ILF (p<0.001), but not in the UF. Post-hoc analyses revealed three patterns of FA differences among the groups: (1) in the right AF, right IFOF, and right ILF, FA was significantly lower in the ASD group compared to the DD and HC groups; however, there was no difference in FA between DD and HC; (2) in the left AF and left IFOF, FA was significantly lower in the ASD than in the HC group, but there were no differences between DD vs HC nor DD vs ASD; and (3) in the left ILF, no difference in FA was seen between ASD and DD, but FA in both was significantly lower than in the HC.ConclusionMicrostructural white matter properties differed between ASD vs DD and HC subjects. The tract where FA impairment in ASD and DD subjects was the most similar was the left ILF.

EL EMPLEO DE CUENTOS INFANTILES Y FÁBULAS EN EL TRABAJO CON FAMILIAS DE LOS NIÑOS CON DIAGNÓSTICO DE DISFASIA DEL DESARROLLO

El artículo describe los fundamentos teóricos en relación a la familia del niño con disfasia del desarrollo. Se reconoce el indiscutible papel protagónico e insustituible de los padres en el desarrollo de los hijos con métodos de trabajo mucho más incentivadores y optimistas, así como en el empleo de cuentos y fábulas para el trabajo de estimulación y desarrollo de estos niños a modo de romper las formalidades y rutinas establecidas desde las propias escuelas de educación familiar. Se describen ejemplos concretos que a juicio de los autores pudieran resultar efectivas para el logro de la estimulación del desarrollo integral en estos niños y que repercutirán en muchas de sus futuras actitudes psicológicas, según seamos capaces de encauzarlos.

A critical review of pyritinol

Pyritinol (pyrithioxine) is a combination of two molecules of vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) with disulfide linkage. Its pharmacokinetic profile mimics that of its parent compound. Because it crosses the blood–brain barrier, its major clinical utility is in brain-related disorders. Pyritinol regulates signalling pathways of various neurotransmitters including acetylcholine, γ-aminobutyric acid, N-methyl-d-aspartate, etc. Pyritinol has also been shown to act as an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agent, and also reduces plasma viscosity. It is indicated in paediatric populations to treat learning disabilities, developmental dysphasia, postnatal hypoxia and other cognitive disorders. In adults, it is indicated for improving cognition and memory, Alzheimer’s disease, multi-infarct dementia and rheumatoid arthritis. It has also been investigated in many other clinical conditions, but results are inconclusive. The positive results of many animal studies have not been replicated into consistent clinical success. This review aims to discuss potential uses of pyritinol and its future prospects.

Potential of peptidergic nootropic therapy in developmental dysphasia in children

To study the therapeutic efficacy of peptidergic nootropic medication Cortexin during two-month follow-up in children with developmental dysphasia aged 3-4 years. Fifty-four children with developmental dysphasia were randomized into two equal groups. The cortexin group received the drug once daily intramuscularly during 10 days. After this course, children did not receive any pharmacotherapy and were examined two months after the beginning of treatment. The control group did not receive pharmacotherapy and was examined twice in two months interval. All the parents were provided with recommendations for the stimulation of speech development in dysphasic children. Before treatment and two months later, speech development was assessed by special scales and questionnaires for parents. After treatment with Cortexin, a significant improvement was achieved not only on the 'expressive language' scale but also on the 'attention to speech' and 'impressive language' scales. The volume of active vocabulary was increased by 2.3 times, the number of articulated phrases by 3.6 times. The evaluation of parents' questionnaires demonstrated the decrease of cerebrasthenic, psychosomatic problems, motor clumsiness, hyperactivity, attention deficit and problems with emotional control in children. The therapy contributed to the reduction of difficulties in communication and social adaptation. The positive effect of Cortexin was observed after the completion of treatment (the protracted effect).

Identification and Analysis of Children Developmental Dysphasia Factors in Karawang

AbstractSome children fail to develop language skills for obvious reasons. The inability is usually seen due to difficulties in producing and understanding spoken language, lack of intelligence, or other developmental disorders. This usually causes difficulties in reading and writing; in many cases, language difficulties continue until adolescence. This research was conducted from May to June 2018 at Dewi Sri Karawang Hospital and in the Karawang community. This study aims to determine the correlation between factors such as family history, child's gender, febrile seizures, exposure to TV/gadget, and mother's occupation, with children developmental dysphasia in Karawang. This study uses an analytical survey method with a cross-sectional approach. Data retrieval was performed by interviewing parents of pediatric patients diagnosed with dysphasia as the case group and parents of children in the Karawang area as the control group. The data obtained were processed using the multivariate regression statistical method. The results showed that heat seizures, excessive multimedia exposure (more than 1 hour per day), and identified hereditary causes were significant risk factors for dysphasia in children aged 1 to 6 years in Karawang, with p-values less than 0.05.

The Way It Used To Be

The Way It Used To Be

The correlation between Salter's criteria for avascular necrosis of the femoral head and Kalamchi's prognostic classification following the treatment of developmental dysplasia of the hip.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the correlation between Salter's criteria and Kalamchi's classification of avascular necrosis in patients treated for developmental dysphasia of the hip (DDH). The study involved a retrospective analysis of 123 patients (123 hips) with DDH treated by operative and non-operative reduction before the age of two years, with a minimum follow-up of ten years. Salter's criteria (S1 to S4) were determined from radiographs obtained at one to two years post-reduction, whilst the Kalamchi grade was determined from radiographs obtained at ten or more years of age. Early post-reduction radiographs were also used to evaluate the centre-head distance discrepancy (CHDD) and the occurrence of a dome-shaped deformity of the proximal femoral metaphysis (D-shaped metaphysis). The prognosis was described as good (Kalamchi grade K0 or KI), fair (Kalamchi grade KII) or poor (Kalamchi grade KIII or KIV) for analysis and correlation with the early Salter criteria, CHDD and D-shaped metaphysis. S1 and S2 criteria were predictive of a poor prognosis. The outcome following S3, S4 and S3 + S4 varied; 18 (40%) had a good prognosis, 17 (38%) a fair prognosis and ten (22%) a poor prognosis. A CHDD ≥ 10% and a D-shaped metaphysis were also predictive of a poor prognosis. The Salter criteria were predictive of the Kalamchi grade of avascular necrosis in patients with DDH aged ten or more years after reduction of the hip. Cite this article: Bone Joint J 2017;99-B:1115-20.

Evaluation of the language profile in children with rolandic epilepsy and developmental dysphasia: Evidence for distinct strengths and weaknesses

Although benign, rolandic epilepsy (RE) or benign childhood epilepsy with centro-temporal spikes is often associated with language impairment. Recently, fronto-rolandic EEG abnormalities have been described in children with developmental dysphasia (DD), suggesting an interaction between language impairment and interictal epileptiform discharges. To investigate if a behavioral-linguistic continuum between RE and DD exists, a clinical prospective study was carried out to evaluate the language profile of 15 children with RE and 22 children with DD. Language skills were assessed using an extensive, standardized test battery. Language was found to be impaired in both study groups, however RE and DD were associated with distinct language impairment profiles. Children with RE had difficulties with sentence comprehension, semantic verbal fluency and auditory short-term memory, which are unrelated to age of epilepsy onset and laterality of epileptic focus. In children with DD, sentence comprehension and verbal fluency were among their relative strengths, whereas sentence and lexical production constituted relative weaknesses.