Imitation Test Research Articles

Implicit and Explicit Recasts in L2 Oral French Interaction

This laboratory-based study of second- and third-year American university students learning French examines the effectiveness of implicit and explicit corrective feedback on noun–adjective agreement errors. The treatment consisted of one hour of interactive tasks. Implicit feedback was operationalized as a single recast with interrogative intonation; explicit feedback was operationalized as a single repetition of the incorrect utterance with interrogative intonation, followed by a single recast with declarative intonation. Testing instruments were administered on three occasions. They comprised a spontaneous production test, an elicited imitation test, and an untimed written grammaticality judgement test. Results showed no significant differences for type of feedback but significant effects for oral interaction.

Sentence imitation as a tool in identifying expressive morphosyntactic difficulties in children with severe speech difficulties

Sentence imitation has been identified as a good indicator of children's language skills, with performance differentiating children with specific language impairment and showing relationships with other language measures. It has a number of advantages over other methods of assessment. The assessment of morphosyntax in children who have severe speech difficulties presents unique challenges which currently available sentence imitation assessments do not address. This paper presents a new sentence imitation test (The Sentence Imitation Test (SIT-61)) and reports on an investigation which sets out to determine whether this test (1) reveals differences in performance between a group of children diagnosed with specific language impairment and a group of typically developing children (2) reveals distinct profiles of performance amongst children with different speech difficulties, and (3) provides information about morphosyntactic strengths and difficulties. SIT-61 is a finely graded sentence imitation test in which the phonotactic structure, segmental phonology and length of words were kept as developmentally simple as possible. Responses are scored for number of content words, function words and inflections correct. A novel scoring system was devised to credit a child where there was evidence of targeting a morpheme even if it was mispronounced. The test was administered to four groups of children between the ages of 4 and 6 years: 33 children with typical development, 13 children with known expressive morphosyntactic difficulties (specific language impairment), and two groups of 14 children with different types of speech disorder: a group with consistent phonological disorder, who used atypical phonological error patterns consistently; and a group with inconsistent phonological disorder, who produced atypical phonological errors inconsistently. SIT-61 found differences in performance between the group of typically developing participants and the three clinic groups. While the consistent phonological disorder group obtained extremely high scores for content and function words, they obtained lower inflection scores reflective of their speech difficulties. The scores of the specific language impairment and inconsistent phonological disorder groups were comparable for content and function words, but the groups were differentiated through an analysis of their errors. Further analyses confirmed that low scores obtained by some children in the inconsistent phonological disorder group were due to morphosyntactic difficulties and not speech difficulties. A new sentence imitation test, the SIT-61, is shown to be valuable tool for identifying expressive morphosyntactic difficulties in children. It is informative about the morphosyntactic abilities of children with speech disorders and raises questions as to the nature of their difficulties.

The influence of lexical aspect and input frequency in the L2 French of adult beginners

This article presents a study of the variation found in the oral production of verbs in L2 French by adult beginners with Swedish as L1. The study deals with the production of the two main forms of regular verbs in spoken French, a short form /parl/ and a long form /parle/, in present-tense and infinitive contexts. Learners at beginner stages use these two forms invariantly in both finite and non-finite contexts. The aim of this study is to investigate the choice of the invariant forms made by the learners. This is done by testing the influence of lexical aspect and input frequency. The investigation is made with concrete data from input sources. The results from both a free production task and an imitation test suggest that input frequency contributes more significantly than lexical aspect, although both factors overlap for most of the studied verbs.

Auditory Development in Early Amplified Children: Factors Influencing Auditory-Based Communication Outcomes in Children with Hearing Loss

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of selected predictive factors, primarily age at fitting of amplification and degree of hearing loss, on auditory-based outcomes in young children with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. Forty-four infants and toddlers, first identified with mild to profound bilateral hearing loss, who were being fitted with amplification were enrolled in the study and followed longitudinally. Subjects were otherwise typically developing with no evidence of cognitive, motor, or visual impairment. A variety of subject factors were measured or documented and used as predictor variables, including age at fitting of amplification, degree of hearing loss in the better hearing ear, cochlear implant status, intensity of oral education, parent-child interaction, and the number of languages spoken in the home. These factors were used in a linear multiple regression analysis to assess their contribution to auditory-based communication outcomes. Five outcome measures, evaluated at regular intervals in children starting at age 3, included measures of speech perception (Pediatric Speech Intelligibility and Online Imitative Test of Speech Pattern Contrast Perception), speech production (Arizona-3), and spoken language (Reynell Expressive and Receptive Language). The age at fitting of amplification ranged from 1 to 72 mo, and the degree of hearing loss ranged from mild to profound. Age at fitting of amplification showed the largest influence and was a significant factor in all outcome models. The degree of hearing loss was an important factor in the modeling of speech production and spoken language outcomes. Cochlear implant use was the other factor that contributed significantly to speech perception, speech production, and language outcomes. Other factors contributed sparsely to the models. Prospective longitudinal studies of children are important to establish relationships between subject factors and outcomes. This study clearly demonstrated the importance of early amplification on communication outcomes. This demonstration required a participant pool that included children who have been fit at very early ages and who represent all degrees of hearing loss. Limitations of longitudinal studies include selection biases. Families who enroll tend to have high levels of education and rate highly on cooperation and compliance measures. Although valuable information can be extracted from prospective studies, not all factors can be evaluated because of enrollment constraints.

Yamaguchi Fox-Pigeon Imitation Test: A Rapid Test for Dementia

Background/Aims: We herein propose a hand-gesture imitation test, consisting of a simple one-handed sign of a ‘fox’ and a complex two-handed sign of a ‘pigeon’, as a rapid, game-like test for detecting dementia/Alzheimer disease (AD) with low psychological burden. The test measures the visuomotor function, which deteriorates in the early stages of AD. Methods: We examined 88 demented subjects, 19 with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and 53 normal controls aged 65 years or over. The subjects were classified according to the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR). Results: The specificity of the test was 94%, and the sensitivity was 58% in CDR 0.5 (MCI), 77% in CDR 1 (mild dementia), 75% in CDR 2 (moderate dementia), and 90% in CDR 3 (severe dementia). The test could be conducted within 1 min and no subjects refused to be tested. Conclusion: This brief hand-gesture imitation test can sensitively evaluate visuomotor deficits in dementia/AD, while some subjects are unaware of their failure or even that their cognitive function is being tested. We herein describe the precise protocol for worldwide use.

Expressive and Receptive Language Effects of African American English on a Sentence Imitation Task

This study tests the extent to which giving credit for African American English (AAE) responses on a General American English sentence imitation test mitigates dialect effects. Forty-eight AAE-speaking second graders completed the Recalling Sentences subtest of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Third Edition (1995). A Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo method was used to determine the relationship between the students' scores and the presence of third person singular -s, a feature largely absent from AAE morphosyntax, in the subtest sentences. Even when given credit for AAE responses, the estimated effect of third person singular -s was significant, high relative to those of negation and counterfactual conditional if + ed, and correlated with an independent measure of the students' rootedness in AAE syntax. It is argued that these results reveal a receptive language effect not addressed by crediting dialect productions.

An On-Line Imitative Test of Speech-Pattern Contrast Perception (OlimSpac): Developmental Effects in Normally Hearing Children

The goal was to assess the effects of maturation and phonological development on performance, by normally hearing children, on an imitative test of auditory capacity (On-Line Imitative Test of Speech-Pattern Contrast Perception [OlimSpac]; Boothroyd, Eisenberg, & Martinez, 2006; Eisenberg, Martinez, & Boothroyd, 2003, 2007). Thirty-four hearing children (aged between 1;8 [years;months] and 6;7) were asked to imitate nonword utterances. Responses were evaluated by a blinded listener in an 8-alternative forced-choice task, giving information on the children's ability to convey, by imitation, information about 6 binary phonemic contrasts. Four children declined participation. Among 30 children aged 2;7 or older, performance improved significantly with age and varied with contrast. All children 3 years of age or older attained passing scores (7 or 8 correct responses in 8 binary trials) on at least 5 of the 6 contrasts. Post-alveolar consonant place was the contrast most often failed. When evaluated on a pass/fail basis, normally hearing children 3 years of age or older are likely to demonstrate auditory perception of most phonemic contrasts using this imitative test. Phonological development and other task-related factors have only a modest effect on performance by normally hearing children after 3 years of age. The effects of hearing loss, hearing age, sensory assistance, and listening experience in children with hearing loss remain to be determined.

The Musical Ear Test, a new reliable test for measuring musical competence

This paper reports results from three experiments using the Musical Ear Test (MET), a new test designed for measuring musical abilities in both musicians and non-musicians in an objective way with a relatively short duration (< 20 min.). In the first experiment we show how the MET is capable of clearly distinguishing between a group of professional musicians and a group of non-musicians. In the second experiment we demonstrate that results from the MET are strongly correlated with measures of musical expertise obtained using an imitation test. In the third experiment we show that the MET also clearly distinguishes groups of non-musicians, amateurs and professional musicians. The test is found to have a large internal consistency (Cronbach alpha: 0.87). We further show a correlation with amount of practice within the group of professionals as well as a correlation with a forward digit span test.

Apraxia related with subcortical lesions due to cerebrovascular disease

To examine whether ideomotor apraxia exists in patients with subcortical ischemic lesions. A matched-control, prospective and multi-centered research design was used. Ideomotor apraxia, anxiety and depression were assessed by the Movement Imitation Test and the Hamilton scales, respectively. Forty two consecutive patients with subcortical ischemic stroke and an equal number of healthy participants, matched in age and sex were included. Paired-sample t-tests showed that patients had significantly more apractic elements in their movements (t = 5.03, P < 0.01), higher anxiety (t = -2.55, P = 0.0014) and depression levels (t = -2.61, P = 0.012) than their healthy matched participants. Participants with higher anxiety and depression scores performed worse on the Movement Imitation Test. Ischemic damage of subcortical modular systems may affect praxis.

Body awareness in children with mental retardation

The body awareness of 124 toddlers with mental retardation and of 124 children developing normally matched to them on age and gender was examined. Twenty-nine of the children with mental retardation were diagnosed as Down syndrome (DS). The ‘Pointing and Naming’ Test of Bergès and Lézine [Bergès, J., & Lézine, I. (1978). Test d’imitation de gestes [Imitation test of gestures] (2nd ed.). Paris: Masson] was used to measure vocabulary skills on body parts. Results indicated that (a) the test used is reliable in terms of internal consistency; (b) children developing normally performed better than children with mental retardation on this test; (c) there were no significant differences in performance on this test between genders for the whole group; (d) children with DS performed as well as children with mental retardation of unknown origin on receptive vocabulary. On expressive vocabulary, they performed worse.

The effects of modelling, local stimulus enhancement, and affordance demonstration on the production of object‐directed actions in 6‐month‐old infants

The present study investigated whether local stimulus enhancement and the demonstration of objects' affordances--both of which are inherent in modelling of object-directed target actions--are themselves sufficient to evoke the target behaviour on imitation test trials. Six-month-old infants were presented with a puppet wearing a removable mitten and observed either a demonstration of mitten removal (modelling group), the experimenter pointing at the mitten (stimulus enhancement group), the mitten falling off apparently by itself (affordance demonstration group), or no specific action directed at the mitten (control group). For all infants, the puppet was next presented without any accompanying demonstrations and infants' mitten removal behaviours in the response period were recorded. The results showed that local stimulus enhancement and affordance demonstration were as effective as full modelling in evoking the target action. This finding shows that the performances of 6-month-old infants on imitation tests can be multiply determined and evoked by variables other than modelling of target behaviour.

DO INFANTS SHOW GENERALIZED IMITATION OF GESTURES? II. THE EFFECTS OF SKILLS TRAINING AND MULTIPLE EXEMPLAR MATCHING TRAINING

The determinants of generalized imitation of manual gestures were investigated in 1- to 2-year-old infants. Eleven infants were first trained eight baseline matching relations; then, four novel gestures that the infants did not match in probe trials were selected as target behaviors. Next, in a generalized imitation test in which matching responses to baseline models were intermittently reinforced, but matching responses to target models were not eligible for reinforcement, the infants matched baseline models but not the majority of their target behaviors. To ensure their failure to match the target behaviors was not due to motor constraints, the infants were trained, in a multiple-baseline procedure, to produce the target responses under stimulus control that did not include an antecedent model of the target behavior. There was no evidence of generalized imitation in subsequent tests. When the infants were next trained to match each target behavior to criterion (tested in extinction) in a multiple-baseline-across-behaviors procedure, only 2 infants continued to match all their targets in subsequent tests; the remaining infants matched only some of them. Seven infants were next given mixed matching training with the target behaviors to criterion (tested in extinction); they subsequently matched these targets without reinforcement when interspersed with trials on which matching responses to baseline models were intermittently reinforced. In repeat tests, administered at 3-week intervals, these 7 children (and 2 that did not take part in mixed matching training) continued to match most of their target behaviors. The results support a trained matching account, but provide no evidence of generalized imitation, in 1- to 2-year-old infants.

Over-imitation in children with autism and Down syndrome

Typically developing children have been shown to imitate the specific means used by an adult to achieve an object-directed outcome, even if a more efficient method is available. It has been argued that this behaviour can be attributed to social and communicative motivations. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), relative to children with Down syndrome (DS), show a reduced tendency to copy the exact means used by an adult to produce a novel outcome. To achieve this a sample of 34 children (22 with ASD and 12 with DS) were given a test of object-directed imitation. Contrary to expectation, children in both groups imitated the specific method of the model to the same high extent. This finding is in line with suggestions that object-directed imitation is relatively spared in children with autism but is surprising given arguments linking such imitation to socially based motivations. Nevertheless, children's ability to successfully copy the model was associated with their communicative ability, providing some support for the link between imitation and communication.

Velocidade de fala em crianças com e sem transtorno fonológico

Speech rate in phonological disorders. To compare the performance of children with and without phonological disorders in different speech rate tests. Participants of this study were 20 children diagnosed with phonological disorders (PDG) and 20 with typical speech development (CG), aged 4 years to 10 years and 11 months, of both genders. Speech rate measurements (total duration time, syllables per second and phonemes per second) were analyzed in two imitation tests, being one standard and the other based on phrases taken from the child's own speech, each composed of a short and a long sentence. The CG presented a significantly better performance than the PDG, when considering all of the measurements applied to the standard imitation test and also when considering the total duration time of the long sentence in the self-imitation test. This indicates that the length and type of sentences influenced the performance of both groups. Lower values of speech rate are observed for children with PD, participants of this study, due to possible language or motor deficits, although there is evidence of speech rate control due to the length of the sentence. All of the measurements indicated this difference, specially for the standard imitation test.

Relationships between speech perception abilities and spoken language skills in young children with hearing loss

The goal of this study was to examine the relationships between scores obtained from measures of speech perception and language in a group of young children with hearing loss (HL). Eighteen children (mean age = 4.3 years) and their mothers participated in this study. Speech perception was measured using the online imitative test of speech pattern contrast perception (OLIMSPAC). Standardized language age equivalent scores were obtained using the Reynell developmental language scales-III. Number of word tokens, word types, and mean length of utterance (MLU) were extracted from the children's spontaneous language samples. Significant positive relationships were observed between children's OLIMSPAC scores and both standardized language scores (r ranging from 0.60 to 0.69; p <0.01) and all measures derived from children's spontaneous language samples (r ranging from 0.80 to 0.86; p<0.01). After controlling for child age, OLIMSPAC scores explained 34.1% of the variance in children's MLU. Using a new speech perception measure with reduced language demands, strong positive correlations were evident between speech perception and language skills for a young group of children with HL.

Interacting Socially With Human Hands at 24 Months of Age.

This experiment explored whether or not 2-year-olds would engage in synchronic imitation with human hands. Sixty-four 24-month-old infants participated. In a test of synchronic imitation, infants were given a toy while a model simultaneously performed novel actions on an identical toy. Infants were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 model conditions: a familiar person, an unfamiliar person, disembodied human hands, and disembodied robotic pincers. Infants were as likely to synchronically imitate disembodied hands as a person. Imitation of the pincers was significantly lower. This pattern suggests that 2-year-olds will engage socially with human hands in the absence of the rest of the body.

Determinants of imitation of hand-to-body gestures in 2- and 3-year-old children.

Twenty children, ten 2-year-olds and ten 3-year-olds, participated in an AB procedure. In the baseline phase, each child was trained the same four matching relations to criterion under intermittent reinforcement. During the subsequent imitation test, the experimenter modeled a total of 20 target gestures (six trials each) interspersed with intermittently reinforced baseline trials. In each session, target gestures were selected in a pre-randomized sequence from: Set 1--ear touches; Set 2--shoulder touches; Set 3--midarm touches; and Set 4--wrist touches; subjects' responses to targets were not reinforced. In each target set, half the gestures featured in nursery matching games and were termed common targets whereas the remainder, which were topographically similar but did not feature in the games, served as uncommon targets. The children produced significantly more matching responses to common target models than to uncommon ones. Common responses were also produced as mismatches to uncommon target models more often than vice versa. Response accuracy did not improve over trials, suggesting that "parity" did not serve as a conditioned reinforcer. All children showed a strong bias for "mirroring"--responding in the same hemispace as the modeler. The 2-year-olds produced more matching errors than the 3-year-olds and most children showed a bias for responding with their right hands. The strong effects of training environment (nursery matching games) are consistent with a Skinnerian account, but not a cognitive goal theory account, of imitation in young children.

Functional imaging of complex movement: insights into the pathophysiology of apraxia

Apraxia is a disorder of motor cognition affecting different aspects of complex voluntary movement. The most common form of apraxia, ideo-motor apraxia (IMA), is clinically assessed by tests of movement imitation. Some patients with IMA show a dissociation between the imitation of abstract and symbolic movements. The second important form of apraxia, ideational apraxia (IA), is characterized by deficient object use. Finally, apraxic patients generally exhibit deficits in the spatial and temporal organisation of (goal-directed) movement sequences. Motivated by these diverse clinical observations of deficient voluntary movement control in apraxic patients, functional and structural imaging is used to investigate the pathophysiology of apraxia.

Investigation of Cognitive Abilities of Indian Sport Women

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in English; abstract also in Chinese.&#x0D; At the elite level of participation of sports the brain has to be equally tuned with the brawn for attaining the peak level performance. Rather, it is higher cortical functioning of the athlete, which helps in judging, analyzing, estimating and calculating the information at the time of execution of highly precised movements during the competition. Taking in view these facts the emphasis of sports psychology researches in these days is shifting towards the cognitive assessment of the players in the laboratory conditions. A substantive probe has taken place in this respect in male athletes however the female athletic population is still awaiting scientific consideration. Taking cognizance of this situation the present study was conducted on 192 National level Female Athletes belonging to Athletics (Track &amp; Field), Badminton, Basketball, Cycling, Football, Gymnastics, Handball and Hockey. These female athletes were assessed on the parameters of visual and auditory reaction time, visual perceptual accuracy and visual concentration. All the subjects were individually tested with the help of Electronic Chronoscope, Muller-Lyer Illusion test and Knox-Cube Imitation test. The standard procedure of testing was followed throughout the testing programme. The results revealed number of inter group differences in the cognitive abilities of female athletes. While comparing individual and team game female athletes differences were found only in reaction­ability.&#x0D; 本文旨在探討印度女子運動選手的認知能力，192名印度女子國家隊選手接受測試，結果顯示，個人與隊際項目出現一些較明顯的差異。

Effect of prolonged high-temperature loading on the structure of the KhN65VMTYu alloy

A complex analysis of changes in the structure and in the phase composition arising as a result of both a prolonged operation of articles made of the alloy KhN65VMTYu (EI893) and after conducting imitation tests of model samples. The tests for long-term strength using samples cut out from the body of a large-dimension turbine blade which was exploited for 63 622 h showed that the blade preserved a significant residual reserve of service life (at 750°C and 250 MPa, the time to failure is 4243.5 h).