Language Abilities Of Individuals Research Articles

Development of a Speech-based Composite Score for Remotely Quantifying Language Changes in Frontotemporal Dementia.

Changes to speech and language are common symptoms across different subtypes of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). These changes affect the ability to communicate, impacting everyday functions. Accurately assessing these changes may help clinicians to track disease progression and detect response to treatment. To determine which aspects of speech show significant change over time and to develop a novel composite score for tracking speech and language decline in individuals with FTD. We recruited individuals with FTD to complete remote digital speech assessments based on a picture description task. Speech samples were analyzed to derive acoustic and linguistic measures of speech and language, which were tested for longitudinal change over the course of the study and were used to compute a novel composite score. Thirty-six (16 F, 20 M; M age = 61.3 years) individuals were enrolled in the study, with 27 completing a follow-up assessment 12 months later. We identified eight variables reflecting different aspects of language that showed longitudinal decline in the FTD clinical syndrome subtypes and developed a novel composite score based on these variables. The resulting composite score demonstrated a significant effect of change over time, high test-retest reliability, and a correlation with standard scores on various other speech tasks. Remote digital speech assessments have the potential to characterize speech and language abilities in individuals with FTD, reducing the burden of clinical assessments while providing a novel measure of speech and language abilities that is sensitive to disease and relevant to everyday function.

The Effect of Background Noise and Music on Speech Recognition Performance of Individuals with Normal Hearing and Hearing Loss

This study explores speech recognition characteristics in background noise and music between normal hearing (NH) listeners, hearing aid (HA) users and cochlear implant (CI) users.Sixty individuals participated in the study: 20 with NH, 20 HA users, and 20 CI users. HA and CI users had a Categories of Auditory Performance score of 6 and open set sentence recognition of 85% or higher. They had been using the devices for at least one year. Babble noise (BN), piano solo (PS), piano + violin (PV), and piano + chorus (PC) were presented at +5- and +10 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The participants were asked to listen and repeat words and sentences from the Korean Standard Sentence List for Adults. At +5- and +10 dB SNRs, CI users performed worse than those with NH on word and sentence recognition in BN, PS, PV, and PC. HA users outperformed CI users in all conditions. Those with NH showed better sentence recognition than HA users across all conditions at +5 dB SNR and better word recognition in PV and BN at +5 dB SNR and in PC at +10 dB SNR. Correlational analysis revealed that the percentage of life with hearing loss before CI was not correlated with sentence and word recognition across all conditions in both SNRs. Statistically significant negative correlations were observed between the duration of deafness and sentence and word recognition in some conditions. Despite individuals with HL performing well on clinical tests, background music can still interfere with communication for those using hearing devices. To accurately evaluate individuals’ communication abilities clinical tools that include background music need to be developed. Studies using different types of music could help develop and standardize such tools for assessing speech and language abilities in individuals with hearing loss.

Theory of Mind in children and adolescents with Down syndrome

IntroductionTo date, the evidence regarding False Belief (FB) abilities in individuals with Down syndrome (DS) has been both sparse and contradictory. Our study is the first systematic investigation targeting the relation between FB, mental age (MA), syntactic abilities (SA) and verbal short-term memory (VSTM) in individuals with DS so far. Method27 German-speaking children/adolescents with DS (aged 10;0–20;1 years) completed a location-change FB-task and four standardized measures assessing nonverbal intelligence & MA, VSTM, receptive and productive SA. Results37.5 % (n = 9) of our participants passed the FB-task, whereas 62.5 % (n = 15) did not answer the target question correctly. While no significant differences emerged for MA and language abilities in individuals who passed and those who failed FB-testing, VSTM came out as a significantly associated factor for FB-performance in a median split analysis of raw-scores. DiscussionThe results suggest that a substantial proportion of individuals with DS is impaired in FB-understanding. In contrast to previous findings on children with developmental disorders such as autism, developmental language deficit or hearing impairment, general and specific SA related to sentence complementation turned out to be of limited relevance for FB-understanding in individuals with DS.

Study protocol: Language profile in mild cognitive impairment: A prospective study.

Background: The present study will be a longitudinal investigation of language abilities in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). The research question will include whether there will be an evidence for language impairment in individuals with MCI, and if so, what aspects of language will be the most affected and whether language abilities will be significantly changed over a 12-month period. Methods: We will diagnose 30 individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and controlled participants using Montreal Cognitive Assessment-Basic (MoCA-B), as a cognitive test, and by asking expert opinions and conducting interviews. Participants will be selected from memory clinics and nursing homes in Tehran during 2018-2019. A comprehensive language test (Barnes Language Assessment (BLA)) will be performed to obtain baseline performance in the elderly. These tests will be repeated after 3, 6, and 12 months. Repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) will be used to determine whether there will be a significant change in participants' language abilities over a 12-month period. In the case of deficient language performance, a discriminant function analysis will be used to identify the language task type that will be highly sensitive to change. Results and Conclusion: The present study will provide evidence for the nature of language change and will be done in a-year course on individuals with MCI and AD and on healthy elders. Also, in this study, the relative sensitivity of various language components to MCI will be determined, and the relationship between language performance and performance on (MoCA-B) neuropsychological test will be examined.

Implicit Measures of Receptive Vocabulary Knowledge in Individuals With Level 3 Autism.

Implicit measures of cognition are essential for assessing knowledge in people with Level 3 autism because such individuals are often unable to make reliable overt behavioral responses. In this study, we investigated whether three implicit measures-eye movement (EM) monitoring, pupillary dilation (PD), and event-related potentials (ERPs)-can be used to reliably estimate vocabulary knowledge in individuals with Level 3 autism. Five adults with Level 3 autism were tested in a repeated-measures design with two tasks. High-frequency 'known' words (eg, bus, airplane) and low-frequency 'unknown' words (eg, ackee, cherimoya) were presented in a visual world task (during which EM and PD data were collected) and a picture-word congruity task (during which ERP data were collected). Using a case-study approach with single-subject analyses, we found that these implicit measures have the potential to provide estimates of receptive vocabulary knowledge in individuals with Level 3 autism. Participants differed with respect to which measures were the most sensitive and which variables best predicted vocabulary knowledge. These implicit measures may be useful to assess language abilities in individuals with Level 3 autism, but their use should be tailored to each individual.

Direct and indirect treatment approaches for addressing short-term or working memory deficits in aphasia

Background: A growing literature has documented that aphasia is frequently accompanied by deficits of short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM), and that such memory impairments may negatively influence language abilities and aphasia treatment outcomes. Consequently, treating STM and WM impairments in individuals with aphasia should not only remediate these memory impairments but also positively affect their response to language therapy programmes. Aims: This paper critically reviews the aphasia literature pertaining to remediating, directly or indirectly, STM and WM deficits. Memory treatment protocols developed for other disordered as well as healthy populations are also discussed as possible therapy approaches to consider in future aphasia research. Main Contribution: Findings from a limited set of studies suggest that STM and WM impairments in individuals with aphasia do respond to treatment, and further that these treatments may also positively affect the language abilities of individuals with aphasia. Conclusions: Further research is warranted to establish the reliability and validity of these preliminary findings and to explore application of these treatments as well as those developed for nonaphasic populations to individuals representing a broader spectrum of aphasia types and severities.

Language laterality in autism spectrum disorder and typical controls: A functional, volumetric, and diffusion tensor MRI study

Language and communication deficits are among the core features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Reduced or reversed asymmetry of language has been found in a number of disorders, including ASD. Studies of healthy adults have found an association between language laterality and anatomical measures but this has not been systematically investigated in ASD. The goal of this study was to examine differences in gray matter volume of perisylvian language regions, connections between language regions, and language abilities in individuals with typical left lateralized language compared to those with atypical (bilateral or right) asymmetry of language functions. Fourteen adolescent boys with ASD and 20 typically developing adolescent boys participated, including equal numbers of left- and right-handed individuals in each group. Participants with typical left lateralized language activation had smaller frontal language region volume and higher fractional anisotropy of the arcuate fasciculus compared to the group with atypical language laterality, across both ASD and control participants. The group with typical language asymmetry included the most right-handed controls and fewest left-handers with ASD. Atypical language laterality was more prevalent in the ASD than control group. These findings support an association between laterality of language function and language region anatomy. They also suggest anatomical differences may be more associated with variation in language laterality than specifically with ASD. Language laterality therefore may provide a novel way of subdividing samples, resulting in more homogenous groups for research into genetic and neurocognitive foundations of developmental disorders.

Language and Literacy Development in Individuals With Velo-cardio-facial Syndrome

Velo-cardio-facial syndrome (VCFS) is a genetic disorder caused by a microdeletion of chromosome 22q11.2. Although there is some variability, VCFS is associated with a characteristic physical, behavioral, and cognitive phenotype. This review article focuses on aspects of language and literacy development in VCFS, describing what is known and offering avenues for future research. The most consistently reported language and literacy findings in the VCFS population include reading, spelling, phonological processing, and auditory verbal rote memory abilities as areas of relative strength. Receptive language abilities are noted to be relatively stronger than expressive language abilities in individuals with VCFS. Speech disorders are very common in VCFS, and the most common compensatory articulation substitution in VCFS is the glottal stop.

LANGUAGE AND PARKINSON'S DISEASE

Parkinson's disease, the most common progressive neurological movement disorder worldwide, causes slow deterioration of subcortical structures and dopamine deficiency, and the disruption of circuits connecting frontal lobe and basal ganglia regions. Although the motor and cognitive consequences of these structural and physiological changes have been well-documented, only a limited, albeit growing, empirical literature has examined the integrity of language abilities in individuals with Parkinson's disease. This article reviews recent advances in that literature that have furthered our understanding of the quantitative and qualitative changes in morphosyntactic, lexical-semantic, and discourse levels of language functioning associated with Parkinson's disease. This article also discusses the theoretical and applied implications of these linguistic symptoms and provides suggestions to forward this line of research.

Caractérisation des troubles du langage dans la schizophrénie grâce au bilan orthophonique

This study investigates a comprehensive assessment of language disorders in order to identify impaired and unaffected language abilities of individuals with schizophrenia. Furthermore, the purpose of this study was to demonstrate the importance of the role of speech therapists in the treatment of schizophrenia. Speech therapy is especially thought to treat language disorders. However, to date, speech therapists have not been solicited in the treatment of schizophrenia, despite growing evidence supporting that schizophrenia is characterized by cognitive disorders such as impairments in memory, attention, executive functioning and language. In this article, we discuss the fact that elements of language and cognition are interactively affected and that cognition influences language. We then demonstrate that language impairments can be treated in the same way as neurological language impairments (cerebrovascular disease, brain injury), in order to reduce their functional outcome. Schizophrenia affects the pragmatic component of language with a major negative outcome in daily living skills [Champagne M, Stip E, Joanette Y. Social cognition deficit in schizophrenia: accounting for pragmatic deficits in communication abilities? Curr Psychiatry Rev:2006;(2):309-315]. The results of our comprehensive assessment also provide a basis for the design of a care plan. For this, subjects with schizophrenia were examined for language comprehension and language production with a focus on pragmatic abilities. In neurology, standardized tests are available that have been designed specifically to assess language functions. However, no such tests are available in psychiatry, so we gathered assessments widely used in neurology and examined the more relevant skills. In this article, each test we chose is described and particular attention is paid to the information they provided on impaired language abilities in schizophrenia. In this manner, we provide an accurate characterization of schizophrenia-associated language impairments and offer a solid foundation for rehabilitation. Current research makes connections between schizophrenia and other neurological disorders concerning language. Nevertheless, further studies are needed to explore these connections to complete our investigations. The strategies we designed are aimed at enabling a subject with schizophrenia to improve his/her language skills. We support the idea that such improvement could be reached by speech therapy. We conclude that speech therapists can play an important role in the non pharmacological treatment of schizophrenia, by selecting appropriate interventions that capitalize on spared abilities to compensate for impaired abilities.

The co-occurrence of autism and Williams syndrome: A case study report.

This paper describes a longitudinal case study detailing the communication profile of one child with both Williams syndrome (WS) and autism. The participant was administered two standardized assessments of language and general cognitive abilities. His parents completed the Pre-Verbal Communication Schedule; and a sample of the child's spontaneous interaction was analyzed. The results show that this child presents with markedly delayed language and communication skills and that his communication profile is the opposite of the assumed 'typical' WS profile. The conclusion is that clinicians need to be aware of the co-occurrence of genetic disorders, such as WS and autism in order to facilitate accurate diagnosis and effective treatment.

Language and communicative development in Williams syndrome

Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder caused by a microdeletion of approximately 25 genes on chromosome 7q11.23, is associated with mild to moderate intellectual disability or learning difficulties. Most individuals with Williams syndrome evidence a cognitive profile including relative strengths in verbal short-term memory and language, and considerable weakness in visuospatial construction. The syndrome has often been argued to provide strong evidence for the independence of language from other aspects of cognition. We provide a brief history of early research on the language abilities of individuals with Williams syndrome and then review contemporary studies of language and cognition in Williams syndrome, beginning with a consideration of performance on standardized assessments. In the remainder of the article, we first consider early language acquisition, with a focus on speech production and perception, vocabulary acquisition, and communicative/pragmatic development and then consider the language abilities of school-age children and adolescents, focusing on semantics, grammar, and pragmatics. We argue that rather than being the paradigm case for the independence of language from cognition, Williams syndrome provides strong evidence of the interdependence of many aspects of language and cognition.