Language Processing Abilities Research Articles

Eighteen years on: What next for the PALPA?

The Psycholinguistic Assessments of Language Processing Abilities (PALPA) is a battery of tests designed to assess language processing abilities in individuals with acquired aphasia. Published in 1992, the battery was well-received by both clinicians and researchers, yet no revised version has been published to date. In this paper, we examine contemporary usage of the PALPA in both clinical and research settings, to inform decisions regarding future developments of the resource. First, we carried out a literature search to identify all published papers that have cited the PALPA since 2003, and compared our findings to those from an earlier search covering the period from 1991 to 2002. Second, we created an online survey that examined current usage of the PALPA in both clinicians and researchers. Our findings suggest the PALPA continues to be a well-used tool in both clinical and research settings, but could benefit from some improvements in its content and presentation. Further, there are time constraints in administering the PALPA, indicating an additional component for general-screening purposes would be a welcome extension to the battery.

Cochlear implants and spoken language processing abilities: review and assessment of the literature.

Cochlear implants (CIs) process sounds electronically and then transmit electric stimulation to the cochlea of individuals with sensorineural deafness, restoring some sensation of auditory perception. Many congenitally deaf CI recipients achieve a high degree of accuracy in speech perception and develop near-normal language skills. Post-lingually deafened implant recipients often regain the ability to understand and use spoken language with or without the aid of visual input (i.e. lip reading). However, there is wide variation in individual outcomes following cochlear implantation, and some CI recipients never develop useable speech and oral language skills. The causes of this enormous variation in outcomes are only partly understood at the present time. The variables most strongly associated with language outcomes are age at implantation and mode of communication in rehabilitation. Thus, some of the more important factors determining success of cochlear implantation are broadly related to neural plasticity that appears to be transiently present in deaf individuals. In this article we review the expected outcomes of cochlear implantation, potential predictors of those outcomes, the basic science regarding critical and sensitive periods, and several new research directions in the field of cochlear implantation.

Reduced connectivity of the auditory cortex in patients with auditory hallucinations: a resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Previous research has reported auditory processing deficits that are specific to schizophrenia patients with a history of auditory hallucinations (AH). One explanation for these findings is that there are abnormalities in the interhemispheric connectivity of auditory cortex pathways in AH patients; as yet this explanation has not been experimentally investigated. We assessed the interhemispheric connectivity of both primary (A1) and secondary (A2) auditory cortices in n=13 AH patients, n=13 schizophrenia patients without auditory hallucinations (non-AH) and n=16 healthy controls using functional connectivity measures from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. Functional connectivity was estimated from resting state fMRI data using regions of interest defined for each participant based on functional activation maps in response to passive listening to words. Additionally, stimulus-induced responses were regressed out of the stimulus data and the functional connectivity was estimated for the same regions to investigate the reliability of the estimates. AH patients had significantly reduced interhemispheric connectivity in both A1 and A2 when compared with non-AH patients and healthy controls. The latter two groups did not show any differences in functional connectivity. Further, this pattern of findings was similar across the two datasets, indicating the reliability of our estimates. These data have identified a trait deficit specific to AH patients. Since this deficit was characterized within both A1 and A2 it is expected to result in the disruption of multiple auditory functions, for example, the integration of basic auditory information between hemispheres (via A1) and higher-order language processing abilities (via A2).

A case for conflict across multiple domains: Memory and language impairments following damage to ventrolateral prefrontal cortex

Patients with focal lesions to the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG; BA 44/45) exhibit difficulty with language production and comprehension tasks, although the nature of their impairments has been somewhat difficult to characterize. No reported cases suggest that these patients are Broca's aphasics in the classic agrammatic sense. Recent case studies, however, do reveal a consistent pattern of deficit regarding their general cognitive processes: They are reliably impaired on tasks in which conflicting representations must be resolved by implementing top-down cognitive control (e.g., Stroop; memory tasks involving proactive interference). In the present study, we ask whether the language production and comprehension impairments displayed by a patient with circumscribed LIFG damage can best be understood within a general conflict resolution deficit account. We focus on one patient in particular—patient I.G.—and discuss the implications for language processing abilities as a consequence of a general cognitive control disorder. We compared I.G. and other frontal patients to age-matched control participants across four experiments. Experiment 1 tested participants' general conflict resolution abilities within a modified working memory paradigm in an attempt to replicate prior case study findings. We then tested language production abilities on tasks of picture naming (Experiment 2) and verbal fluency (Experiment 3), tasks that generated conflict at the semantic and/or conceptual levels. Experiment 4 tested participants' sentence processing and comprehension abilities using both online (eye movement) and offline measures. In this task, participants carried out spoken instructions containing a syntactic ambiguity, in which early interpretation commitments had to be overridden in order to recover an alternative, intended analysis of sentence meaning. Comparisons of I.G.'s performance with frontal and healthy control participants supported the following claim: I.G. suffers from a general conflict resolution impairment, which affects his ability to produce and comprehend language under specific conditions—namely, when semantic, conceptual, and/or syntactic representations compete and must be resolved.

Cognitive functioning in Williams Syndrome: A study in Portuguese and Spanish patients

Williams Syndrome (WS) is a genetic neurodevelopmental disorder caused by a submicroscopic deletion on chromosome 7 q11.23. This is a systemic disorder in which cardiac problems and mental retardation are the key phenotypic symptoms. Although displaying a general cognitive impairment, they are most often described as exhibiting a peak and valley profile, with relative sparing of language and face processing abilities and severe impairment of visual–spatial cognition. In this study, we conducted a detailed cognitive assessment using Wechsler Intelligence Scales on a WS and a normal development control group. To explore the hypothesis of a dissociative cognitive architecture in WS, performance on subtests, factorial indexes and composite measures of Verbal, Performance and Full Scale Intelligence Quotient were analysed. Individuals with WS were found to score in Full Scale Intelligence Quotient (FSIQ) within mild to moderate mental retardation interval, and had significantly lower scores in all measures when they were compared with the normal development group. However, a specific intragroup cognitive profile was found for Williams Syndrome (confirming Mervis' definition of the WS cognitive profile) along with a specific developmental pathway (absence of an age-associated cognitive decline).

Spoken Language Processing: A Convergent Approach to Conceptualizing (Central) Auditory Processing

Spoken Language Processing: A Convergent Approach to Conceptualizing (Central) Auditory Processing

CMedPort: An integrated approach to facilitating Chinese medical information seeking

As the number of non-English resources available on the Web is increasing rapidly, developing information retrieval techniques for non-English languages is becoming an urgent and challenging issue. In this research to facilitate information seeking in a multilingual world, we focused on discovering how search-engine techniques developed for English could be generalized for use with other languages. We proposed a general framework incorporating a focused collection-building technique, a generic language processing ability, an integration of information resources, and a post-retrieval analysis module. Based on this approach, we developed CMedPort, a Chinese Web portal in the medical domain that not only allows users to search for Web pages from local collections and meta-search engines but also provides encoding conversion between simplified and traditional Chinese to support cross-regional search and document summarization and categorization. User studies were conducted to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of CMedPort with those of three major Chinese search engines. Results indicate that CMedPort achieved similar accuracy for search tasks, but exhibited significantly higher recall than each of the three search engines as well as higher precision than two of the search engines for browse tasks. There were no significant differences among the efficiency measures for CMedPort and benchmarks systems. A post-questionnaire regarding system usability indicated that CMedPort achieved significantly higher user satisfaction than any of the three benchmark systems. The subjects especially liked CMedPort's categorizer, commenting that it helped improve understanding of search results. These encouraging outcomes suggest a promising future for applying our approach to Internet searching and browsing in a multilingual world.

Language Processing in Children with Emotional Disorders

The author explores the language processing ability of children with emotional disorders who have preexisting language delays (ED/LA) to determine whether language difficulties in this population are internal biological features rather than due to environmental variables such as lack of language stimulation in the home. A comparison group consisting of children with ED but without language delays was used to determine whether language processing may be a critical factor in the occurrence of language delays in children with ED. Language competence was determined using the Test of Language Development/Intermediate. Language processing skills were then compared in the typical versus delay language groups using the Language Processing Test-R. Children with ED and language delays presented concerns in areas of language processing difficulty suggestive of underlying neurological pathology.

Revised inference processing as a measure of the working memory–processing relationship

Processing and resource allocation models have been used in cognitive psychology and aphasiology in an attempt to investigate and explain the possible relationships among working memory and normal/disordered language-processing abilities. The interest of the present study was to determine potential benefits of employing revised inferences as the linguistic stimuli to explore these relationships further. Before application can be made to individuals with brain damage, however, results from neurologically intact individuals are needed. Therefore, we asked 30 individuals without neurological symptoms to participate in a cross-modal lexical priming study designed to measure revised inference-processing abilities, and a listening span task devised by Tompkins, Bloise, Timko, and Baumgaertner (1994) was used to measure working memory ability. Participants demonstrated priming effects for contextually appropriate target words in the two lexical decision positions housed within the revised inferences. These findings are discussed with respect to models of processing and resource allocation. Implications and applications to studies of the braindamaged population are also considered.

A comparison of relaxation training and syntax stimulation for chronic nonfluent aphasia

This study examined the effects of relaxation training and syntax stimulation on the spoken language abilities of a 59-year-old male with chronic, nonfluent aphasia of moderate severity. Relaxation training consisted of progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) and guided imagery (GI), whereas the syntax stimulation was a modified version of the Helm Elicited Program for Syntax Stimulation (HELPSS) [(1981). Helm Elicited Language Program for Syntax Stimulation. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.]. These treatments were applied in the context of a single-subject alternating treatments plus baseline design. Results indicated that although both treatments produced improvements in spoken language, syntax stimulation was associated with larger improvements, particularly in terms of the proportions of grammatical utterances, correct information units (CIUs), and successful utterances produced by the participant. Analysis of treatment order, however, indicated that the participant's best performances of the syntax treatment and of the probe tasks occurred when relaxation training preceded syntax stimulation. These findings suggest that the simplicity and psychological benefits of relaxation training make it a complementary component to traditional linguistic programs for aphasia. Educational objectives: (1) The reader will understand how psychological responses to stress may affect the language processing abilities of adults with aphasia. (2) The reader will be able to describe how relaxation training complements a traditional language treatment approach for remediating spoken language abilities of adults with chronic nonfluent aphasia.

Bone Lead Levels and Language Processing Performance

The relation between bone lead absorption and language processing abilities in 156 randomly selected 11- to 14-year-old boys who were asymptomatic for lead toxicity is examined. Tibial lead concentrations were measured by X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. The language processing outcome variables consisted of the least and most difficult subtests from the Nonword Repetition Task, Competing Language Processing Task, and the Revised Token Test. Participants were classified by quartiles according to bone lead concentrations, and analysis of variance and analysis of covariance measured the impact on language processing scores. Results showed that children in the highest bone lead quartile displayed decreased language processing performance on the most difficult language processing tasks but not on the easier tasks.

Psycholinguistic profiling of a hearing-impaired child

The speech and language processing abilities of a 10 year old with a severe hearing impairment and additional word retrieval difficulties are examined at a single word level using Stackhouse and Wells’ psycholinguistic framework. Performance on a variety of output tasks is compared and input processing is investigated in detail. Evidence is found for a breakdown in processing at several levels. The specific point of breakdown for individual contrasts is identified. It is shown to be possible and informative to use a psycholinguistic framework with a child with a hearing impairment to produce a detailed profile which could inform therapy decisions.

The Neurobiology of Language Recovery in Aphasia

The Neurobiology of Language Recovery in Aphasia

The kindergarten-path effect: studying on-line sentence processing in young children

A great deal of psycholinguistic research has focused on the question of how adults interpret language in real time. This work has revealed a complex and interactive language processing system capable of rapidly coordinating linguistic properties of the message with information from the context or situation (e.g. Altmann & Steedman, 1988; Britt, 1994; Tanenhaus, Spivey-Knowlton, Eberhard & Sedivy, 1995; Trueswell & Tanenhaus, 1991). In the study of language acquisition, however, surprisingly little is known about how children process language in real time and whether they coordinate multiple sources of information during interpretation. The lack of child research is due in part to the fact that most existing techniques for studying language processing have relied upon the skill of reading, an ability that young children do not have or are only beginning to acquire. We present here results from a new method for studying children's moment-by-moment language processing abilities, in which a head-mounted eye-tracking system was used to monitor eye movements as participants responded to spoken instructions. The results revealed systematic differences in how children and adults process spoken language: Five Year Olds did not take into account relevant discourse/pragmatic principles when resolving temporary syntactic ambiguities, and showed little or no ability to revise initial parsing commitments. Adults showed sensitivity to these discourse constraints at the earliest possible stages of processing, and were capable of revising incorrect parsing commitments. Implications for current models of sentence processing are discussed.

Language Basis of Reading and Reading Disabilities: Evidence From a Longitudinal Investigation

This study examined the contributions of phonological processing and oral language abilities to reading and reading disabilities in young children. Two approaches were taken. First, 604 participants were divided into good and poor readers on the basis of reading performance in second grade. Reading groups were then compared in terms of kindergarten phonological processing and other language abilities. In a second approach, multiple regression was employed to investigate the relative contributions of phonological processing and oral language abilities in predicting second-grade reading achievement across reading groups. Results indicated that over 70% of poor readers had a history of language deficits in kindergarten. Most of these children had problems in both phonological processing and oral language. Regression analyses further indicated that oral language and phonological processing abilities each accounted for unique variance in reading achievement. These results suggest that language-based theories of reading and reading disabilities must include both phonological processing and oral language abilities.

Computational approaches to language acquisition Ed. by Michael R. Brent (review)

190 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 75, NUMBER 1 (1999) ond language (L2) acquisition by untutored adult immigrants . Already published are studies of utterance structure, temporality, and the lexicon, all based on data (stored in CHILDES) from the same 40 learners. The approach is cross-linguistic and longitudinal, with data collected 20-25 times over a two-year interval from learners of varied first languages (Lis) acquiring varied L2s ab initio. Each observational session elicited learner language referring to spatial relations via picture description and stage direction tasks, supplemented occasionally by other communicative activities and by the informants' incidental uses of spatial terms in conversation with native L2speaking experimenters. This design was held consistent by research teams at different sites, with members of those teams contributing separate chapters to the book. Ch. 1, by Angelika Becker and Clive Perdue, gives general background. In Ch. 2, B presents a theoretical framework pitched at somewhat too abstract a level. More liberal use of examples and a visual display of the relationships among the complex taxonomy ofspatial relations and terms would help. Ch. 3, by Mary Carroll , reports the acquisition ofEnglish by two Italian speakers; B's Ch. 4 addresses acquisition of German by four Italian speakers and one Turkish speaker; Ch. 5, by Jorge Giacobbe, Clive Perdue, and Rémi Porquier describes the acquisition of French by two Spanish speakers and one Moroccan Arabic speaker. Carroll's Ch. 6 concludes with a survey ofthe results. In the absence of a theory of acquisition in the relevant domain, the approach is explicitly 'datadriven and inductive' (2), making it easy to get lost in the masses of descriptive data presented for each informant in Chs. 3-5. Those data are revealing both with regard to the process of acquisition and with regard to what they communicate about the properties of the source and target languages. They also, happily, model what it means to view L2 acquisition (relatively) unobstructed by the 'comparative fallacy ', that is, free from the tendency to see interlanguage grammars as flawed or partial versions of native speakers' grammars. I can only summarize here some of the overall findings. All early learners arrive at a comparable 'basic variety' of their L2. They may first represent spatial relations by simple juxtaposition, then start to encode dynamic relations (movement along an axis, or movement toward or away) in whatever formal devices the L2 exploits. For static spatial relations , topological terms (inside, near) emerge before axis-based terms (above, left) because the latter require perspective-based computation. Past the basic variety, how space is conceived and represented in the Ll shapes learners' interlanguage systems, as evidenced in acquisitional order variations between learners of different Lis. The research finds that divergence between Ll and L2 in the conceptualization of space and in the encoding of spatial relations leads to slower and more idiosyncratic developmental paths. In addition, greater conceptual complexity (for example, that represented in the word between) delays acquisition across the board. [Margaret Thomas, Boston College.] Computational approaches to language acquisition. Ed. by Michael R. Brent. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997. Pp. 199. There has been a movement in recent years away from rule-based theories of language acquisition to understanding how developmental and statistical constraints on natural language development give rise to infant speech and language processing ability. These models can be divided into two broad categories : First, artificial neural network models have provided a limited developmental account (in reading, for example) of how mappings from orthography to phonology can be 'learned' by statistical approximation using many ubiquitous nonlinear predictors. The second approach has sought to determine the statistical conditions necessary for developing language and specifying processes which might satisfy these conditions (the 'bootstrapping' approach). Autonomous bootstrapping is the subject of this volume of papers reprinted from a special issue of Cognition. Brent presents an overview of computational approaches to the acquisition of natural language in infancy which are based on bootstrapping hypotheses and integrates key results from the four research papers reprinted in the volume. These papers address semantic , prosodie, and syntactic bootstrapping issues although an account of the acquisition of regular and irregular verb morphologies is absent. The papers are presented in a complementary way...

Phonological processing: say that again?

Sensory deprivation since birth, as in blindness or deafness, produces alterations in the normal functional organization of the brain. A related question is whether cultural deprivation, such as the lack of opportunity to learn to read, could also have such effects on brain organization. Recently, Castro-Caldas et al.[ 1 Castro-Caldas A. et al. The illiterate brain: learning to read and write during childhood influences the functional organization of the adult brain. Brain. 1998; 121: 1053-1063 Crossref PubMed Scopus (304) Google Scholar ]have demonstrated, with the cooperation of a group of elderly Portuguese women, that learning to read during childhood does indeed influence the way our brains are functionally organized for spoken language. Their study used positron emission tomography to compare brain activation during word versus non-word repetition in six literate women and six women who were illiterate for social reasons. While verbally repeating words, similar areas of the brain were activated in both groups of women, whereas differences in the patterns of activation were seen during non-word repetition, the illiterate group showing increased activation (above that seen for word repetition) in the right middle frontal cortex only. In contrast, a large network of regions was activated by non-word repetition in the literate group, including bilateral insular cortex, right frontal opercular and anterior cingulate cortices, left basal ganglia, thalamus and cerebellum. This difference might reflect differences in language processing in the two groups. The illiterate women tended to transform the non-words into real words, indicating a difference in phonological processing and a reliance on lexico-semantic analysis. The authors conclude that the literate women had acquired extra language-processing abilities through the training received in reading and writing during childhood. This training appears to change permanently the functional organization of the phonological processing system in the brain.

Verbal Dichotic Listening in Boys at Risk for Behavior Disorders

The association between deficits in verbal processing skills and disruptive psychopathology remains one of the most frequently replicated findings in all of child psychiatry. This study uses a dichotic consonant-vowel listening test to examine the potential neural basis for this association. A series of 87 young boys recruited from a sample at risk for disruptive disorders received standardized psychiatric, neuropsychological, and language skills assessments. Approximately 1 year later, these boys received a reassessment of their psychiatric status and a test that assesses the neural basis of language-processing ability, a dichotic consonant-vowel listening test. Disruptive psychopathology predicted reduced right ear accuracy for dichotic syllables, indicative of a deficit in left hemisphere processing ability. Deficits in reading and language ability also correlated with right ear accuracy for dichotic syllables. Boys with disruptive behavior disorders, relative to at-risk but nondisruptive boys, exhibit a deficit in verbal processing abilities on dichotic listening tasks. This deficit in verbal processing ability is also manifested as low scores on standardized tests of reading achievement and language comprehension.

Effects of working memory capacity on understanding rate-altered speech

Age-related declines in language processing have been attributed in part to generalized cognitive slowing. Because of this slowing, it has been suggested that older adults' sentence comprehension might be facilitated by reducing the rate at which sentences are spoken. Research, however, has failed to reliably show that speaking slowly enhances comprehension. the present study explores the hypothesis that declines in working memory (WM) would actually counteract any benefits derived from a reduction in speech rate. That is, at a slower than normal speech rate, more demands are placed on WM since information must be retained over a longer duration. the comprehension of normal and slow speech was examined for three Alzheimer's subjects, each presenting a unique profile of WM capacity. Results suggest that the effect of speech rate on comprehension is determined by the extent of WM capacity: A slow speech rate was beneficial only for the subject with the most preserved WM; speech rate did not affect comprehension for the subject with moderately impaired WM; and a slow speech rate was actually detrimental for the subject with the most severe WM impairment. the findings demonstrate the value of considering the involvement of multiple cognitive domains when assessing language processing abilities.

Language testing and the assessment of dementia in second language settings: a case study

Procedures commonly used for assessing cognitive function in people with suspected dementia are of questionable validity in second language settings because of possible linguistic and cultural inappropriateness. This article reports a case study of a patient of Japanese background with suspected dementia in an English-speaking geriatric unit. The subject was thought to be able to understand and speak English sufficiently well for her daily activities, but was not engaging in communication with hospital staff. The case was further complicated by a history of schizophrenia. As part of a research project concerned with language disorder in speakers of English as a second language, the subject was tested using tasks selected on the basis of current knowledge regarding language decline and deficit in dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT). The tasks, which the subject wished to do only in Japanese, included naming, story recall and processing by semantic category. The subject's performance in her first language did not, in general, indicate her language-processing abilities to be compromised by DAT. The results demonstrate the potential contribution of information from language-based tasks administered in the person's preferred language to screening for dementia in second language settings.