Mean Number Of Words Research Articles

Verba <em>krist</em> daudznozīmība latviešu valodā

POLYSEMY OF THE VERB krist ‘FALL’ IN THE LATVIAN LANGUAGE Summary This article describes one of the fundamental problems of lexicography: the representation of polysemy in dictionaries. Often the number of word meanings differs in explanatory dictionaries. For instance, the number of meanings of the verb krist ‘fall’ found in the “Dictionary of the Latvian Literary Language” is 24, in the “Dictionary ofthe Latvian Language” – 17 and in the “Dictionary of the Contemporary Latvian Language” – 18 meanings. Different research methods are applied in the analysis of the meaning system of the verb krist . In the article relations of the word meanings are analyzed paradigmatically, by applying the method of semantic component analysis, and syntagmatically, by applying the semantic conjunction approach. In addition, word meaning relations are analyzed by applying the prototype theory of cognitive linguistics. After the analysis of definitions of the verb krist in the explanatory dictionaries of the Latvian language as well as the analysis of examples of the verb krist in the contemporary Latvian language corpus, the author concludes that it is possible to form a meaning system of the verb krist comprising 8 meanings.

Dream changes following initiation of efavirenz treatment

The objective was to evaluate abnormalities in the quality of dreams after the use of efavirenz. Ten HIV patients without neuropsychiatric diseases underwent a polisomnography (PSG) study before and after efavirenz treatment, [after 10.4 (SD 5.4) days]. Patients were awoke after REM phases to record their dreams. All patients had therapeutic efavirenz plasma levels. Dreams were recalled in 84% before efavirenz and 43% after efavirenz (p=0.024). There were no differences in the mean number of words per dream before and after efavirenz treatment (61.9 versus 47.5, p=0.115). The proportion of dreams with no neutral emotional content (either pleasant or unpleasant) was 37.5% in the first night and 66.7% in the second night (p=0.046). There were a higher proportion of dreams with no neutral emotional content after efavirenz treatment in this group of patients. However, no longer dreams and no more dreams with negative emotional content were noted. Dream recall was lower after efavirenz treatment.

Individual variability on discourse measures over repeated sampling times in persons with aphasia

Background: Although persons with aphasia typically have difficulty with the production of language at the level of discourse, there is a paucity of reliable measurement systems to quantify the characteristics of spoken language. Nicholas and Brookshire (1993) developed one of the few standardised, rule-based systems to quantify the informativeness of spoken language samples. While the authors reported temporal stability for all measures, they also noted variability at the individual level. Because individual data were not reported, it is difficult to determine the nature and extent of that variability. Aims: The aim of the current investigation was to further explore Nicholas and Brookshire's (1993) quantitative linguistic analyses, and to examine individual variability over time in persons with aphasia. Methods & Procedures: Five fluent and six nonfluent persons with aphasia produced language samples over repeated sampling times in response to the 10 stimulus items used by Nicholas and Brookshire (1993). Measurements of mean number of words, mean correct information units (CIUs), percent CIUs, words per minute, and CIUs per minute were calculated, and results from the sessions were compared. To examine factors related to individual variability, correlations between linguistic measures, months post onset of aphasia, and scores on standardised assessment tools were explored. Outcomes & Results: Visual inspection of the data and descriptive statistics suggested that participants were more variable in their repeated productions than previously described by Nicholas and Brookshire (1993). Repeated measures ANOVAs revealed non-significant effects at the group level. There was no pattern of variability uniquely associated with aphasia fluency type. Range of mean number of CIUs was positively and significantly correlated with all test measures; however, the other range correlations were non-significant. Conclusions: The current results suggest greater variability over repeated sampling times in the spoken language of persons with aphasia than previously reported by Nicholas and Brookshire (1993). Clinicians and researchers should consider this variability, and establish stable baselines prior to the initiation of treatment to document meaningful change over time.

Readability of Health Related Quality of Life Instruments in Urology

The average American adult reads at a fifth to eighth-grade level, with wide variability, presenting challenges for the assessment of self-reported health related quality of life. We identified the health related quality of life instruments used in patients with urological diseases and evaluated their readability. We focused on the most burdensome urological diseases, based on total expenditures in the United States. We then identified disease specific instruments by systematically searching PubMed, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Google, Google Scholar, the Patient Reported Outcome and Quality of Life Instruments Database (Mapi Research Institute, Lyon, France) and Yahoo! for health related quality of life studies in patients with these urological conditions. Where disease specific instruments were lacking, we noted the general health related quality of life measures most commonly used. For each instrument, we calculated the median Flesch-Kincaid grade level, the proportion of questionnaire items below an eighth-grade reading level, the mean Flesch Reading Ease, and the mean number of words per sentence and characters per word, all of which are validated measures of readability. The average +/- SD of the median Flesh-Kincaid reading levels was 6.5 +/- 2.1 (range 1.0 to 12.0). Of the 76 instruments 61 (80%) were at or below an eighth-grade reading level. The mean reading ease was greater than 30 for each of the 76 questionnaires and greater than 60 for 66 (87%). Urinary tract infection, the costliest urological disease, has only 1 disease specific health related quality of life measure. Urolithiasis, the second costliest, has none. The reading level of health related quality of life questionnaires in urology is appropriate for the reading ability of most adults in the United States. However, the most burdensome urological diseases lack disease specific health related quality of life instruments.

Antioxidants do not improve early childhood development in children with Down's syndrome

Main Results Children randomized to antioxidant supplements attained similar developmental outcomes to those without antioxidants (mean Griffiths developmental quotient 57.3 v 56.1; adjusted mean difference 1.2 points, 95% confidence interval 2.2 to 4.6). Comparison of children randomized to folinic acid supplements or no folinic acid also showed no significant differences in Griffiths developmental quotient (mean 57.6 v 55.9; adjusted mean difference 1.7, 1.7 to 5.1). No between group differences were seen in the mean numbers of words said or signed: for antioxidants versus none, the ratio of means was 0.85 (95% confidence interval 0.6 to 1.2), and, for folinic acid versus none, it was 1.24 (0.87 to 1.77). No significant differences were found between any of the groups in the biochemical outcomes measured. Adjustment for potential confounders did not appreciably change the results.

Supplementation with antioxidants and folinic acid for children with Down’s syndrome: randomised controlled trial

Objectives To assess whether supplementation with antioxidants, folinic acid, or both improves the psychomotor and language development of children with Down’s syndrome.Design Randomised controlled trial with two by two factorial...

Prosodic and lexical aspects of maternal linguistic input to late‐talking toddlers

Children who have reached the age of 2 years without having acquired a 50-word vocabulary and/or who use no word combinations are referred to in the literature as 'Late Talkers'. Research has not yet identified the factors that cause slow development of expressive language; in particular, relatively little research has been carried out on the characteristics of the maternal linguistic input received by Late Talkers. In fact, the majority of studies in this area have focused principally on the mothers' semantic, pragmatic and interactive verbal behaviour. The objective was to verify whether the input addressed to a group of Late Talkers differs to that addressed to a group of typically developing peers. It was expected that there would be differences in the prosodic and structural/lexical properties of the input, which by creating a 'less than optimal environment' for language acquisition processes, could affect the children's rate of linguistic development. The spontaneous maternal speech of nine Italian-speaking mothers of late-talking toddlers (LT) at 20 months of age was examined and compared with that of nine mothers of age-matched children with typical language development (Late Starters). Data were collected during video-recorded play sessions, which were transcribed and coded based on the structural-lexical and acoustical characteristics of the mothers' speech. Group differences were tested for the following variables: number of utterances per minute, mean number of words per utterance (MLUw), number of nouns per minute, number of different nouns per minute, common nouns as a percentage of overall words, type/token ratio for common nouns, one-word utterances as a percentage of the total number of utterances, one-word utterances formed by a common noun as a percentage of the total number of utterances, mean syllable duration, duration of the final syllable of the utterance, F0 maximum (the highest F0 in the utterance), F0 minimum (the lowest F0 in the utterance) and F0 range (by subtracting F0 min from F0 max). The mothers of LT produced common nouns and mark nouns by a pitch peak with a significantly lower frequency than the mothers of the children with typical language development. The mothers of LT also used flat pitch contours more often than the mothers of the typically developing peers. The study provides evidence that maternal input addressed to Late Talkers can contribute to slowing the process of language acquisition. Based on these findings, additional investigations that examine the contribution of maternal verbal behaviour to the development of language delay are warranted.

Age and Third Language Production: A Longitudinal Study

This longitudinal study examines the acquisition of subject pronouns in third language (L3) production. Participants were 90 Basque–Spanish bilingual students, learning English as a third language in a formal setting in the Basque Country. All the participants, who had received the same amount of exposure to English, were divided into three groups according to their age, and were asked to perform an oral and a written production task, after four, six and eight years of instruction in English, to examine their behaviour in relation to subject pronoun usage. The study yields different results in both production tests. In the case of the oral task, our data provide support for a positive relationship between subject pronoun usage and the number of utterances produced. Nevertheless, there does not seem to be any steady connection between subject omissions and the mean number of words used by the different groups. Concerning the written production task, age seems to be positively related to subject pronoun usage. Furthermore, there is no significant difference in the behaviour of subject pronouns in the periods under study. The fact can be associated with language complexity, which reaches higher levels longitudinally.

Psychiatrie in ? Der Nervenarzt? von 1928?2000

By analysing the complete edition of the German-language psychiatric journal "Der Nervenarzt" from 1928 to 2000 we examined basic trends in the historical and scientific orientation of psychiatry in this journal. All published articles (n=3270) were classified under formal aspects and were assigned to one of 30 categories by content. Inter-rater reliability was determined in 3 years from different eras (1957, 1977, 1997). With kappa values between 0.65 and 0.81 the inter-rater reliability was moderate to good. The mean number of authors and the mean number of references in the articles has been increasing continuously, particularly within the last decade. The mean number of words per article has been relatively constant. In nearly all 5-year periods, most of the articles came from Heidelberg, Munich and Berlin. In addition to original articles, review articles were introduced in 1971 and medical education articles in 1978. Since 1955 the "Nervenarzt" has been publishing the communications of the German Psychiatric and Neurological Society. Original articles with data reports and articles using statistics have been increasing continuously since the 1960s, reflecting an increasing evidence-based orientation of psychiatry. The currently accepted scientific standard was introduced in the early 1990s. The last decade, the "decade of the brain", not only yielded a high proportion of articles on biological issues but also indicated an increasing interest in institutions of psychiatric care and psychotherapy. On the other hand, links to related disciplines such as philosophy, sociology and psychology seem to have got lost. The percentage of articles from abroad has been decreasing within the last 2 decades. In comparison, the American Journal of Psychiatry, the Archives of General Psychiatry and the British Journal of Psychiatry have been publishing a higher percentage of original articles, particularly randomised controlled trials.

Gender, Language And Computer-mediatedCommunication

This research aimed to investigate gender and language in the context of educational computer-mediated interactions. As the use of online discussion groups in campus-based education increases, so does the need to investigate the impact of gender on language and communication styles in this context. It has been claimed that the lack of social context cues in computer-mediated communication (CMC) equalises participation, resulting in a more democratic environment than face-to-face communication. However, gender differences in power and language use have been found online. In total, 197 students (148 females, 49 males) participated in open-ended online discussion as an optional part of their introductory psychology module. Informed consent was sought from the online participants to download the electronic discourse for analysis using Atlas.ti 4.2. Participation and language use were analysed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. A detailed coding scheme was developed during the pilot study that incorporated various linguistic, stylistic, paralinguistic and task variables. This coding scheme was used in subsequent studies and 699 messages from four studies were coded in total. Males and females were similar overall with regard to participation as shown by the total number of posts and mean number of words per post. However, gender-related patterns in language use and interaction styles were found. The results are discussed in relation to previous literature on gender and language in both face-to-face and computermediated contexts and in relation to the democratising theories of CMC. The implications of the results for the use of CMC in Higher Education will also be considered.

Textual content, health problems and diagnostic codes in electronic patient records in general practice

Objective - To investigate textual content, health problems and diagnostic codes in everyday electronic patient records. Design - Retrospective and observational database study. Setting - Primary health care in Stockholm. Subjects - Twenty randomly selected general practitioners with 20 records each. Main outcome measures - The frequency of use of problem-oriented medical records. The number of words, problems and diagnostic codes. The completeness and correctness of the diagnostic codes. Results - About 14.5% of 400 studied records were problem-oriented. The mean number of words per record was 99.4, and the mean number of problems managed per record was 1.2. On average, there were 1.1 diagnostic codes per record and this differed widely among GPs and also among the electronic patient record systems. The mean number of codes per problem was 0.9, and the proportion of correct codes was 97.4%. Conclusions - The electronic patient records in general practice in Stockholm have an extensive textual content. A vast majority of the problems are coded and the completeness and correctness of diagnostic codes are high. It seems that problem-oriented electronic patient record systems enforce coding activities. It is feasible to establish a database of diagnostic data for research and health care planning based on electronic patient records.

The Role of an Interactive Book Reading Program in the Development of Second Language Pragmatic Competence

The development of pragmatic competence in another language is significant to second (L2) and foreign language (FL) learners’ ability to communicate successfully in the target language. Although a great deal of research has focused on defining and comparing the content of pragmatic competence across culture groups, far less attention has been given to examining its development. Our study is a partial response to this gap. The purpose of the study was to investigate the connection between Korean children's participation in an interactive book reading program and their development of pragmatic competence in English. We found that their participation led to significant changes over a 4–month period in the mean number of words, utterances, and talk management features as measured by the changes in children's use of these during role play sessions. The findings suggest that participation in such reading programs provides opportunities for the development of at least some aspects of L2 pragmatic competence.

Orthographic neighborhood size, number of word meanings, and number of higher frequency neighbors

The present lexical decision task experiment examined orthographic (large, medium, small), number-of-meanings (ambiguous, unambiguous), and number of higher frequency neighbors (few, many), factors that have to date not been studied simultaneously. For both mean reaction time and percentage error, the critical three-way interaction between these factors was significant. Breakdown of this interaction revealed that the ambiguity effect (unambiguous–ambiguous) decreased as neighborhood size increased, but only when there were many higher frequency neighbors in the neighborhood. These results appear inconsistent with serial search models but are understandable within the context of interactive-activation models of word recognition.

Associations to Smell are More Pleasant Than to Sound

To assess and compare the quantitive and qualitative aspects of verbal associations of olfaction and audition, we conducted two verbal category fluency tasks, one consisting of the generation of smelling associations and the other of auditory associations. The responses of the 40 subjects on these fluency tasks were rated as pleasant or unpleasant by themselves as well as by an independent group of 40 subjects. In addition, all 80 healthy, right-handed subjects rated their momentary emotional state on a visual analog scale. The mean number of words generated by the 40 subjects did not differ between the two tasks, and in both tasks pleasant associations were more frequent than unpleasant associations. However, for all subjects, the proportion of pleasant associations was significantly higher in the olfactory compared to the auditory fluency task. The finding of more pleasant associations in both tasks confirms previous reports, but the pronounced effect in the olfactory task suggests that odors may be more hedonically coded than other sensory modalities, i.e., audition. Although there is evidence that the majority of odors are initially perceived as unpleasant, when retrieved from memory, pleasant connotations seem to dominate. The possible mechanisms for this dissociation are discussed.

Determinants of speech perception in children after cochlear implantation

Cochlear implants provide access to the speech signal in those profoundly deaf children who derive no material benefit from acoustic hearing aids. Speech perception after implantation can vary widely--we have analysed the contribution of several factors. We examined 40 children with mean age at implantation of 52 months who were either born deaf or became deaf before 3 years. All patients received the same multichannel implant system and were followed up for 5 years. We used connected discourse tracking (CDT) as the measure of speech perception. The effect of five potential predictors (age at implantation, number of inserted electrodes, origin of deafness, mode of communication, and socioeconomic group) on speech perception was analysed. The mean number of words per minute perceived increased from 0 before implantation to 44.8 (SD 24.3) 5 years after implantation. Repeated-measures ANOVA showed that children significantly progressed over time (p=0.001). Age at implantation was a significant covariate (p=0.01) and mode of communication was a significant between-individuals factor (p=0.04). Young age at intervention and oral communication mode are the most important known determinants of later speech perception in young children after cochlear implantation. Early identification of candidate children necessitates implementation of universal neonatal screening programmes for hearing impairment.

Regional Cerebral Blood Flow During Script-Driven Imagery in Childhood Sexual Abuse-Related PTSD: A PET Investigation

The purpose of this study was to determine whether anterior limbic and paralimbic regions of the brain are differentially activated during the recollection and imagery of traumatic events in trauma-exposed individuals with and without posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Positron emission tomography (PET) was used to measure normalized regional cerebral blood flow (CBF) in 16 women with histories of childhood sexual abuse: eight with current PTSD and eight without current PTSD. In separate script-driven imagery conditions, participants recalled and imagined traumatic and neutral autobiographical events. Psychophysiologic responses and subjective ratings of emotional state were measured for each condition. In the traumatic condition versus the neutral control conditions, both groups exhibited regional CBF increases in orbitofrontal cortex and anterior temporal poles; however, these increases were greater in the PTSD group than in the comparison group. The comparison group exhibited regional CBF increases in insular cortex and anterior cingulate gyrus; increases in anterior cingulate gyrus were greater in the comparison group than in the PTSD group. Regional CBF decreases in bilateral anterior frontal regions were greater in the PTSD group than in the comparison group, and only the PTSD group exhibited regional CBF decreases in left inferior frontal gyrus. The recollection and imagery of traumatic events versus neutral events was accompanied by regional CBF increases in anterior paralimbic regions of the brain in trauma-exposed individuals with and without PTSD. However, the PTSD group had greater increases in orbitofrontal cortex and anterior temporal pole, whereas the comparison group had greater increases in anterior cingulate gyrus.

Descriptive study of cooperative language in primary care consultations by male and female doctors

Objective: To compare the use of some of the characteristics of male and female language by male and female primary care practitioners during consultations.Design: Doctors' use of the language of...

The Thematic Apperception Test and Alzheimer's disease.

The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT; Murray, 1938, 1943) is widely used in personality description and psychological assessment. Similar narrative tasks are also frequently used as part of neuropsychological assessment. Little is empirically known, however, concerning performances of cognitively impaired individuals on thematic tasks when compared with other diagnostic groups. It was predicted that hospitalized patients with dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) would demonstrate impaired performances on the TAT when compared with a group of nondemented psychiatric inpatients. This prediction was supported, with the DAT group performing significantly worse on TAT dependent measures than the nondemented group. Results indicate total number of words and mean number of words used, loss of instructional set, and tendencies to describe the pictures to be significantly different between groups. These findings are discussed in terms of neuropsychological theory on verbal expression and in terms of use of the TAT as a screening device for clinicians in determining need for neuropsychological evaluation.

Letter Detection in Multiple-Meaning Words: One Lexical Entry or Two?

Abstract The methodology of Reicher (1969) was used to perform three experiments to determine whether the number of word meanings has an effect on letter-detection performance. Performance was hypothesized to be superior on multiple-meaning words (i.e., ambiguous words such as bank) than on single-meaning words (i.e., unambiguous words such as cause), because ambiguous words may possess a separate lexical entry for each distinct meaning. Results from each experiment revealed the standard word superiority effect (WSE, better letter detection in words than in nonwords). However, there was no reliable difference between performance with ambiguous and unambiguous words in any experiment. Implications of these results are discussed.

Word Processing and Handwriting: Writing Samples Produced by At-Risk College Freshmen

Differences between letters of at-risk college freshmen written by hand and those composed on a microcomputer using a word processor were examined. The subjects spent significantly more time and undertook substantially more editing when composing letters on a microcomputer. Also, editing through deletions and/or insertions was significantly related to quality of letter. However, the mean number of words written per unit of time spent completing a letter was substantially higher for subjects' handwritten letters, while judges' holistic evaluations of letter quality did not differ significantly between the two production modes.