Syntactic Comprehension Research Articles

정보그림책을 활용한 극화놀이가 유아의 구문이해력과 인지능력에 미치는 영향

본 연구는 정보그림책을 활용한 극화놀이가 유아의 구문이해력과 인지능력에 미치는 효과를 분석함으로써 유아교육현장에서 정보그림책의 효율적인 교육방법에 대한 정보를 제시하는데 목적이 있다. 연구대상은 만 5세 유아 38명이며 평균 월령은 72.03개월이었다. 실험집단은 정보그림책을 활용한 극화놀이에 10주 동안 참여하였고, 비교집단에서는 동일한 정보그림책을 제시하고 정보탐색하기, 감상하기, 정보 교환하기까지만 참여하였다. 연구도구는 유아의 구문이해력과 인지능력을 측정하기 위하여 ‘구문의미이해력’ 과 ‘K-ABC’검사 도구를 사용하여 연구 자료를 수집하였고 수집된 자료는 공변량 분석을 통해 사전과 사후검사를 실시하여 집단 간의 차이를 분석하였다. 연구결과 첫째, 실험집단 유아들의 구문이해력의 하위 영역 중 구문구조와 이해점수가 비교집단 유아들의 점수보다 유의하게 높은 것으로 밝혀졌다. 둘째, 실험집단 유아들의 인지능력의 전체점수가 비교집단 유아들의 점수보다 유의하게 높은 것으로 밝혀졌다. 이러한 본 연구결과는 정보그림책을 활용한 극화놀이 활동은 유아의 구문이해력과 인지능력에서 긍정적인 효과가 있음을 시사하는 것이라 하겠다.

Children's Early Decontextualized Talk Predicts Academic Language Proficiency in Midadolescence.

This study examines whether children's decontextualized talk-talk about nonpresent events, explanations, or pretend-at 30months predicts seventh-grade academic language proficiency (age 12). Academic language (AL) refers to the language of school texts. AL proficiency has been identified as an important predictor of adolescent text comprehension. Yet research on precursors to AL proficiency is scarce. Child decontextualized talk is known to be a predictor of early discourse development, but its relation to later language outcomes remains unclear. Forty-two children and their caregivers participated in this study. The proportion of child talk that was decontextualized emerged as a significant predictor of seventh-grade AL proficiency, even after controlling for socioeconomic status, parent decontextualized talk, child total words, child vocabulary, and child syntactic comprehension.

Syntactic comprehension in Parkinson’s disease: Type of embedding and canonicity

Syntactic comprehension in Parkinson’s disease: Type of embedding and canonicity

Neural encoding of phonetic features relates to phonological processing in PPA

Neural encoding of phonetic features relates to phonological processing in PPA

Auditory comprehension of control structures in German individuals with aphasia using self-paced listening, visual world eye tracking and an object manipulation task

Auditory comprehension of control structures in German individuals with aphasia using self-paced listening, visual world eye tracking and an object manipulation task

Aphasia in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy: As Severe as Progressive Non-Fluent Aphasia.

Adynamic speech is characteristic of progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), but higher language deficits have been reported inconsistently, in the context of clinical and pathological overlaps with progressive non-fluent aphasia (PNFA). The present study tested two hypotheses: 1) PSP and PNFA display impaired single word repetition, object naming, semantic knowledge, and syntactic comprehension; and 2) PSP have reduced speed on timed cognitive tasks. Structured clinical and neuropsychological assessments of language were performed on patients with clinically defined PSP and PNFA. Language was tested using the Sydney Language Battery (SYDBAT) and the Test of Reception of Grammar (TROG). In total, 144 participants were studied (PSP 22, PNFA 29, and Control 93). PSP patients had prominent eye movement abnormalities, parkinsonism, and falls. All 4 PSP patients who underwent postmortem examination had 4-Repeat tauopathy, with PSP pathology in 3. The frequency and severity of impairment on the SYDBAT (naming, word comprehension, semantic association), and TROG (syntactic comprehension) did not differ between PSP and PNFA, but PSP were significantly slower on timed non-language cognitive tests. Tested formally, aphasia may be seen in PSP, with a severity similar to that seen in PNFA.

Effect of education on listening comprehension of sentences on healthy elderly: analysis of number of correct responses and task execution time.

To analyze the effect of education on sentence listening comprehension on cognitively healthy elderly. A total of 111 healthy elderly, aged 60-80 years of both genders were divided into two groups according to educational level: low education (0-8 years of formal education) and high education (≥9 years of formal education). The participants were assessed using the Revised Token Test, an instrument that supports the evaluation of auditory comprehension of orders with different working memory and syntactic complexity demands. The indicators used for performance analysis were the number of correct responses (accuracy analysis) and task execution time (temporal analysis) in the different blocks. The low educated group had a lower number of correct responses than the high educated group on all blocks of the test. In the temporal analysis, participants with low education had longer execution time for commands on the first four blocks related to working memory. However, the two groups had similar execution time for blocks more related to syntactic comprehension. Education influenced sentence listening comprehension on elderly. Temporal analysis allowed to infer over the relationship between comprehension and other cognitive abilities, and to observe that the low educated elderly did not use effective compensation strategies to improve their performances on the task. Therefore, low educational level, associated with aging, may potentialize the risks for language decline.

Linguistically deprived children: meta-analysis of published research underlines the importance of early syntactic language use for normal brain development

We analyzed all published reports of individuals not exposed to syntactic language until puberty: two feral children, who grew up without hearing any language, and eight deaf linguistic isolates, who grew up communicating to their families using homesign or kitchensign, a system of gestures which allows them to communicate simple commands but lacks much in the way of syntax. A common observation in these individuals is the lifelong difficulty understanding syntax and spatial prepositions, even after many years of rehabilitation. This debilitating condition stands in stark contrast to linguistic isolates’ performance on memory as well as semantic tests: they could easily remember hundreds of newly learned words and identify previously seen objects by name. The lack of syntactic language comprehension in linguistic isolates may stem from inability to understand words and/or grammar or inability to mentally synthesize known objects into novel configurations. We have previously shown that purposeful construction of novel mental images is the function of the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) ability to dynamically control posterior cortex neurons (Vyshedskiy et al. 2017). Here we have ranked all tests performed on linguistic isolates by their reliance on the LPFC control of the posterior cortex: a) the amount of posterior cortex territory that needs to be recruited by the LPFC and b) the number of disparate objects that have to be combined together by the LPFC in order to answer the test question. According to our analysis, linguistic isolates performed well in all tests that did not involve the LPFC control of the posterior cortex, showed decreasing scores in tests that involved greater recruitment of the posterior cortex by the LPFC, and failed in tests that involved greatest recruitment of posterior cortex necessary for mental synthesis of multiple objects. This pattern is consistent with inadequate frontoposterior connections in linguistic isolates. We discuss implications of these findings for the importance of early syntactic language exposure in formation of frontoposterior connections.

Deficits in comprehending wh-questions in children with hearing loss – the contribution of phonological short-term memory and syntactic complexity

ABSTRACTThe aim of the study is to investigate if German children with hearing loss (HL) display persisting problems in comprehending complex sentences and to find out whether these problems can be linked to limitations in phonological short-term memory (PSTM). A who-question comprehension test (picture pointing) and a nonword repetition (NWR) task were conducted with 21 German children with bilateral sensorineural HL (ages 3–4) and with age-matched 19 normal hearing (NH) children. Follow-up data (ages 6–8) are reported for 10 of the children with HL. The data reveal that the comprehension of who-questions as well as PSTM was significantly more impaired in children with HL than in children with NH. For both groups of participants, there were no correlations between question comprehension scores and performance in the NWR test. Syntactic complexity (subject vs. object question) affected question comprehension in children with HL, however, these problems were overcome at school age. In conclusion, the data indicate that a hearing loss affects the comprehension of complex sentences. The observed problems did, however, not persist and were, therefore, unlikely to be caused by a genuine syntactic deficit. For the tested wh-questions, there is no indication that syntactic comprehension problems of children with HL are due to limitations in PSTM.

Preserved cognitive functions with age are determined by domain-dependent shifts in network responsivity

Healthy ageing has disparate effects on different cognitive domains. The neural basis of these differences, however, is largely unknown. We investigated this question by using Independent Components Analysis to obtain functional brain components from 98 healthy participants aged 23–87 years from the population-based Cam-CAN cohort. Participants performed two cognitive tasks that show age-related decrease (fluid intelligence and object naming) and a syntactic comprehension task that shows age-related preservation. We report that activation of task-positive neural components predicts inter-individual differences in performance in each task across the adult lifespan. Furthermore, only the two tasks that show performance declines with age show age-related decreases in task-positive activation of neural components and decreasing default mode (DM) suppression. Our results suggest that distributed, multi-component brain responsivity supports cognition across the adult lifespan, and the maintenance of this, along with maintained DM deactivation, characterizes successful ageing and may explain differential ageing trajectories across cognitive domains.

Acquisition of who-question comprehension in German children with hearing loss

For children with sensorineural hearing loss the ability to understand wh-questions might be particularly challenging because they often have only restricted access to spoken language input during optimal periods of language acquisition. In previous research it has been suggested that this restricted input during critical stages in language acquisition might lead to syntactic deficits that persist into adolescence. In this study we want to pursue this issue by investigating the comprehension of wh-questions in German children with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. We report results of a who-question comprehension task in a group of 21 3- to 4-year-old German hard-of-hearing children compared to a group of age-matched children with normal hearing. The group data and individual performance patterns suggest that the syntactic comprehension difficulties observed in some, but not all, of the children with hearing loss reflect a delay in the acquisition of who-question comprehension rather than a persistent syntactic deficit. Follow-up data elicited from a subgroup of children confirm this supposition.

Theory of mind and language development in Japanese children with hearing loss

ObjectiveThis study investigates the development of theory of mind (ToM) in Japanese children with hearing loss (HL) and its relationship with language abilities using the data of a large sample size. MethodsParticipants were 369 children with HL, ranging from 4 to 12 years of age. The mean hearing level of the better ear was 100.7 dB. A “change in location”-type false belief task similar to the “Sally-Anne test” was given to the participants. ResultsThe pass rates for the false belief task were in the 20% range for 4 to 6-year-olds, 35.6% for 7-year-olds, 47.6% for 8-year-olds, and 63.6% for 9-year-olds. However, no children, even 12-year-olds, achieved a pass rate of 70%. A logistic regression analysis showed that the significant independent predictors of the false belief task performance were vocabulary age and syntactic comprehension level, and chronological age, hearing level, syntactic production level, and nonverbal intelligence were excluded. ConclusionThe results demonstrate that there is a delay in the development of ToM in Japanese children with HL. This finding is consistent with findings in English-speaking countries. Additionally, it is suggested that language abilities play an important role in the acquisition of ToM for children with HL.

Language comprehension in children, adolescents, and adults with Down syndrome

BackgroundThere is conflicting evidence as to whether receptive language abilities of individuals with Down syndrome (DS) continue to improve into adulthood, reach a plateau in late adolescence, or even start to decline. AimThe study aims to shed light on the question whether receptive syntactic skills change from childhood/adolescence to adulthood and provides a detailed qualitative analysis of the receptive abilities of adults with DS. Methods58 individuals with DS participated in the study: 31 children/adolescents (aged: 4;6–19;0 years) and 27 adults (aged: 20;8–40;3 years). They completed measures of grammar comprehension, nonverbal cognition, and phonological working memory. ResultsThere was no significant correlation between comprehension performance and chronological age in the overall sample. Separate correlational analyses for the subgroups of children/adolescents and adults yielded a significant positive result for the former subgroup but not for the latter. We also found significant positive correlations between grammar comprehension scores and nonverbal mental age as well as measures of phonological working memory. Qualitative analyses showed various limitations in the receptive syntactic abilities of adults with DS. Difficulties increase with sentence length and grammatical complexity, but are also apparent in simple sentences. ConclusionThe results suggest that syntactic comprehension abilities of individuals with DS continue to improve through childhood and adolescence and that thereafter a plateau is reached and maintained. Language comprehension in adults with DS is impaired for a variety of grammatical structures and receptive performance seems to be related to nonverbal cognitive abilities, phonological working memory, and grammatical complexity.

Syntactic comprehension in aphasia. An evaluation test with relative clauses in Spanish

Event Abstract Back to Event Syntactic comprehension in aphasia. An evaluation test with relative clauses in Spanish María E. Sánchez1*, Analí Taboh1, Martin Fuchs2, Juan P. Barreyro3, 4 and Virginia Jaichenco1 1 University of Buenos Aires, Linguistics Institute, Argentina 2 Yale University, Department of Linguistics, United States 3 University of Buenos Aires, Faculty of Psychology, Argentina 4 CONICET, Argentina This work aimed to try out an instrument that can detect the sentences comprehension deficits by manipulating two types of structures with relative clauses (subject and object) in Spanish. We compare the performance between aphasic patients and their controls using a binary sentence–picture matching task. The type of structure was manipulated: El oso que patea al perro es azul [The bear that kicks the dog is blue] (subject relative clause) vs. El oso al que patea el perro es azul [The bear that the dog kicks is blue] (object relative clause). The test was administered to 151 native Spanish speakers, of 3 age groups and 3 different schooling levels, and a group of 5 aphasic patients. The results showed that in the control group there is a strong interaction between the type of sentence and the level of schooling, with more errors in the sentences with a relative object as the level of schooling decreases. Aphasic patients, as a group, did not differ from the lowest schooling groups in subject relative clauses, but did diverge from all groups in object relative clauses. Within the group of patients, we found that three patients (AG, RD and RR) did not differ from their control group in subject relative clauses, but in object relative clauses. Contrary, a patient (OV) differs significantly from their control group in the two structures, that is, it is worse in both object and subject relative clauses (although in the case of object clause, their performance is much worse). Finally, RC patient does not differ significantly in any of the two structures with their control group. The data allow establishing differences between patients with and without syntactic alterations. First, the data allow us to discuss how schooling affects the processing of these two structures in Spanish in subjects without language impairment. In addition, the evidence shows that agrammatic aphasic patients clearly have difficulties to assign the thematic roles to non-canonical structures, and this test is sensitive to detect them. References del Río, D., López-Higes, R., & Martín-Aragoneses, M. T. (2012). Canonical word order and interference-based integration costs during sentence comprehension: The case of Spanish subject and object relative clauses. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65, 2108–2128 Friedmann, N. (2008). Traceless relatives: Agrammatic comprehension of relative clauses with resumptive pronouns. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 21(2), 138-149. Garraffa, M. & Grillo, N. (2008). Canonicity effects as grammatical phenomena. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 21, 177-197. Grodzinsky, Y. (1989). Agrammatic comprehension of relative clauses. Brain and Language, 37, 480–499. Keywords: sentence comprehension, relative clauses, Evaluation, agrammatism, neurolinguistics Conference: Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting , Baltimore, United States, 5 Nov - 7 Nov, 2017. Presentation Type: poster presentation Topic: General Submission Citation: Sánchez ME, Taboh A, Fuchs M, Barreyro JP and Jaichenco V (2019). Syntactic comprehension in aphasia. An evaluation test with relative clauses in Spanish. Conference Abstract: Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting . doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2017.223.00071 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 27 Apr 2017; Published Online: 25 Jan 2019. * Correspondence: PhD. María E Sánchez, University of Buenos Aires, Linguistics Institute, Buenos Aires, Argentina, mariaelinasanchez@yahoo.com.ar Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers María E Sánchez Analí Taboh Martin Fuchs Juan P Barreyro Virginia Jaichenco Google María E Sánchez Analí Taboh Martin Fuchs Juan P Barreyro Virginia Jaichenco Google Scholar María E Sánchez Analí Taboh Martin Fuchs Juan P Barreyro Virginia Jaichenco PubMed María E Sánchez Analí Taboh Martin Fuchs Juan P Barreyro Virginia Jaichenco Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Fluency in the narratives of a bilingual person with non-fluent aphasia and a neurogenic stutter

Fluency in the narratives of a bilingual person with non-fluent aphasia and a neurogenic stutter

Learning and Using Abstract Words: Evidence from Clinical Populations.

It has been shown that abstract concepts are more difficult to process and are acquired later than concrete concepts. We analysed the percentage of concrete words in the narrative lexicon of individuals with Williams Syndrome (WS) as compared to individuals with Down Syndrome (DS) and typically developing (TD) peers. The cognitive profile of WS is characterized by visual-spatial difficulties, while DS presents with predominant impairments in linguistic abilities. We predicted that if linguistic abilities are crucial to the development and use of an abstract vocabulary, DS participants should display a higher concreteness index than both Williams Syndrome and typically developing individuals. Results confirm this prediction, thus supporting the hypothesis of a crucial role of linguistic processes in abstract language acquisition. Correlation analyses suggest that a maturational link exists between the level of abstractness in narrative production and syntactic comprehension.

Are the effects of tDCS in language rehabilitation in primary progressive aphasia specific to the task trained?

Are the effects of tDCS in language rehabilitation in primary progressive aphasia specific to the task trained?

Influence of Lexical versus Procedural Knowledge in Sentence Production in Response to Thematic Role Assignment Treatment

Influence of Lexical versus Procedural Knowledge in Sentence Production in Response to Thematic Role Assignment Treatment

Second language performances in elderly bilinguals and individuals with dementia: The role of L2 immersion

Abstract With the population aging and an increase in the number of senior immigrant citizens in modern societies, public health systems will be increasingly burdened with the need to deal with the care and treatment of bi- or multilingual individuals with cognitive decline and dementia. This raises complex questions such as which language is better preserved in these elderly individuals, particularly for those facing dementias. The main aim of the present investigation was to study in two groups of immigrant populations whether the first language (L1) or the second language (L2) are better preserved. For this purpose, we assessed by means of cognitive and neurolinguistics testing 20 late-bilingual individuals with neurodegenerative dementia of the Alzheimer and mixed type, and compared their results to a matched control group consisting of 19 subjects. Our results suggest that L1 is not better preserved in individuals with dementia. We report a parallel decline of second language across groups, regardless of the presence of dementia, as well as a significant correlation between language immersion and L2 relative performances (r = 0.379, p = 0.03). Moreover our data suggest that individual with dementia may have a relative sparing of syntactic L2 comprehension. These results suggest that these elderly individuals who have lived in a host country for many years, such as the subjects here investigated, may preserve similarly their L2 as much as their L1, irrespectively of the presence or absence of neurodegenerative disease, and even preserve some features of L2 processes in dementia. These results emphasize the role of immersion in language preservation.

Language, cognitive and school outcomes following childhood stroke

Studies on language outcome following childhood stroke are rare. The aims of this study were to study language, cognitive and school outcomes following childhood stroke. We retrospectively reviewed the files of children (1 month–15 years) consecutively admitted to a physical medicine and rehabilitation department following childhood stroke between 1992 and 2015. Age at onset, aetiology, lesion laterality, initial severity, motor and functional impairments upon admission and discharge, language tests, neuropsychological assessment (or developmental age/quotient) and academic outcome were collected. Over the study period, 184 children were hospitalised following ischemic ( n = 79) or hemorrhagic ( n = 105) stroke. Upon admission, after a median time since stroke of 22 days, 89% of the children had motor impairment and 42% were not able to walk. Upon discharge (median 6 months post-stroke), 25% could still not walk independently and 42% could not use their hand. Neuropsychological assessment performed after a median time since stroke of 4 months indicated severe impairment: n = 135 [m (SD)]: full scale IQ 85 (19), verbal IQ 93 (22), performance IQ 85 (20), working memory index 87 (18), processing speed index 79 (18). Language tests performed after a median time since stroke of 3 months also revealed severe impairment ( n = 130). The 4 language skills tested (receptive and expressive, semantic and syntax) were impaired, especially word finding (median SD = –2). Overall, significant impairment was found (scores < –2SD) in 26% of children for lexical extent, 53% for word finding, 38% for syntactic comprehension and 47% for syntactic expression. For 19 children who were under the age of three at assessment, mean developmental quotient was 57 (SD = 23) for the total score and 65 (SD = 24) for the language subscale. Language and verbal IQ were significantly lower ( p < 0.01) in patients with left-hemisphere lesion than in those with right-hemisphere lesions. After a median follow up of 40 months, only 34% of the children were following normal curriculum without adaptations or delay and 28% were attending special education programs. School outcome was highly correlated to language and IQ ( p < 0.0001). Childhood stroke leads to severe language and cognitive impairments, with negative and long lasting consequences on academic achievement.