Verbal Mediation Research Articles

Increased activation in Broca's area after cognitive remediation in schizophrenia

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure changes in cerebral activity in patients with schizophrenia after participation in the Cognitive Remediation Program for Schizophrenia and other related disorders (RECOS). As RECOS therapists make use of problem-solving and verbal mediation techniques, known to be beneficial in the rehabilitation of dysexecutive syndromes, we expected an increased activation of frontal areas after remediation. Executive functioning and cerebral activation during a covert verbal fluency task were measured in eight patients with schizophrenia before (T1) and after (T2) 14 weeks of RECOS therapy. The same measures were recorded in eight patients with schizophrenia who did not participate in RECOS at the same intervals of time (TAU group). Increased activation in Broca's area, as well as improvements in performance of executive/frontal tasks, was observed after cognitive training. Metacognitive techniques of verbalization are hypothesized to be the main factor underlying the brain changes observed in the present study.

Executive function and verbal self-regulation in childhood: Developmental linkages between partially internalized private speech and cognitive flexibility

Recent studies have noted that executive function and the use of self-regulatory private speech are related in childhood, and proposed that the critical leap that occurs in the development of executive function between the ages of three and six years may be due to the onset of language-based self-regulatory functions at this age. This research explored the relationship between executive function and private speech in a cross-sectional study of 81 children between four and seven years of age. The children performed an executive function task, the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS), and children's use of private speech was observed during a categorization task. The results indicated that, after controlling for children's age, gender, verbal abilities, and fluid reasoning, children's use of partially internalized private speech during the categorization task was significantly related to the number of phases successfully passed on the DCCS task, which required them to switch between card sorting rules. Children who used more partially internalized private speech were more likely to pass the most challenging phase of the DCCS task that assesses the ability to flexibly use different sorting rules according to a higher-order rule. We discuss the role of verbal mediation in the development of cognitive flexibility and its implications for the design of intervention programs for children who possess deficits of executive function.

Concurrent and Longitudinal Relationships Between Development in Graphic, Language and Symbolic Play Domains from the Fourth to the Fifth Year

This research investigated the developing inter‐relationships between language, graphic symbolism and symbolic play both concurrently and longitudinally from the fourth to the fifth year of childhood. Sixty children (n = 60) aged between 3 and 4 years completed multiple assessments of language and assessments of graphic symbolism, symbolic play and non‐verbal intelligence. A year later, 31 children (n = 31) were re‐tested using the same assessments. The findings revealed that skills within each symbolic domain were inter‐related during the fourth year, appearing to develop in a domain‐general type fashion based upon a common underlying symbolic mechanism. However, between the fourth and the fifth years, only language had predictive validity, suggesting a shift towards the verbal mediation of symbolic play and graphic symbolism as language becomes progressively internalized (Vygotsky, 1962, 1978). Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Verbal Mediation of Problem Solving in Pre-Primary and Junior Primary School Children

Human ontogeny entails the construction and use of semiotic mediational means to regulate psychological functions intrapersonally and interpersonally. In the Vygotskyan school of thought, speech is regarded as both a mediatory tool and a mediated higher mental function and, as such, is considered central to the development of children's cognition. Grounded in Vygotsky's work on speech as an instrument of thought, this study examined the dynamics of verbal mediation of children's problem solving with specific focus on the use of social, private and inner speech. The study investigated the incidence and semantic composition of speech produced during problem solving and delineated the age related changes of the semantic profile of private speech in relation to social speech and inner speech. A total of 120 children, aged from 5 years, 6 months to 9 years, 5 months, with equal distribution of boys and girls, completed the Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices. The participants within the four age groups were of different ethnic origin but all spoke English as their first language. The results indicated that children relied extensively on all three types of speech and that the semantic content of both social and private speech was primarily task-oriented. Unlike social speech, private speech presented with a dual, cognition-centred and emotions-centred semantic profile, in which complex age-related changes, as shown by a one-way MANCOVA, permeated children's verbal denotations of salient task-related dynamics. Importantly, significations of emotional processes featured consistently in the content composition of private speech and showed a steady age-related occurrence. It was concluded that verbal mediation of children's problem solving is multimodal, multifocal and multidirectional.

Verbal mediation of cognition in children with specific language impairment

Private speech (PS) and inner speech (IS) are thought to be functionally important for children's and adults' cognition, but they have not been studied systematically in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Participants were 21 children with SLI (7-11 years, expressive or receptive verbal IQ ≤ 75, nonverbal IQ ≥ 84) and 21 age- and nonverbal IQ-matched controls. Participants completed three sets of Tower of London problems: one with no dual task (PS condition), one with articulatory suppression, and one while foot tapping (control condition). Participants also completed a digit span task. There was no group difference in the susceptibility of Tower of London performance to articulatory suppression, but the PS of the SLI group was less internalized than that of the controls on both tasks. The findings suggest that children with SLI experience a significant delay in the development of PS/IS, but that their PS/IS is effective for Tower of London performance in middle childhood. Findings are discussed with reference to the interpretation of the nonlinguistic deficits associated with SLI, and in terms of clinical implications.

Language Augmented Prediction

Language Augmented Prediction

Rereading Vygotsky's Theses on Types of Internalization and Verbal Mediation

The Vygotskyan sociocultural approach to human development and cognition marked a new direction in psychology and created new, distinctive avenues for exploring fundamental matters of the mind. The complexity, diversity, and multilayered meaning of Vygotsky's formulations have in the history of psychology triggered scholastic debate, which has focused on the clarification, implications, and extension of the core explanatory constructs of his framework—mediation and internalization. The aim of this review is to offer a contemporary logico-semantic rereading of Vygotsky's formulations of these constructs with an emphasis on speech and, in particular, its dual mediatory role as a primary mediational means and a mediating process. Vygotsky's less renowned, and rather incomplete, propositions on the types of internalization are revived and examined in relation to the ontogenetic formation of speech. In this critical analysis, some ambiguous conceptual links between the notion of internalization types and the transformation of social speech into private speech and inner speech are explicated, debated, and refined. By addressing these conceptual links, the present examination extends the sociocultural account of semiotic mediation. The interpretations proposed highlight the logical cohesion and enhance the comprehensibility of Vygotsky's theoretical stance on human development.

Editorial: Seeking a new characterisation of learning disorders

Editorial: Seeking a new characterisation of learning disorders

Executive function in everyday life: implications for young cochlear implant users

Cochlear implants (CIs) provide significant speech and language benefits to many prelingually deaf children (Geers et al., 2008). However, CIs do not provide optimal benefits to all children who receive them. Identification of pre-implant predictors of CI outcomes is critical to providing appropriate expectations to parents and in decision making regarding intervention, assessment, management, and focused habilitation throughout childhood. A growing body of research findings suggests that deafness and degraded auditory experience may affect not only speech and language skills, but also other neurocognitive functions (Pisoni et al., 2010). We adopt the working hypothesis (supported by recent findings from our center) that many profoundly deaf children who use CIs, especially the low-performing users, may have other neural, cognitive, and affective sequelae resulting from a period of auditory deprivation combined with a delay in language development before implantation. For example, compared to hearing peers, young CI users show differences in short-term and Working Memory capacity and have slower processing speeds for rehearsing and retrieving verbal information (Pisoni et al., 2010). Robust speech perception and spoken language processing are highly dependent on these underlying core neurocognitive building blocks. Executive function (EF) is an umbrella construct from research in neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience representing a complex set of cognitive processes such as organization, planning, working memory, inhibition, and flexibility, involved in the control of thought, action, and emotion (Gioia et al., 2001). There is general agreement among cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists that several different aspects of EF play important roles in language perception and production via top-down feedback and control of processing activities in a wide range of behavioral tasks (Pisoni et al., 2010). In addition, language itself serves an EF because through verbal mediation processes it can be used by the child to exercise control over thoughts, actions, and emotions with self-directed speech (Muller et al., 2009). For these reasons, knowledge of the developmental relations between EF and language processes in children with CIs is critical to understanding not only outcomes proximal to language, but also more distal outcomes such as learning, self-regulation, and social cognition. The two objectives of this study were to identify areas of EF vulnerability in children with CI’s using a behavior rating scale completed by parents, and to determine if these areas of vulnerability are associated with conventional speech and language outcomes.

The organization and dissolution of semantic-conceptual knowledge: Is the ‘amodal hub’ the only plausible model?

In recent years, the anatomical and functional bases of conceptual activity have attracted a growing interest. In particular, Patterson and Lambon-Ralph have proposed the existence, in the anterior parts of the temporal lobes, of a mechanism (the ‘amodal semantic hub’) supporting the interactive activation of semantic representations in all modalities and for all semantic categories.The aim of then present paper is to discuss this model, arguing against the notion of an ‘amodal’ semantic hub, because we maintain, in agreement with the Damasio’s construct of ‘higher-order convergence zone’, that a continuum exists between perceptual information and conceptual representations, whereas the ‘amodal’ account views perceptual informations only as a channel through which abstract semantic knowledge can be activated. According to our model, semantic organization can be better explained by two orthogonal higher-order convergence systems, concerning, on one hand, the right vs. left hemisphere and, on the other hand, the ventral vs. dorsal processing pathways. This model posits that conceptual representations may be mainly based upon perceptual activities in the right hemisphere and upon verbal mediation in the left side of the brain. It also assumes that conceptual knowledge based on the convergence of highly processed visual information with other perceptual data (and mainly concerning living categories) may be bilaterally represented in the anterior parts of the temporal lobes, whereas knowledge based on the integration of visual data with action schemata (namely knowledge of actions, body parts and artefacts) may be more represented in the left fronto-temporo-parietal areas.

Brief Report: Predicting Inner Speech Use Amongst Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): The Roles of Verbal Ability and Cognitive Profile

Studies of inner speech use in ASD have produced conflicting results. Lidstone et al., J Autism Dev Disord (2009) hypothesised that Cognitive Profile (i.e., discrepancy between non-verbal and verbal abilities) is a predictor of inner speech use amongst children with ASD. They suggested other, contradictory results might be explained in terms of the different composition of ASD samples (in terms of Cognitive Profile) in each study. To test this, we conducted a new analysis of Williams et al.'s, J Child Psychol Psychiatry 48(1): 51-58 (2008) data on inner speech use in ASD. This revealed verbal ability predicted inner speech use on a short-term memory task over and above Cognitive Profile, but not vice versa. This suggests multiple factors determine whether children with ASD employ verbal mediation.

Control and interference in task switching—A review.

The task-switching paradigm offers enormous possibilities to study cognitive control as well as task interference. The current review provides an overview of recent research on both topics. First, we review different experimental approaches to task switching, such as comparing mixed-task blocks with single-task blocks, predictable task-switching and task-cuing paradigms, intermittent instructions, and voluntary task selection. In the 2nd part, we discuss findings on preparatory control mechanisms in task switching and theoretical accounts of task preparation. We consider preparation processes in two-stage models, consider preparation as an all-or-none process, address the question of whether preparation is switch-specific, reflect on preparation as interaction of cue encoding and memory retrieval, and discuss the impact of verbal mediation on preparation. In the 3rd part, we turn to interference phenomena in task switching. We consider proactive interference of tasks and inhibition of recently performed tasks indicated by asymmetrical switch costs and n-2 task-repetition costs. We discuss stimulus-based interference as a result of stimulus-based response activation and stimulus-based task activation, and response-based interference because of applying bivalent rather than univalent responses, response repetition effects, and carryover of response selection and execution. In the 4th and final part, we mention possible future research fields.

Rapid Automatized Naming and Immediate Memory Functions in Chinese Mandarin—Speaking Elementary Readers

The purpose of this study was to evaluate rapid automatized naming skills (RAN) and immediate memory processes in 243 Chinese Mandarin—speaking elementary readers (ranging from Grade 1 to Grade 5). For RAN subtests, the mean naming time decreased monotonically with grade level in good and average readers, and a similar trajectory was found in poor readers, even though they were generally slower in rapid naming. Regardless of grouping methods (counting all participants or counting good readers only), RAN Character emerged as a significant predictor of various Chinese reading measures. Different from classical findings in English readers indicating that RAN Number was a better correlate of reading than RAN Object, RAN Object outperformed RAN Number and became a significant predictor of Chinese reading speed and spelling, suggesting that the differences in predictive power of RAN tasks may be language specific. Comparison of memory profiles for good, average, and poor readers revealed that the patterns varied depending on mode of stimulus presentation or response. Poor readers performed poorly on subtests involving a visual component and did relatively better on subtests involving verbal cues only, whereas a reversed pattern was shown in the group of good readers. The findings were interpreted to suggest that good and poor Chinese readers may be essentially different in applying visual strategies and verbal mediation during visual-verbal intra- and intermodal processing, and visual skills appear to be particularly important in reading of Chinese.

Verbal mediation as a treatment strategy for children with non-verbal learning difficulties

Aim The aim of this case study was to investigate the effectiveness of verbal mediation training in children with non-verbal learning difficulties. Methods Two A-B-A single case experimental design studies were conducted. In the intervention phase each child was asked to complete non-verbal construction tasks using verbal mediation. Children also completed a digit span task, as a control measure of overall development. During the training and follow-up phases they completed a jigsaw, as a measure of generalization of training to a related task. Findings: The results suggested that the children improved in their ability to complete non-verbal construction tasks, unrelated to changes in their overall developmental level. Conclusions Findings suggest that verbal mediation training was beneficial for two children with non-verbal learning difficulties but further research, in the form of randomized controlled trials is needed.

Naming and equivalence: Response latencies for emergent relations

In an attempt to distinguish between associative network and verbal mediation accounts of equivalence formation, three experiments were carried out in which conditional stimulus relations were established and response latencies assessed during tests for emergent relations. In Experiment 1, three groups of adults were trained with six three-member classes of visual stimuli, using different kinds of stimuli for each group: readily nameable pictograms, which were “preassociated” (Group 1); equally nameable but “non-associated” pictograms (Group 2); or non-associated “abstract” stimuli, designed to discourage the use of verbal mediators (Group 3). For those trained with pictograms, equal response latencies were observed on all tested relations, viz. trained associations, symmetry, transitivity, and transitivity with symmetry, but for subjects given abstract stimuli response latencies were greater on tests requiring transitivity. In Experiment 2 this result was replicated with methodological refinements, using...

The Sex Specificity of Navigational Strategies in Alzheimer Disease

Alzheimer disease (AD) is associated with navigational impairments that limit functional independence. We have now examined the role of cognitive and perceptual mechanisms in the navigational impairment of AD to test the hypothesis that men and women with AD may focus on different navigational cues. We conducted navigational, neuropsychologic, and psychophysical testing in men and women from 3 groups: older normal controls, patients with mild cognitive impairment, and patients with AD. Men and women showed parallel declines in navigational capacities from the older normal control, to the mild cognitive impairment, to the AD groups with men and women making similar numbers of errors but different types of errors. There were small sex differences in neuropsychologic and psychophysical performance but large sex differences in how those measures related to navigational capacity: men showed strong links between visual motion processing and navigation. Women showed strong links between verbal capacities and navigation. The findings of these cross-sectional comparisons suggest that there may be sex differences in the progressive navigational decline of AD: men and women who are impaired to the same degree may suffer somewhat different patterns of decline with men relying more on visuospatial processing and women relying more on verbal mediation.

Too much to count on: Impaired very small numbers in corticobasal degeneration

Patients with corticobasal degeneration (CBD) have calculation impairments. This study examined whether impaired number knowledge depends on verbal mediation. We focused particularly on knowledge of very small numbers, where there is a precise relationship between a cardinality and its number concept, but little hypothesized role for verbal mediation. We evaluated accuracy and reaction time (RT) for matching dot arrays and Arabic numerals involving smaller (2–4) and larger (5–9) cardinalities in non-aphasic patients with CBD ( n = 16), frontotemporal dementia (FTD; n = 23), and healthy controls ( n = 15). CBD were less accurate and slowed at judging smaller Arabic numeral-dot array stimuli compared to FTD patients and controls. Moreover, only CBD showed longer RTs judging successively larger number-dot array pairs among the smaller cardinalities. Difficulty judging very small numbers is impaired in CBD, suggesting degraded representation of precise number knowledge that does not depend on language functioning.

The effects of implementing a classwide peer tutoring model on social approvals and disapprovals emitted during unstructured free time.

Abstract This study tested a classwide peer tutoring model using rule-governed responding to teach tutors to accurately present learn units during social studies instruction using a multiple baseline across participants with pre and post intervention probes. Three students, aged 8 to 10, in a self-contained 3rd/4th grade CABAS[R] classroom participated in this study to test the effects of peer tutoring on the social interactions of the students during unstructured free time and accurate implementation of learn units during tutoring. The results showed an increase in social approvals and accurate learn unit presentations and a decrease in social after the introduction of rule-governed peer tutoring. Additionally, the results showed a classwide (and individual participant) increase in social approvals and a decrease in social during unstructured free time. Keywords: Classwide peer tutoring, Learn units, Teacher Performance Rate and Accuracy (TPRA). *********** Classwide peer tutoring is an instructional tactic where peers function as each others teachers to teach academic and social behaviors. Each student in a tutor-tutee pair gets an opportunity to function as tutor and tutee. Peer tutoring is easy to implement and permits the efficient application of the teacher's and peer tutor's skills in the process of individualizing instruction and managing students' classroom (Kohler & Greenwood, 1990, p.307). Classwide peer tutoring uses peer-mediated and teacher feedback to increase opportunities to respond by allowing peers to teach each other (Delquadri, Greenwood, Whorton, Carta & Hall, 1986). Tutors are trained to accurately present learn units. Learn units are the foundation of learning and are the initial tactic for most teaching. The learn unit consists of interlocking three-term between teacher and student (Greer, 2002). During peer tutoring learn units consist of at least two three-term for the tutor and one potential three-term contingency for the tutee. The student's potential three-term contingency consists of an antecedent, a behavior and a consequence. The tutor is taught to appropriately present antecedents, record correct and incorrect responses and deliver appropriate consequences. These consequences involve delivering verbal approvals for tutees correct responses and participating in a correction for tutees incorrect responses. No are given for incorrect responses, because disapprovals function as attention for undesirable behavior and interfere with the development of positive classroom practices (Singer-Dudek & Keohane, in press). One method to teach tutors accurate peer tutoring is using rule-governed responding. Rule-governed behavior is behavior that is controlled by verbal rather than nonverbal (Greer, 2002). A term that expands on Skinner's (1957) rule-governed behavior is verbal mediation. Verbal behavior that governs or guides nonverbal behavior in lieu of the natural is an incidence of behavior under the control of verbal mediation ... Individuals performing a series of operations under verbal mediation can perform those operations without having ever experienced the direct contingencies (Greer, 2002, p.353). Studies have shown that rule governed responding increases correct responding (Marsico, 1998; Singer, 2000; Taylor & O'Reilly, 1997). Marsico (1998) implemented rule governed responding with 6 students by giving them scripts that contained the steps to correctly solve long division and multiplication problems. The results showed an increase in the amount of time the student spent working independently without seeking help or stopping for all 6 students. The rates of correct responses also increased across all participants during the intervention phase. To insure accuracy of rule-governed responding, an observer records the tutor's behavior using the Teacher Performance Rate and Accuracy (TPRA) data sheet (Ingham & Greer, 1992). …

Compromised Memory Function in Schizophrenia and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Compromised Memory Function in Schizophrenia and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Critical discourse analysis as an analytic tool in considering selected, prominent features of TRC testimonies

This paper considers a number of salient, characterising features of the verbal mediation process that took place in the TRC hearings on gross human rights violations. This is done with reference to the methodology developed in Discourse Sociolinguistics. It considers how various participants represent a particular event, each taking the perspective from which they experienced it. It notes the differences in verbal choice, and in textual and information structure of (i.a.) a journalist who witnessed this particular instance of public police excess, of a woman involved because her home was at the scene of the confrontation between police and youngsters, of one of the commanding police officers who had been subpoenaed and thus was not a voluntary witness at the hearing, of a doctor who treated patients after the event, of a school teacher who could articulate the particular kind of protest youngsters engaged in at the time, and so on. It also highlights a particular practice of reformulating which appears to be typical of discourses that mediate past atrocities with a view to founding new and improved democratic practices.