Prosodic Boundary Effects on Syntactic Disambiguation in Children With Cochlear Implants.

Purpose: This study investigated prosodic boundary effects on the comprehension of attachment ambiguities in children with cochlear implants (CIs) and normal hearing (NH) and tested the absolute boundary hypothesis and the relative boundary hypothesis. Processing speed was also investigated. Method: Fifteen children with NH and 13 children with CIs (ages 8-12 years) who are monolingual speakers of Brazilian Portuguese participated in a computerized comprehension task with sentences containing prepositional phrase attachment ambiguity and manipulations of prosodic boundaries. Results: Children with NH and children with CIs differed in how they used prosodic forms to disambiguate sentences. Children in both groups provided responses consistent with half of the predictions of the relative boundary hypothesis. The absolute boundary hypothesis did not characterize the syntactic disambiguation of children with CIs. Processing speed was similar in both groups. Conclusions: Children with CIs do not use prosodic information to disambiguate sentences or to facilitate comprehension of unambiguous sentences similarly to children with NH. The results suggest that cross-linguistic differences may interact with syntactic disambiguation. Prosodic contrasts that affect sentence comprehension need to be addressed directly in intervention with children with CIs.

Molecular characterization of quinolone-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae isolates from Brazil.

Despite the rapid spread of antibiotic resistance among gonococci worldwide, limited reports are available from Brazilian locations. In the present study, 25 quinolone-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae (QRNG) strains isolated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, were characterized by phenotypic and molecular methods, including analysis of mutations in the gyrA and parC genes. They represented 16.5% of the N. gonorrhoeae isolates obtained during a survey performed from 2006 to 2010. A trend for increasing resistance to ciprofloxacin was observed in the period investigated. The most prevalent pattern of mutation observed among QRNG isolates, Ser-91 to Phe and Asp-95 to Gly in gyrA and Ser-87 to Arg in parC, was detected in 40% of the isolates exhibiting MICs ranging from 4 to >32 µg/ml. Rare types of mutations were found in the gyrA gene (Gln-102 to His [12%] and Asp-95 to Tyr [4%]) and in the parC gene (Ser-88 to Thr [4%]). The genetic relationship of the QRNG isolates, evaluated by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, suggested that the increase in the frequencies of the QRNG isolates in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, may have arisen as a result of simultaneous spread of two clonal groups. The results also indicate that fluoroquinolones may no longer be used as first line antibiotics for the treatment of gonorrhea in Rio de Janeiro, and that programs for antimicrobial susceptibility surveillance of N. gonorrhoeae should also be implemented in other regions of Brazil.