Some relationships between skills in word-category recall and factors in adults' aphasia.

It has long been recognized that a basic dimension to the lexical organization of the brain is semantic, and some brain mapping studies have indicated that the brain fields are distinctly different from some grammatical classes. Findings from the present investigation showed consistent relationships between 29 aphasic adults' performances on tasks involving graphic and gestural skills and those involving sequential recall of spoken words from different word categories. Each adult received the Porch Index of Communication Abilities which relies upon the physical manipulation of objects to assess verbal, gestural, and graphic abilities. Scores on a test requiring recall of word strings of nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, or prepositions were used to predict the subscale scores from the Graphic and Gestural factors of the index. Recall scores for verb and preposition were predictive of the aphasic subjects' performances on the Graphic subscale, and noun and preposition scores were predictors of subjects' scores on the Gestural subscale. The results are related to other research showing that verb and preposition skills are predictive of fine motor abilities of children with communication disorders and brain-mapping studies. Some discussion centers on possible overlapping functions of brain activity involving word categories, language, and fine motor skills.

Training profoundly retarded adults to communicate using handguiding.

Four multiply disabled, profoundly retarded young adults received two series of instructional activities designed to teach them to use handguiding to communicate basic needs and intents. All had failed in previous attempts to learn to communicate using augmentative devices and strategies. Caregivers and staff served as partners in communication. Three of the four subjects were successful in learning some basic communication skills using the strategy of having a partner and handguiding as a technique.

Changes in maternal attitudes and perceptions and children's communication skills.

The present investigation had two purposes: (a) to assess significant changes in the attitudes and perceptions of mothers of young children who were enrolled in 15 wk. of individual speech-language therapy and (b) to compare changes in mothers' attitudes and perceptions with university supervisors' ratings of children's over-all communication skills and speech intelligibility. 17 children, ages 2;10 to 5;8, and their mothers were participants. Mothers received speech-language services and counseling from graduate-student clinicians and university clinical supervisors but no special counseling was provided to alter their attitudes and perceptions concerning the intervention process. The typical child in the intervention program received 24 individual speech and language therapy sessions. Mothers and supervisors completed questionnaires before and after the 15-wk. intervention. Neither group was made aware of the purpose of the investigation. Analysis showed a pattern of significant changes in mothers' pre- and postrankings of questionnaire items and significant changes in the total communication and speech intelligibility rankings made by supervisors. Significant relationships were found for changes in attitudes and perceptions of mothers and changes in the children's communication skills. The results bolster the need for use of family-based therapy approaches in intervention programs for young children's communication disorders.

Word skills of children normal and impaired in communication skills and measures of language and speech development.

Results from two related investigations are reported, one using 60 normal language learners, ages 3-5 and one using 34 children with communication disorders, ages 5.4-8.5. Tasks involving the sequential recall of words from five categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions) were given to the subjects in each investigation, thus providing an opportunity to compare group performances. A hierarchy of recall strengths of words from different categories and the organizational pattern of scores was determined for each group. Each group's word category scores were used as independent variables in regression analyses to predict scores from a battery of language tests and a test of phonology. The results were anticipated to be capable of contributing to descriptions of children's mental dictionaries, have implications for word category differences in normal and impaired language learners, and clinical relevance. Comparisons of the word recall accuracy of skills of children from each group revealed that the younger normal Ss had word scores equal to the older language and speech impaired children. However, the hierarchy of word category strengths and the patterns of organization within each group's mental dictionary were essentially the same in both groups. Word category scores predicted language and speech scores in both investigations, but the prediction was stronger in the children having impaired language or speech.

Adults who stutter: responses to cognitive stress.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of speed and cognitive stress on the articulatory coordination abilities of adults who stutter. Cardiovascular (heart rate, systolic blood pressure, and diastolic blood pressure), behavioral (dysfluencies, errors, speech rate, and response latency), and acoustic (word duration, vowel duration, consonant-vowel transition duration/extent, and formant center frequency) measures for nine stutterers and nine nonstutterers were collected during performance of the Stroop Color Word task, a well-established and highly stressful cognitive task. Significant differences were found between the two groups for heart rate, word duration, vowel duration, speech rate, and response latency. In addition, stutterers produced more dysfluencies under speed plus cognitive stress versus speed stress or a self-paced reading task. These findings demonstrate that the presence of cognitive stress resulted in greater temporal disruptions and more dysfluencies for stutterers than for nonstutterers. However, similar spatial impairments were not evident. The potential contributions of the Stroop paradigm to stuttering research as well as the need for further research on autonomic correlates of stuttering are also discussed.

Contributions of the fundamental, resolved harmonics, and unresolved harmonics in tone-phoneme identification.

Researchers describe Mandarin Chinese tone phonemes by their fundamental frequency (Fo) contours. However, tone phonemes are also comprised of higher harmonics that also may cue tone phonemes. We measured identification thresholds of acoustically filtered tone phonemes and found that higher harmonics, including resolved harmonics above the Fo and unresolved harmonics, cued tone phonemes. Resolved harmonics cued tone phonemes at lower intensity levels suggesting they are more practical tone-phoneme cues in everyday speech. The clear implication is that researchers should use the Fo only as a benchmark when describing tone-phoneme contours, recognizing that higher harmonics also cue tone phonemes. These results also help explain why tone-language speakers can identify tone phonemes over a telephone that attenuates selective frequencies, and suggests that hearing-impaired tone-language speakers may still identify tone phonemes when their hearing loss attenuates selective frequencies.

A review and critical analysis of treatment research related to articulation and phonological disorders.

This article contains a summary of aspects of research designs and strategies found in 63 published reports in which the effectiveness of treatment of articulation or phonological disorders was evaluated. These research reports were published in four nationally refereed journals that contained most of the literature published in the decades of the 1970s and 1980s. A total of 91 items were evaluated in each report by two reviewers working independently, including types of research designs, details about subjects, sampling, and types of independent and dependent variables used by researchers. Comparisons were made within each decade and across both decades to identify strengths and limitations. Some significant differences in research designs and variables under investigation occurred between the decades. A critical analysis was performed, and suggestions for changes are discussed.

Approaches to the prediction of language abilities in a sample of children who have developmental delays.

Prediction of the quality of language was explored using planned comparisons of three approaches, one cognitive, one neurodevelopmental, and one a combination of the two. Subjects were 37 children, ages 5-9 years, whose significant developmental delays included language and speech skills. The cognitive predictors were mental age (MA) and IQ from the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. Neurodevelopmental predictors consisted of fine motor skill quotients (MQs) and dichotic speech processing scores. Chronological age (CA) was also evaluated as a predictor. A composite language ability score constituted the dependent variable. Results of regression analyses showed that CA and MQ, and MA and MQ, were nearly equal in their predictive strengths and were substantial predictors of composite language scores. Larger multiple correlations (low .8 range) were found when combinations of MA, IQ, and MQ or CA, IQ, and MQ were used as predictors. Statistical control over the 4-year age range revealed that approximately equal amounts of prediction of language scores were attributable to CA and a combination of MA, IQ, and MQ. Each of the latter variables contributed important amounts of unique variance to the language score prediction. Dichotic ear scores did not relate to cognitive or language scores and were ineffectual as predictors in regression analysis. Results indicated that children of the type studied have language and speech delays that show substantial relationships to their verbal cognitive abilities and MQs, in addition to their CAs.

Unisensory and bisensory processing skills of children having misarticulations and normally speaking peers.

The purpose of this investigation was to test the developmental delay hypothesis as a possible explanation for the existence of misarticulations in 7- and 8-year-old children. To accomplish this, 10 normally speaking children, 10 having mild misarticulations, and 10 children with severe misarticulations were administered unisensory and bisensory processing tasks. Unisensory tasks consisted of oral and manual form discrimination and auditory recall of word strings. Bisensory tasks were combinations of the unisensory ones and were of major interest, because this form of processing has been considered a test of children's CNS maturity. Results showed that children having misarticulations obtained lower scores than children with normal articulation on all bisensory tasks and had larger decrements from unisensory to bisensory tasks than control subjects. On unisensory tasks involving recall of word strings and manual form discrimination, differences were also found in favor of the control subjects. The results supported the hypothesis that delayed CNS development may coexist with misarticulations of 7- and 8-year-old children.

Prediction of fine motor skills of children having language and speech disorders.

Relationships between the fine motor skills and linguistic abilities of 37 developmentally delayed children, ages 5 to 9 yr., were studied using a battery of expressive and receptive language tests, a measure of fine motor performance, a dichotic listening test, and individual intelligence tests. While IQs and MAs were not related to fine motor skills, both expressive and receptive language test scores showed moderate to moderately high correlations, the highest single relationship being the Test for the Auditory Comprehension of Language. In concert with CAs, a dichotic right-ear test score, the Auditory Comprehension Test, predicted fine motor-skill indices substantially; R = .80. Strong relationships appear between linguistic and fine motor skills in an age group not previously investigated and at higher levels than reported in studies of infants and very young children. Dichotic results were abnormal in a majority of the children.

Nonspeech and speech processing skills in patients with aphasia and apraxia of speech.

Nonspeech and speech auditory processing skills as well as internal speech processing skills were assessed among four patients with acquired "pure" apraxia of speech, 10 with acquired aphasia, 10 with aphasia plus apraxia of speech, and 11 neurologically normal adults. Fourteen tasks were administered and performances on 68 variables were examined using both nonparametric and parametric analyses controlling for the effects of advancing age and associated hearing loss. In all cases, the "pure" apractic patients performed as normal subjects. Few differences were noted among the performances of the aphasic and aphasic-apractic subjects. Results led to three major conclusions: (1) apraxia of speech is a disorder distinct from aphasia; (2) aphasic individuals, despite locus of lesion, demonstrate disabilities for processing nonspeech and speech materials presented auditorily and for analytically evaluating speech evoked internally; and (3) aphasic individuals demonstrating similar severity levels of language impairment show similar performance patterns for these types of processing tasks, despite locus of lesion or coexistence of apraxia of speech.

Dichotic verbal processing in Down's syndrome children having qualitatively different speech and language skills.

A dichotic word task was used to contrast the speech-perceptual functioning of two groups of Down's syndrome children having qualitatively different speech and language skills to that of nonretarded subjects. Although the 20 nonretarded subjects showed an average 23% right-ear effect on the task, the average ear effect for 29 Down's syndrome subjects was essentially zero. The pattern of phonemic processing of 15 Down's syndrome subjects having better speech and language resembled that of the nonretarded subjects; however, the pattern of 14 Down's syndrome subjects having poorer speech and language was atypical. Place of articulation and voicing of phonemes appeared frequently to have different affects in the latter group in the determination of which dichotic words were reported. Although the group having better speech and language had slightly higher MAs and IQs than the poorer group, MAs and IQs were not related to ear-preference scores.

Dichotic ear preference in aphasia.

A dichotic listening test, composed at 30 CVC-word pairs, was administered to 20 adults with aphasia and 20 normal adults. The subjects with aphasia were selected for inclusion in one of four experimental groups which differed according to intitial severity of aphasia and time post onset. All experimental subjects were given a diagnostic language test within the first four weeks following aphasia onset and again at the time of dichotic testing. Difference scores provided a quantitative estimate of language improvement. Data analysis revealed a strong left-ear preference (-0.363) for the experimental subjects which differed significantly from a right-ear preference (+0.290) obtained from the normal control subjects. Further, initial severity of aphasia was found to be a significant variable, capable of influencing the magnitude of ear preference. Multiple regression and partial correlational methods revealed significant, positive relationships between the magnitude of ear preference and initial severity of aphasia and between the former and the magnitude of language improvement. Time post aphasia onset was not shown to be a significant variable. The theoretical and potential clinical relevance of the results are discussed.

Dichotic ear preferences of stuttering children and adults.

39 stutterers and 39 normal speakers indicated their ear preferences for dichotically presented words and digits. A single response mode for both dichotic words and digits was selected to study speech perception. Stutterers showed significantly less of the normal right-ear preference for dichotic words and digits than non-stutterers. The proportion of stutterers who failed to demonstrate a right-ear preference for dichotic words was significantly greater than for non-stutterers. 18% of the stutterers and none of the non-stutterers showed reversed or a left-ear preference for dichotic digits. Although non-stuttering children and adults performed alike on the dichotic tasks, the right-ear dichotic-words scores of stuttering children were significantly smaller than those of adult stutterers. The results are related to an early notion that stuttering may be related to mixed dominance and recent evidence showing that large percentages of older stuttering children show spontaneous remission of stuttering.