Defining the Characteristics of Story Production of Autistic Children: A Multilevel Analysis.

Several studies suggest that a valuable tool to examine linguistic skills in communication disorders is offered by procedures of narrative discourse assessment. Following this line of research, we present an exploratory study aimed to investigate storytelling abilities of autistic children to better define the characteristics of their story production. Participants included 41 autistic children and 41 children with typical development aged between 7.02 and 11.03 years matched on age, gender, level of formal education, intelligence quotient, working memory, attention skills, theory of mind, and phonological short-term memory. Narrative production was assessed by analysing the language samples obtained through the "Nest Story" description task. A multilevel analysis including micro- and macro-linguistic variables was adopted for narrative assessment. Group differences emerged on both micro- and macro-linguistic dimensions: autistic children produced narratives with more phonological errors and semantic paraphasias (microlinguistic variables) as well as more errors of global coherence and a fewer number of visible events and inferred events (macrolinguistic variables) than the control group.This study shows that even autistic children with adequate cognitive skills display several limitations in their narrative competence and that such weaknesses affect both micro- and macrolinguistic aspects of story production.

Two dissociable semantic mechanisms predict naming errors and their responsive brain sites in awake surgery. DO80 revisited.

How do we choose words, and what affects the selection of a specific term? Naming tests such as the DO80 are frequently used to assess language function during brain mapping in awake surgery. The present study aimed to explore whether specific semantic errors become more probable under the stimulation of specific brain areas. Moreover, it meant to determine whether specific semantic characteristics of the items may evoke specific types of error. A corpus-based qualitative semantic analysis of the DO80 items, and the emitted naming errors to those items during direct cortical electrostimulation (DCE) revealed that the number of hyperonyms (i.e. 'vehicle' for car') of an item predicted the emission of a synonym ('automobile' for 'car'). This association occurred mainly in frontal tumor patients, which was corroborated by behavior to lesion analyses. In contrast, the emission of co-hyponyms was associated with tumors located in temporal areas. These two behavior-lesion associations thus dissociated, and were also dependent on item semantic characteristics. Co-hyponym errors might generate from the disruption in a temporal semantic-to-lexical process, and the production of synonyms could be the result of an impairment in a frontal lexical-selection mechanism. A hypothesis on the lexical selection mechanisms exerted by the inferior frontal gyrus is proposed. Crucially, the present data suggest the need for more restrictive naming tasks, with items conditioned by tumor location.

Acquired neurogenic foreign accent syndrome after right-hemisphere lesion with left cerebellar diaschisis: A longitudinal study.

Patients affected by acquired neurogenic foreign accent syndrome (ANFAS) start speaking with a new accent that resembles that of a foreign language. ANFAS has been reported following left-hemisphere damage, but it is extremely rare after right-hemisphere damage. We described KKE, a right-hemisphere-damaged patient. His cognitive functions were largely intact and he was not aphasic. Nonetheless, KKE showed a marked foreing accent which was mainly judged as Slavic. Positron emission tomography revealed left cerebellar diaschisis, even if the cerebellum did not appear lesioned, on MRI scans. Remarkably, KKE still showed ANFAS three years after lesion onset. We propose that this very rare variant of ANFAS, after right-hemisphere lesion, can be due to the damage of a complex cerebral network involving supra- and infra-tentorial structures.