Revista de Logopedia, Foniatria y Audiologia最新文献

Parkinson's disease is a multisystem neurodegenerative disorder that affects voluntary movement control and cognition due dopamine dysfunction at basal ganglia. It has been associated to language impairment in different degrees. This would explain, from a psycholinguistic perspective, the underlying processes of language. This article shows the main theoretical assumptions on the effect of Parkinson's disease on the processing of phonological and semantic information in the lexical access. The review includes the main findings of the studies that have addressed, directly or indirectly, the difficulties associated to phonological processing, on the one hand, and semantic processing, on the other one. The results of the main studies advocate for an impaired phonological and semantic processing as a consequence of the disease, though the causes for such deterioration are not very clear.

Background and objectives

The effects that the COVID-19 pandemic may have had on the language development of children are still poorly understood. In this study, we examine the effect of the pandemic on this development by analyzing the vocabulary and the morphosyntactic level in a sample of toddlers.

Participants and method

One hundred and fifty-three boys and girls between 18 and 31 months of age participated in the study. Of these participants, 82 were born and evaluated before the pandemic (PRE group) and the other 71 were born during the pandemic and were evaluated at the end of the 2021/2022 academic year, the last academic year in which restrictive measures derived from the pandemic were maintained in the schools (POST group). Both groups were matched by age and mother's educational level and attended nursery schools with similar socioeconomic characteristics.

Results

We found lower scores both in vocabulary and morphosyntactic development in the POST group than in the PRE group. These findings are consistent with the scarce previous studies on children's language development during the pandemic.

Conclusions

The measures adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic have had a negative impact on the language development of children under 3 years of age. It is necessary to pay special attention to these children due to the needs they may require in the immediate future.

Objective

To check the predictive efficacy of subsequent reading difficulties of the Test for the early detection of difficulties in learning to read and write and the Battery for initiation to reading (BIL 3-6).

Method

Both instruments were applied to students in the 2nd year of Preschool (107 participants for the Early Detection Test and 209 for the BIL 3-6), and 2 years later their reading was evaluated by reading Words and Pseudowords of the Prolec-R and Text IB of the TALE. An assessment of the participants’ learning was also obtained from the teachers.

Results

The sensitivity (S) and specificity (E) of both instruments were calculated based on the groupings of the students based on the results in the 3 reading tasks: good and poor readers from pc 16. Neither of the two instruments examined reach appropriate values of S and E. If an appropriate value of S is taken a priori to ensure that students at risk of difficulties are identified, then the E is very low, and therefore the number of false positives makes it impossible successful educational decisions. The general assessment of the teaching staff on the learning of each participant shows a similar predictive capacity as both instruments.

The current study analyses short Basque CDI questionnaires’ accuracy to measure the effect of the amount of exposure to the language on bilingual children's vocabulary size. Additionally, it compares the predictive ability of three variables related to the amount of exposure: relative input, language of parental communication and parents’ linguistic profile. Data of 2098 children (8–49 months) obtained with the short versions of the Basque CDI (CDI-1vb, CDI-2vb and CDI-3v) revealed (a) these three instruments’ sensibility to measure the effect of language exposure on children's expressive vocabulary, (b) a very similar effect size for the three variables, and (c) an increase in effect size with age: no effect at the age of 8–15 months, small at 16–29 months and large at the age of 30–49 months. Data suggests that parents’ linguistic profile and language of inter-parental communication are indicators equally suitable of preschool children's exposure to the language, or even more so, than input, and leads the authors to claim the inclusion of those factors in the assessment of young children's lexical development, especially in minority languages.

Introduction

This research aims to implement and validate a Praat script for computing four quantitative metrics of diadochokinetic rate in digital speech samples. Notably, the script computes the average number of syllables per second, the coefficient of variability of the average number of syllables per second, average syllable length, and the coefficient of variability of average syllable length in diadochokinetic sequences.

Methods

To do this, a Praat script was written and implemented to segment the syllables of diadochokinetic sequences and to calculate and deliver the four metrics above.

Once the script had been implemented, and to validate the code, the results obtained for the four metrics from a sample of 30 speakers were compared with two sets of results from the same 30 speakers obtained from two different methods: (a) a single human non-automated analysis and calculation; (b) an automated analysis and calculation from a commercially available program.

Results and conclusion

The validation process results did not reveal any significant differences in the performance of the three methods, which ratifies the validity of the script presented in this work.

Prematurity has a high incidence rate in developed countries, accounting for 75% of perinatal mortality. Although pre- and perinatal advances in recent decades have reduced its prevalence, consequently, the presence of morbidities and comorbidities in the development of these infants has become evident.

The purpose of this prospective and longitudinal research is to analyze the language components (morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics) of 29 minors, born extremely premature, at the Hospital Universitario La Paz in Madrid and who are currently of compulsory school age, in order to identify the presence of possible language difficulties. All the participants were enrolled in Primary Education and the language components were assessed using the BLOC-Screening battery.

The results show that there are comorbidities in the morphological component in the following elements: irregular forms of the past, irregular forms of the future, reflexive…; in the semantic component (locatives, quantifiers, modifiers of time and succession…) and in syntax (passive voice, comparative clauses, subordinate clauses of cause and condition, and in the temporal ones [after/before]…), obtaining better results in the pragmatic component, except in those actions that require expressing demands and requesting specific information.

Therefore, the profile obtained in the language of extremely premature infants suggests the need for speech therapy intervention and entails the need to make proposals for educational intervention at school that improve their language skills from a communicative approach.

Reading problems appear to be common in developmental language disorder (DLD). The objective of this review is to synthesize the research on reading in Spanish speakers with DLD. A search was carried out in databases and references of key works, selecting studies with a control group. When possible, a meta-analysis of the data found was carried out. The reading level of the groups with DLD was significantly lower than that of the groups of similar age with typical language development (ES = -1.51). The differences were seen in comprehension, fluency and accuracy. Among the intervention studies there was only one with an equivalent control group. Spanish-speaking students with DLD show a reading level lower than usual for their age. Lacks are detected in research in this field, especially in intervention to improve reading.

Background

Gestures are linked to developmental and neurological development. Cerebroplacental ratio (CPR) has proven to be a good predictor of neurological damage within the growth-restricted fetuses’ population. However, its usefulness in the general population has not been studied for this purpose. The aim of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of CPR as a predictor of gesture acquisition.

Method

A prospective cohort of 35 singleton pregnancies with normally grown fetuses was recruited. Doppler indices for the umbilical artery (UA), middle cerebral artery (MCA) and cerebroplacental ratio (CPR) at 36–40 weeks of gestation were recorded. MacArthur-Bates I Communication Skills Development Questionnaires (SCDI) at 12 (±1) months of age were applied. Based on their gesture performance, they were divided into Normal Scores (NS), and Low Scores (LS).

Results

The independent samples t-test analysis revealed a significant difference between the NS group and LS in terms of CPRz scores (t = 2.706, p = .011). CPR z-scores values showed a positive correlation with early gesture centiles (R² = 0.145, p = .029) and late gesture centiles (R² = 0.178, p = .014).

Conclusion

CPR within the last weeks of pregnancy could be of potential utility to predict gesture acquisition.