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Previous investigations on sentence production in English-speaking individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) have yielded mixed conclusions based on their findings. While some studies found comparable sentence complexity between speakers with TBI and control speakers, others reported more syntactic and lexical errors, reduced sentence complexity, and erroneous word order transpositions in the sentence production of speakers with TBI. These contradictory findings could possibly be due to the use of language measures that were less sensitive to subtle syntactic impairments among speakers with TBI. In this preliminary report, the language samples obtained from 11 Cantonese-speaking participants with mild-moderate TBI in Guangzhou, with a mean age of 37.6 and mean years of education of 10 years, and nine control speakers with a similar age range and education background were analyzed using in-depth linguistic-oriented frameworks adopted from pervious works in Cantonese. The results indicated that the TBI group produced more errors, different varieties of sentence types, and lower syntactic complexity in their sentence production compared with the control group. The findings suggested that the more refined and linguistic-oriented measures used in the present study were more sensitive in identifying the subtle syntactic impairments produced by the participants with TBI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study investigated the grain size of writing units used by children in copying Chinese characters using handwriting measures. In Experiment 1, 31 Grade 1 and 31 Grade 5 children studying in mainstream schools in Hong Kong were invited to copy 36 pseudo-characters on an Android tablet. The pseudo-characters were constructed by combining, in their legal positions, radicals that contain two logographemes. The pseudo-characters contain only high frequency radicals in one condition and only low frequency radicals in the other condition. Linear mixed effect modeling was used to analyze the significance of radical frequency, radical free-standing frequency, and logographeme frequency in predicting the inter-stroke intervals after controlling for inter-stroke distance and gestalt boundaries of radicals and logographemes. The results showed that all three frequency measures significantly predicted Grade 5 children's inter-stroke intervals while only logographeme frequency and radical free-standing frequency significantly predicted Grade 1 children's inter-stroke intervals. This indicated that older children demonstrated the use of both small and large grain size units in writing Chinese characters while younger children showed tendency to use small grain size units with the support of some large grain size units that they know in writing Chinese characters. In Experiment 2, a Grade 3 child with writing difficulties was assessed using the same task. Results showed that he demonstrated the use of only small grain size units in writing. Theoretical and clinical implications were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study investigated the grain size of writing units used by children in copying Chinese characters using handwriting measures. In Experiment 1, 31 Grade 1 and 31 Grade 5 children studying in mainstream schools in Hong Kong were invited to copy 36 pseudo-characters on an Android tablet. The pseudo-characters were constructed by combining, in their legal positions, radicals that contain two logographemes. The pseudo-characters contain only high frequency radicals in one condition and only low frequency radicals in the other condition. Linear mixed effect modeling was used to analyze the significance of radical frequency, radical free-standing frequency, and logographeme frequency in predicting the inter-stroke intervals after controlling for inter-stroke distance and gestalt boundaries of radicals and logographemes. The results showed that all three frequency measures significantly predicted Grade 5 children's inter-stroke intervals while only logographeme frequency and radical free-standing frequency significantly predicted Grade 1 children's inter-stroke intervals. This indicated that older children demonstrated the use of both small and large grain size units in writing Chinese characters while younger children showed tendency to use small grain size units with the support of some large grain size units that they know in writing Chinese characters. In Experiment 2, a Grade 3 child with writing difficulties was assessed using the same task. Results showed that he demonstrated the use of only small grain size units in writing. Theoretical and clinical implications were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Intelligibility in Context Scale (ICS) is a parent report questionnaire for assessing children's speech intelligibility. The original version was developed in English and was based on Environmental Factors identified within the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health-Children and Youth Version (ICF-CY). The ICS has been translated into over 30 languages, including Traditional Chinese (ICS-TC). The aims of the current study were to examine the psychometric properties of the ICS-TC with Cantonese-speaking parent--child dyads and to identify speech measures that were more sensitive to the ICS-TC ratings. A total of 72 Cantonese-speaking preschoolers with ( n = 39) and without speech sound disorders (SSD; n = 33) were recruited. Native Cantonese-speaking parents completed the ICS-TC independently. The measure showed good internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Correlations with speech performance on the Hong Kong Cantonese Articulation Test (HKCAT), and significant difference in ICS-TC mean scores between the two groups provided preliminary support for the validity of ICS-TC and suggested that ICS-TC can differentiate between children with and without SSD with a large effect size of d = 0.74. The optimal cutoff was estimated using Receiver Operative Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, giving a sensitivity of 0.70 and specificity of 0.59. ICS-TC mean scores showed a positive correlation with the percentage of initial consonants correct and negative correlation with frequency of atypical errors, and both were moderate in strength. Given the satisfactory psychometric properties of ICS-TC, it may be a valuable clinical tool for screening Cantonese-speaking preschool children's intelligibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]