Search

Assessment of communication skills in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is challenging in an unfamiliar clinical environment due to their limited verbal output and inadequate motivation to communicate. To analyze whether the communication sample recorded at clinic represents the child's competence and performance, this study compared caregiver-child interaction in 24 to 48 months old children with ASD (n = 10, M = 38.2 months) at clinic and home. The 30-minute caregiver-child interaction at clinic and home was video recorded and analyzed for frequency of pragmatic acts (initiations and responses) and duration of joint engagement. Results indicated that children initiated and responded more at home than at clinic, whereas caregivers initiated and responded more at clinic. The study provides evidence that communication profile of children with ASD in multiple environments needs to be considered for obtaining representative and reliable communication sample for child-centered assessment and intervention.

Objective: A cochlear implant (CI) is a management option for congenital severe to profound hearing loss in children with no residual hearing. Cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) have been found to be useful in evaluating the outcome using CIs. The study aimed at assessing the change in CAEPs and auditory perception using the categories of auditory perception (CAP) test with respect to the duration of auditory stimulation using a CI in children who were deaf and received a unilateral CI during childhood before the age of 5 years. Materials and Methods: Prelingually profound hearing-impaired children with normal cochlea who received a unilateral CI during childhood between 12 months and 5 years were recruited for the study. The duration of use of the implant ranged from 1 month to 5 years. Results: We found that with an increased duration of auditory stimulation using CIs, auditory responses matured regarding reduction in P1 latency and increased CAP scores. How long it takes for these children to achieve normal patterns of cortical maturation is a subject of further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on agrammatism, primarily associated with nonfluent aphasias like Broca's aphasia, characterized by omission of function words and inflectional affixes, leading to telegraphic utterances. Topics include hypotheses explaining agrammatism, including phonological deficit, syntactic deficit, and lexical-semantic deficit, and aims to study agrammatic deficits in Malayalam-speaking Broca's aphasics.

The article presents the discussion on aphasia, an acquired language disorder caused by brain damage, affecting both spoken and written language production and comprehension. Topics include explores errors in speech production among aphasics, categorizing them into phonemic and phonetic deficits, and examines the characteristics of Broca's aphasia, including nonfluent speech, paraphasias, agrammatism, and preserved comprehension.

The article focuses on the semantic and syntactic deficits in Malayalam-speaking children with learning disabilities. Topics include the prevalence of speech-language delay among children, long-term consequences of language impairment on school populations, and the comparison of language skills between children with learning disabilities and normal peers.

The article focuses on comparing speech sound production and metaphonological skills in Malayalam-speaking children with learning disabilities to typically developing children. It reveals that despite similar articulation abilities, children with learning disabilities demonstrate significantly poorer metaphonological skills, emphasizing the importance of phonological awareness in academic skill acquisition.

The article focuses on "specific learning disorder," a neurodevelopmental challenge affecting learning and academic skills. It explores diagnostic labels for children facing academic difficulties despite normal intelligence. It emphasizes on the relationship between phonological disorders, cognitive deficits, and metalinguistic skills, crucial for reading and writing.

We report a right handed patient with right middle cerebral artery infarct who recovered from aphasia and has persisting agraphia and alexia. The types of errors that he showed were similar in writing as well as reading, characterized by spelling errors that would preserve the phonological form of the target word. The sparing of language functions other than reading and writing suggests the possibility of different language functions being represented in different lobes or the possibility of differential cerebral reorganization for different functions. The co-occurrence of same type of agraphia and alexia, i.e., lexical type raises the question whether reading and writing share a common neural circuit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Glossectomy can affect tongue mobility and impairment of speech. Aim of the study was to measure speech intelligibility preoperatively and post operatively in patients with T1 and T2 cancers of oral tongue who have undergone wide excision and primary closure. Materials and Methods: Twelve patients with T1 and T2 cancers of the oral tongue treated by wide excision and primary closure between the ages of 50 to 70 years were taken up for the study. Two of the patients were females and 10 of them were males. All of them had Malayalam as their mother tongue. Speech samples were recorded preoperatively (2-3 days before surgery) and four weeks post operatively. Results: The results revealed that though there was a difference between preoperative and postoperative perceptual analysis of both vowels, consonants, words and passage, the differences were significant only for the passage. Conclusion: Patients with T1 and T2 cancers of oral tongue who have undergone wide excision and primary closure showed better intelligibility scores at phoneme level and word level even after surgery and the intelligibility deteriorated at sentence level. This could be due to the failure to meet the demand on the articulators to move faster for the continuous flow of speech at sentence level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study reveals the case report of a 39 year old man with intracerebral hemorrhage in the left temporal lobe. He is a bilingual anomic aphasic patient with Malayalam as mother tongue and English as second language. There was a discrepancy in the scores between the tasks of automatic writing vs word retrieval writing in Malayalam and English. Lexical interference (borrowing of entire word from Malayalam) was found while writing English words in the subtest of written word retrieval of function words (grammatical words). Deficits in writing in the two different languages, i.e., English and Malayalam were definitely different. The scores for the subtest of written word retrieval of function words (grammatical words) was better for English language whereas the scores were better in Malayalam for other writing tasks associated with semantics. This difference in scores raises the question whether deficits can differ between syntax and semantics in different languages. Comparison need to be done in future research studies regarding the performance on oral production across languages so that a better understanding will be available whether the difference in the script is accountable to the difference in the scores or the language as such. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study reveals the writing errors in a bilingual Wernickes aphasic with Malayalam as mother tongue and English as second language. The phoneme grapheme conversion route was nonfunctional in both L1 and L2 as indicated by poor scores for writing to dictation as well as on the subtest of sight spelling (the examiner will dictate the word first and then shows the word in which few letters will be missing. Subject has to write the word by filling the missing letters) for nonwords. The good scores obtained on sight spelling for irregular as well as regular words shows that the patient had access to stored whole word orthographic representation in the lexicon, L1 showing better scores than L2. It is suggested that the intact route, i.e., lexical route may be used for training these patients for retrieving words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study reveals the details of a pair of identical twins with idioglossia and Language Learning disability .The children were evaluated by a multidisciplinary team consisting of an Otorhinolaryngologist, Neurologist, Audiologist, Speech Language Pathologist and Psychologist. Both children showed idioglossia, a history of delayed speech and language milestones, misarticulations and dysgraphia. There was an association between their misarticulations and the spelling errors. It is suggested that oral production is essential for later writing skills to develop. Both the children had exceptionally good skills in Mathematics. Early identification and intervention of twins with language delay is crucial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an abstract of the study entitled "Diversities in the Speech and Language Skills Among Children With Developmental Gerstmann's Syndrome: A Subgroup of Learning Disability," by Swapna Sebastian and Shyamala Chengappa.