Search

Theory of mind (ToM) is crucial for social interactions. Previous research has indicated that deaf and hard-of-hearing children born into hearing families (DoH) are at risk of delayed ToM development. However, it is unclear whether this is the case for DoH children who receive cochlear implants (CIs) before and around the second year of life. The present study aimed to investigate false belief understanding (FBU) in DoH children with CIs. The relationships between false belief task (FBT) performance, sentence comprehension, age at implantation, duration of CI use, and Speech Recognition Threshold were explored. A total of 94 children with typical levels of hearing (TH) and 45 DoH children (age range: 3–8), who received their first CI between 6 and 27 months of age, were tested on the FBT and a sentence comprehension test. Results showed that 4- and 5-year-old children with CIs performed significantly worse than their peers with TH on the FBT; 6- to 8-year-old children with CIs performed similarly to age-matched children with TH. Age at implantation and duration of CI use were correlated with sentence comprehension but not with the FBT. The results indicated that FBU was delayed until the age of 6 years in most of children with CIs.

Background: The cochlear implant (CI) is one of the most important recent technological advances in healthcare. Even with this new technology, participants continue to have complaints regarding the performance of the CI. Auditory training is a procedure that provides the individual with performance improvements in auditory skills. One possible auditory training is music therapy. Objective: To verify the influence of music therapy on spoken language comprehension in participants who are post-lingual users of cochlear implants. Design and setting: The current research is a cross-sectional study. It was carried out in a university public institution, with a tertiary healthcare ranking. Method: Nine post-lingual implanted individuals participated in this study (average age: 52 years). These individuals had ten music therapy sessions, conducted once a week. The sentence comprehension test was used for hearing evaluation. All participants underwent a homework moment before the music therapy, and they were evaluated at three different times. Results: We observed significant improvement in understanding spoken sentences after music therapy. Conclusion: Music therapy was a useful tool for improving auditory and speech comprehension skills in post-lingual users of cochlear implants.

Objetivo: Analisar a performance de crianças com desenvolvimento típico de linguagem, em tarefas de produção e de compreensão de orações relativas comparando com o desempenho escolar. Métodos: Fizeram parte deste estudo 30 crianças, com idades entre 4:0 e 8:11 (anos:meses). Foi realizada avaliação fonológica da criança (AFC), exame articulatório, teste de compreensão de orações relativas, teste de produção de orações relativas, avaliação da linguagem oral e triagem auditiva. Para análise do desempenho escolar, foi dada uma escala de 1 a 5 para a professora responsável pela criança. Após, foram selecionadas as crianças dentro dos critérios de inclusão e divididas por desempenho escolar. Os resultados foram analisados estatisticamente, realizando a comparação entre o desempenho escolar e a compreensão de orações relativas, e entre o desempenho escolar e a produção das orações relativas. Resultados: Na comparação entre o desempenho escolar e o teste de compreensão, houve diferença estatística, indicando que quanto melhor o desempenho escolar, melhor o desempenho no teste de compreensão de orações relativas. Na comparação do desempenho escolar com o teste de produção, não houve diferença estatística significativa. Conclusão: O desempenho escolar interfere na compreensão das orações relativas, pois, quanto melhor o desempenho escolar melhor será a performance das crianças no teste de compreensão de orações relativas. Quanto à produção, o desempenho escolar não interfere.

Purpose: The International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health can be utilized to measure individual health. Although ‘activity’ is one of the components of health, no studies have investigated the frequency of participation of the elderly in daily communication activities, such as talking, reading, and writing. We examined the daily communication behaviors of normal elderly subjects and their effects on cognitive and language test performance. Methods: Normal elderly subjects (n = 456) over 60 years old completed a questionnaire on how often they thought that they talked/read/wrote in their daily lives. Also, they were administered the Korean Mini-Mental State Examination, Controlled Oral Word Association Test, Short Form of the Korean version-the Boston Naming Test, and Sentence Comprehension Test. Results: About 50% of the participants reported that they seldom talked, read, and/or wrote daily. The more frequently that the participants reported daily talking, reading and writing, the better they performed on cognitive and/or language tests. Daily writing influenced the test results the most, which suggested that writing behavior was closely related to all four cognitive/ language tests. Conclusion: These results suggested that daily active communication behaviors play major roles in the cognitive and language abilities of the elderly.

Highlights • Children between 5 and 8 years performed a sentence comprehension task. • Their structural images were analyzed using voxel-based morphometry. • Gray matter in inferior temporal and frontal areas predicts thematic role assignment. • Left temporo-parietal area's gray matter predicts working memory-related performance., Prior structural imaging studies found initial evidence for the link between structural gray matter changes and the development of language performance in children. However, previous studies generally only focused on sentence comprehension. Therefore, little is known about the relationship between structural properties of brain regions relevant to sentence processing and more specific cognitive abilities underlying complex sentence comprehension. In this study, whole-brain magnetic resonance images from 59 children between 5 and 8 years were assessed. Scores on a standardized sentence comprehension test determined grammatical proficiency of our participants. A confirmatory factory analysis corroborated a grammar-relevant and a verbal working memory-relevant factor underlying the measured performance. Voxel-based morphometry of gray matter revealed that while children's ability to assign thematic roles is positively correlated with gray matter probability (GMP) in the left inferior temporal gyrus and the left inferior frontal gyrus, verbal working memory-related performance is positively correlated with GMP in the left parietal operculum extending into the posterior superior temporal gyrus. Since these areas are known to be differentially engaged in adults’ complex sentence processing, our data suggest a specific correspondence between children's GMP in language-relevant brain regions and differential cognitive abilities that guide their sentence comprehension.

This study was designed to determine the clinical significance of the auditory sentence comprehension in evaluating aphasic patients. The Sentence Comprehension Test(SCT)(Kamei, 1986) provided an examination of auditory comprehension for sentence material. The task employed in SCT was a sentence-picture matching task. The variables in the sentence material were active-passive formation, plausibility in sentence meaning, and word ordering in noun phrases. SCT was useful to evaluate the syntactic processing deficit by aphasic patients.

就学前の5歳児の統語的知識を含んだ文理解能力を測定するために, 文を口頭で提示し, それに対して口頭で質問する聴覚性文理解テストを作成した.このテストを32名の小児に行った結果, 得点が典型的な正規分布を示し, 文理解能力の測定ができそうであることがわかった.また, パス解析の結果, 聴覚性文理解テストは, 豊富な語彙知識と, 単語をたくさん覚えておくという2つの側面を兼ね備えた複合的な能力を測定していると考えられる.興味深いことに, 仮名の読みの得点が高くても, 聴覚性文理解がそれに比べて低い場合と, その逆に, 聴覚性文理解が高得点であっても, 仮名がほとんど読めない小児もいた.聴覚性文理解テストは, 仮名の読みに求められる能力とは異なる側面の言語能力を測定している可能性が強い.

In this article I present the results of a comparison between six Dutch agrammatic aphasics and six Wernicke's aphasies on a sentence comprehension test and a sentence ordering test. One aim was to establish whether the Wernicke's aphasies suffer from a syntactic disorder, and whether this disorder resembles the syntactic disorder of agrammatics. A second aim was to see whether the problems observed in production are similar to the problems observed in comprehension and vice versa. The results show that Wernicke's aphasies suffer from a syntactic impairment, although the impairment differs from that in agrammatics. Specifically, agrammatics seem impaired in their ability to construct adequate syntactic representations, whereas Wernicke's aphasies seem to have an impairment in the syntactic information of the verbs. Finally, in agrammatism, it seems that only argument movement is problematic in both production and comprehension, while for the Wernicke's aphasies there is also a problem with verb movement in comprehension.

The purpose of the study was to assess comprehension capacities in brain-damaged aphasics. Eighteen aphasic patients following left hemisphere lesions (five Broca's, five Wernicke's, five anomic, and three conduction), three aphasic patients following right hemisphere lesions, and ten normal controls were given a sentence comprehension test. The task employed in this test was a sentence-picture matching task. The variables in the sentence material were activepassive formation, plausibility in sentence meaning, and word ordering in noun phrases. Conduction aphasics demonstrated the best test performance, followed by anomic, Broca's and Wernicke's, but there were no significant differences between Broca's and Wernicke's. Conduction aphasics made significantly fewer syntactic and semantic errors than each of the other groups. Broca's aphasics made significantly more syntactic errors than each of the other groups. Right-hemisphere damaged aphasics demonstrated the characteristic test performance. These results were relevant to the hypothesis that the linguistic impairment in Broca's aphasics was limited to a syntactic processing deficit.

Clinical work with language disorders requires tests which are based on linguistic theory. Such tests are needed not only that can provide estimates of language levels and aspects but also that can predict units of achievement in linguistic competence. In this study, some syntactic and semantic factors in sentence comprehension were discussed and the sentence comprehension test was designed to deal with development of comprehension of active and passive sentences. Six language retarded children were selected as subject, using this test. The results indicated that this test can provide valid and reliable information for the sentence comprehension of language retarded children, and that patterns of dissolution are characteristic for levels of language disorders.

Thirty-six 3- and 4-year-old children were given a battery of six metalinguistic tasks and two measures of language development: the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and a sentence comprehension test. The results clearly showed that the majority of preschoolers were able to make at least some metalinguistic judgments, and that metalinguistic performance improved with age. Furthermore, overall performance on the metalinguistic tasks was significantly correlated with each language measure when the effects of age were partialed out. In contrast, the correlation between age and metalinguistic performance was not significant once the effects of both language measures were partialed out. These data demonstrate that preschoolers' metalinguistic abilities are more extensive than has been previously acknowledged, and that they are closely tied to other aspects of language development at this time.

A sentence comprehension test was performed to study the influence of context and syntactic structure on auditory sentence comprehension in aphasics. The subjects were 30 aphasics and 15 persons with no brain damage. The aphasics were divided into 6 groups according to clinical type (fluent/non-fluent) and total test score (low/medium/high). After the presentation of stories, a sentence comprehension test was given which consisted of 60 sentences varying in parameters of context (consistent/inconsistent with the presented stories) and syntactic structure (active/pas-sive). Results were as follows. 1) In non-brain-damaged subjects, both parameters had no influence, all sentences being equally easy to comprehend. 2) In aphasics, both parameters exerted significant influence on comprehension difficulty. a) Inconsistent sentences were more difficult to comprehend than consistent sentences ; this tendecy proved more marked in aphasics with lower scores. b) Passive sentences were more difficult to comprehend than active sentences.

The revised edition of the Sentence Comprehension Test is described. Details are presented concerning the test's reliability and validity. Comparison data on samples of children aged three to five years are reported.

Differences between elderly and young adults in storage organization of sentence material were investigated using a modification of Mandler's (1967) sorting technique. The elderly were expected to be relatively poorer at sorting organization, and would then recall less sentence material. The age groups were also compared on time taken to organize the sentences, recall organization, and performance on a short sentence comprehension test. There were no age differences in conceptual type of organization or clustering of sentences in sorting groups and recall storage organization was not related to the amount of recall. The elderly adults did require more time to acquire the sentences, and had lower recognition test scores. It was concluded that the sorting technique and measures related to it failed to detect the elderly adults' apparent difficulty in acquiring the sentences.

A 36-item-version of the Token Test is described and normative data obtained from its administration to 215 normal subjects are given. Years of schooling (but not age) were found to significantly affect the performance. The scores were corrected for this factor and the lower limit of the 90% tolerance interval around the mean of the adjusted scores was determined: it was found to correspond to 29 and left below it exactly 5% of the normal sample. The test was given to 200 aphasic patients. Fourteen (7%) were found to have an adjusted score of 29 or more, namely would have been classified as non-aphasic. This is a percentage remarkably smaller than that (40%) obtained with a 10 sentence comprehension test, which supports previous studies pointing to the sensitivity of the Token Test to the presence of oral language disorders. On the basis of the aphasic patients' performance, cutting scores allowing evaluation of the severity of the comprehension deficit are provided. The 36-item-version of the test appears to be an useful and convenient device to diagnose aphasic impairment of language comprehension.

The error patterns of normal and aphasic adults on a sentence comprehension test were studied. For position of error, both normals and the three aphasic groups performed consistently with the expected error distribution. Neither sentence half was experienced as more difficult to process. All groups, both aphasic and normal, demonstrated error patterns for grammatical class and for surface structure linguistic constituent which were consistent with the expected error distributions. Exceptions were noted for the normals on the verb class and for the Wernicke's aphasics on the NP and VP linguistic constituents. Rank orderings of error proportions were similar across groups for both grammatical form class and linguistic constituent. The general findings lend support to the notion that, for auditory comprehension of sentences, aphasic patients differ quantitatively from normal adult speakers, but behave qualitatively similar to them.

SUMMARY. Thirty-nine normal pre-school and 48 older ESN(S) children of similar vocabulary age were tested on a sentence comprehension test under three different presentation conditions. The test requires the child to demonstrate his comprehension of spoken sentences by pointing appropriately to one of three or four alternative visual referents. In the first condition the pictures were presented prior to the stimulus sentence, in the second the pictures and sentence were presented simultaneously, and in the third the sentence was presented prior to the pictures. Presentation conditions did not affect performance significantly for normal children, but that of ESN(S) children was adversely affected by the condition in which sentences were presented prior to pictures.

Partially hearing, deaf, and hearing children's ability to say, write, and comprehend the same sentences, from the Sentence Comprehension Test (1979), were compared. It was hypothesized that writing sentences would be more difficult than saying the same sentences in all of the three groups. It was further hypothesized that the partially hearing would form an intermediate group between the hearing and deaf. The partially hearing made more errors in both the spoken and written conditions than the hearing who were 2 years younger. The number of phonetic and visual spelling errors made by the three groups were compared.

Eighteen divers were tested four times under water, twice at a depth of 5 ft and twice at 100 ft. They performed three tests—digit copying, a sentence comprehension test and a manual dexterity test. All three showed a significant drop in efficiency at depth. This was small for digit copying (7-9 per cent) and manual dexterity (3 5 per cent), and somewhat larger for sentence comprehension (15-3 per cent). In all three cases the drop in efficiency was approximately the same as found at the equivalent pressure in a dry pressure chamber. This contrasts with previous results where impairment in the open sea has been considerably greater than in a dry chamber. Possible reasons for this discrepancy are discussed and it is suggested that level of anxiety may be a crucial factor.

The Miller-Isard hypothesis that people attempt to process multiply self-embedded sentences as recursively interrupted sub-routines was critically examined. Results of a sentence comprehension test showed that Ss perceive such sentences as ungrammatical approximations to sentences with one embedding rather than as multiply embedded structures. The Miller-Isard hypothesis appeared irrelevant to the actual processing performance of the naive Ss.