Assessing Language in Unstructured Conversation in People With Aphasia: Methods, Psychometric Integrity, Normative Data, and Comparison to a Structured Narrative Task

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Marion C. Leaman ◽  
Lisa A. Edmonds
Keyword(s):  
Language Production ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Minimal Detectable Change ◽  
Percent Correct ◽  
Global Coherence ◽  
Literature Base ◽  
Communicative Success ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Purpose This study evaluated interrater reliability (IRR) and test–retest stability (TRTS) of seven linguistic measures (percent correct information units, relevance, subject–verb–[object], complete utterance, grammaticality, referential cohesion, global coherence), and communicative success in unstructured conversation and in a story narrative monologue (SNM) in persons with aphasia (PWAs) and matched participants without aphasia (M-PWoAs). Furthermore, the relationship of language in unstructured conversation and SNM was investigated for these measures. Methods Twenty PWAs and 20 M-PWoAs participated in two unstructured conversations on different days with different speech-language pathologists trained as social conversation partners. An 8- to 12-min segment of each conversation was analyzed. Additionally, a wordless picture book was used to elicit an SNM sample at each visit. Correlational analyses were conducted to address the primary research questions. Normative range and minimal detectable change data were also calculated for the measures in both conditions. Results IRR and TRTS were moderate to good for parametric measures and moderate to excellent for nonparametric measures for both groups, except for TRTS for referential cohesion for the PWAs in conversation. Furthermore, in PWAs, a strong correlation was demonstrated for three of eight measures across conditions. Moderate or weaker correlations were demonstrated for three of eight measures, and correlations for two of eight measures were not significant. An ancillary finding was no significant differences occurred for sample-to-sample variability between the two conditions for any measure. Conclusions This study replicates previous research demonstrating the feasibility to reliably measure language in unstructured conversation in PWAs. Furthermore, this study provides preliminary evidence that language production varies for some measures between unstructured conversation and SNM, contributing to a literature base that demonstrates language variation between different types of monologue. Thus, these findings suggest that inclusion of the specific types of discourse of interest to the PWA may be important for comprehensive assessment of aphasia. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.16569360

How to check understanding across languages. An introduction into the Pragmatic Index of Language Distance (PILaD) usable to measure mutual understanding in receptive multilingualism, illustrated by conversations in Russian, Ukrainian and Polish

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jochen Rehbein ◽  
Olena Romaniuk
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Data Base ◽  
Digital Camera ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Pragmatic Theory ◽  
Multilingual Communication ◽  
Communicative Success ◽  
Data Program ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe paper proposes, under the roof-concept of a method abbreviated PILaD, a combination of quantitative and qualitative procedures aiming to clarify the relationship of ``closely related languages'' (Voegelin and Harris 1951). The method is based on the functional-pragmatic theory of `Communicative Apparatus', a cross-linguistically operating interactive structure, which is modified by Lingua Receptiva communication. The data consist of 4 Russian-Ukrainian, 4 Polish-Ukrainian and 4 Polish-Russian conversations which were recorded with a digital camera and transcribed in a HIAT transcription format under the multiparty data program EXMARaLDA. Cases of `problematic understanding' defined in terms of problematic utterances are related to the total number of utterances in a discourse. The communicative success is compared across the three language constellations and refined down to every participant. Statistical analysis gives an overall picture of how receptive multilingualism works in the three language constellations. The findings reveal that receptive multilingual communication between Polish, Russian and Ukrainian interactants is generally successful, yet, not symmetric, but depends itself on the direction of intelligibility. A summary of the PILaD method and the data base are attached.

Cognitive precursors of receptive vs. expressive language

1982 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Smolak
Keyword(s):  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Expressive Language ◽  
Object Permanence ◽  
Verbal Interaction ◽  
Comprehension Development ◽  
Cognitive Precursors ◽  
Expressive Language Development ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTAlthough cognitive precursors of language production have received considerable attention, the relationship of cognitive development to language comprehension development remains unexplored. In the present research, the relationship of object permanence and classification skills to receptive, as well as expressive, language development was investigated in infants between 0; 9 and 1; 3. Results indicated that object permanence, classification, and parent–child verbal interaction ratings were about equally related to language comprehension functioning. No prerequisite stage of object permanence functioning could be discerned. On the other hand, object permanence was more strongly related to language production than were classification and verbal interaction. Furthermore, it appeared that a minimum of Stage 5 object permanence functioning was necessary prior to the onset of language production.

scholarly journals The relationship between sensory reactivity differences and mental health symptoms in children with neurodevelopmental conditions and their neurotypical peers

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Rossow ◽  
Elysa J Marco ◽  
Molly Gerdes ◽  
Teresa Tavassoli
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Mental Health Symptom ◽  
Mental Health Symptoms ◽  
Health Symptoms ◽  
Sensory Reactivity ◽  
Health Assessments ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Background: Children with neurodevelopmental conditions (NDC) often have sensory reactivity differences, such as being overwhelmed by sounds, which can elicit distress in their everyday life. Furthermore, children with an NDC often present with a greater frequency of mental health symptoms compared to their typically developing peers. However little research has examined the relationship of these sensory reactivity differences on broader mental health. Aims: This study set out to explore the relationship between sensory reactivity and mental health symptoms. Methods: Data from parent-reported measures of sensory reactivity and mental health symptoms were collected for 49 children presenting with a neurodevelopmental condition and 42 typically developing (TD) controls. Procedures: Partial correlational analyses, controlling for IQ, were used to elucidate the relationship between sensory reactivity and mental health symptoms. Results: Children with an NDC were significantly more likely to present with a sensory reactivity difference or mental health symptom. Sensory seeking was found to be the sensory subtype most related to mental health symptoms, especially in externalising conditions. There was evidence also found for a relationship between depression, sensory seeking and sensory hypo-reactivity, and GAD and hyper-reactivity. Conclusions: Findings suggest a relationship between sensory reactivity and mental health symptoms in children with a neurodevelopmental condition. There is also preliminary evidence of unique sensory-based profiles of mental health. Implications: Assessment of sensory difficulties as part of more rigorous mental health assessments within mental health services will support more accurate diagnoses and intervention.

Measuring Global Coherence in People With Aphasia During Unstructured Conversation

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Marion C. Leaman ◽  
Lisa A. Edmonds
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Evaluation ◽  
Intrarater Reliability ◽  
Coherence Measure ◽  
Reliable Measure ◽  
Global Coherence ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Assessment And Treatment ◽  
Picture Description ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Purpose Global coherence is an essential macrolinguistic discourse skill that speakers use to formulate discourse to convey meaning with maintenance to a topic. When global coherence is poor, the listener's ability to understand how the discourse makes sense as a whole is diminished. Measures exist to evaluate global coherence in people with aphasia during monologue tasks (e.g., picture description). The aim of the current research is to develop such a measure for unstructured conversation and to explore how global coherence is impacted by aphasia during conversation. A global coherence measure for conversation is required because markedly different cognitive and linguistic demands are made for production of different types of discourse. Thus, a structured monologue measure cannot be used with validity for unstructured conversation. To adequately evaluate global coherence during conversation, a measure specific to the demands of conversation is required. Method We adapted the 4-point Global Coherence Scale (Wright & Capilouto, 2012; Wright et al., 2013), a monologue-level measure of global coherence to conversation, resulting in the 4-point Global Coherence Scale in unstructured conversation (GCSconv). We conducted statistical evaluation of the reliability/stability of the 4-point GCSconv in 18 unstructured conversations held by nine people with aphasia. Utterances with low global coherence scores were classified following a recent methodology to describe how breakdown in these utterances contributed to diminished global coherence (Hazamy & Obermeyer, 2019). Results The 4-point GCSconv demonstrated excellent inter/intrarater reliability and test–retest stability. Nonspecific language and off-topic comments contributed most frequently to lowered global coherence. Conclusions Findings suggest the 4-point GCSconv may be a feasible and reliable measure of global coherence in conversation. This measure adds to a core of emerging reliable discourse measures for conversation. As such, it has potential to inform assessment and treatment of everyday conversation and to investigate the relationship of global coherence in structured monologue and unstructured conversation. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12469187

Discrimination of the direction of motion on the human hand: a psychophysical study of stimulation parameters

1994 ◽  
Vol 71 (6) ◽  
pp. 2414-2429 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. P. Gardner ◽  
B. F. Sklar
Keyword(s):  
Human Hand ◽  
Correct Identification ◽  
Apparent Velocity ◽  
Spatial Effects ◽  
Discrimination Accuracy ◽  
Percent Correct ◽  
Detection Techniques ◽  
Perfect Performance ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

1. In these experiments we assess the relative importance of the spatial and temporal properties of a moving tactile stimulus in determining the ability of humans to discriminate its direction of motion. Movement along the finger was simulated by applying a series of pulses to adjacent locations on the skin using the tactile array of an OPTACON stimulator. Simulated motion permitted us to vary independently the overall distance moved as well as the spacing, timing, and number of sequential stimuli. Different combinations of spatiotemporal parameters allowed us to further examine the relationship of apparent velocity of motion and sweep duration to behavioral performance. Discrimination accuracy was measured using signal detection techniques to calculate the discrimination parameter d' and PCmax, a bias-free measure of the percent correct identification of the direction of motion. 2. In experiments where the path length was constant, discriminability of the direction of motion increased as the spacing between successive pulses narrowed. Similarly, for a given interpulse spacing, the accuracy of discrimination increased linearly with distance, saturating at perfect performance. These apparent spatial effects on performance actually reflect the total number of stimuli presented to the skin rather than their proximity. Sweeps containing the same number of pulses are equally discriminable regardless of either their spacing or the total distance crossed on the skin. d' values obtained at 1.2-, 2.4-, and 4.8-mm spacings appear indistinguishable when plotted as a function of the total number of pulses in a sweep. 3. Experiments in which both the distance moved and the spacing between pulses was varied randomly confirmed that discrimination accuracy depends on the total number of pulses in a sweep rather than the spatial dimensions of the path traversed. Stimulation of only two points that mark the start and stop locations on the skin appears insufficient to enable subjects to discriminate correctly the direction of motion. Two-point stimulation elicits random performance whether the points lie 1.2 or 4.8 mm apart. Discriminability rises linearly to near-perfect performance when eight or more pulses are delivered sequentially. Extrapolation of the d' and PCmax curves suggests a mean threshold of approximately three points for 75% correct discrimination of the direction of motion across the skin. 4. The relationship of stimulus spacing to discriminability over a fixed path suggests that direction discrimination does not simply involve computation of the location of the start and stop points on the skin or their spatial disparity.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

scholarly journals Virtual Topography: Poets, Painters, Publishers and the Reproduction of the Landscape in the Early Nineteenth Century

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Fulford
Keyword(s):  
Picture Book ◽  
Book Production ◽  
Lake District ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Mechanical Reproduction ◽  
Coffee Table ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Relationship

In this article I develop the work of a number of critics—Gillen Darcy Wood, Sophie Thomas, Peter Simonsen, Julia S. Carlson—who have recently begun to revise our understanding of the relationship of literary Romanticism, and in particular that of Wordsworth and Southey, to visual culture. I show first that new means of mechanical reproduction—the woodcut, the aquatint—combined with technological changes in book production, stimulated a new print genre known as Views—an ancestor of the coffee-table book and often a spin-off wherein the public could see engravings of the scenes their favourite landscape poets described. Pictures sold poets, and, for the first time in history, popular writers were marketed to a mass readership able—and avid—to buy images as well as words. Wordsworth and Southey were not popular writers and were not at first marketed as illustrated poets. And they at first disapproved of the visual turn of their culture. This disapproval, I show, was never consistent or total and in fact they strove to take advantage of the vogue for the visual, collaborating with artists to publish volumes of Views in which their writing was combined with engravings of landscape. And these collaborations, I argue, were greatly influential upon them, causing them to alter the form and style of their writing as well as the publication formats in which it appeared. Wordsworth and Southey, in their late work, became writers of a moralised picturesque—of words that deferred to pictured views and tourist sights—and that sought to derive truths about human nature, life and society from them. Departing from their earlier suspicion of the visual, and of Views, they became practitioners, in conjunction with artists, of a virtual topography. Their continued marketing, in the 21st century, as part of the visual packaging of the Lake District in picture-book, DVD, and website is therefore not as contrary to what they stood for as it first might seem, shallow though it often is.

scholarly journals The educational e-portfolio: preliminary evidence of its relationship with student’s self-efficacy and engagement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ginesa López-Crespo ◽  
M. Carmen Blanco-Gandía ◽  
Sonsoles Valdivia-Salas ◽  
Camino Fidalgo ◽  
Noelia Sánchez-Pérez
Keyword(s):  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Initial Sample ◽  
Specific Element ◽  
Traditional Assessment ◽  
Multiple Choice Tests ◽  
Personal Variables ◽  
Choice Tests ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe educational use of portfolios has been increasing in the last few years, especially as technology has also developed electronic versions of portfolios. Although there is abundant information about their benefits and practice description, few studies provide empirical evidence of their implementation. The objective of this study was to provide initial evidence about the use of the portfolio in higher education. Concretely, we aimed 1) to explore the correlation between students’ performance on the portfolio and their performance on more traditional assessment methods 2) to explore whether student’s personal variables predict performance in key elements of the e-portfolio, such as individual reflections, and if these contribute to general academic performance in the course, and 3) to evaluate whether the use of the e-portfolio during a semester changes the students’ self-efficacy and engagement. For this purpose, an initial sample of 73 students were recruited, and an e-portfolio (based on Mahara) was implemented over a semester. The results showed that performance on the portfolio correlated with the score obtained on multiple choice tests. There was an increase in self-efficacy after one semester of e-portfolio implementation, and engagement proved to be an important predictor of the final course grade through the mediation of individual reflections. These results offer preliminary and promising evidence about the relationship of a specific element of e-portfolios, individual reflections with several variables related to academic achievement such as self-efficacy and engagement.

Evaluating Change in the Conversation of a Person With Mild Aphasia After Attentive Reading With Constrained Summarization-Written Treatment

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 1618-1628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica A. Obermeyer ◽  
Marion C. Leaman ◽  
Lisa A. Edmonds
Keyword(s):  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Lexical Retrieval ◽  
Minimal Detectable Change ◽  
Conversational Discourse ◽  
Discourse Production ◽  
Word Finding ◽  
Novel Material ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Communicative Success

Purpose The purpose of this project was to evaluate the effect of a discourse-level treatment, Attentive Reading with Constrained Summarization–Written (ARCS-W), on conversational discourse. ARCS-W aims to improve spoken and written output by addressing the cognitive–linguistic requirements of discourse production through constrained summarization of novel material. Method This is an experimentally controlled case study with a single participant, Bill. Three conversation samples were collected at pretreatment, and a single conversation was collected 1 month after treatment. The participant completed 24 ARCS-W treatment sessions, and each session included reading and then summarizing a novel current event article following specific constraints (use lexically precise words, stay on topic, use complete sentences) in speaking and writing. Conversation outcomes evaluated the success of each utterance (1–4 scale), grammaticality, and the proportion of utterances with relevant content (relevant utterances). Additionally, behavioral manifestations of word-finding difficulty were evaluated in conversation. Results Bill improved communicative success at the utterance level based on the minimal detectable change. He also demonstrated reductions in behavioral manifestations of lexical retrieval difficulty based on decreases in the percentage of false starts (e.g., t*, t*), mazes (e.g., uh, s*, um), and abandoned utterances. Bill did not increase the proportion of relevant utterances or grammatical utterances in conversation. Conclusions This case study provides preliminary evidence of the potential impact of ARCS-W treatment in conversation. Additionally, the measures implemented to evaluate conversation represent a promising adaptation of a novel methodology to capture change in conversation. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12375053

scholarly journals FOOD INSECURITY AND COST-RELATED MEDICATION NON-ADHERENCE IN OLDER ADULTS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S635-S635
Author(s):  
Lisa L Boss ◽  
Shaunna Caouette
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Food Insecurity ◽  
Community Setting ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Health Concern ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
Annual Household Income ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Food insecurity (FI) is defined as having limited access to nutritional and safe foods due to lack of financial resources and is believed to negatively influence health outcomes. Older adults, in particular, face rising healthcare costs and may be forced to choose between purchasing prescribed medications and using their limited financial resources for basic needs, such as food. The purpose of this systematic review was to examine the relationship of food insecurity (FI) and cost-related medication non-adherence (CRN) in older adults living in the community setting. A comprehensive, electronic review of the literature was performed. Criteria for inclusion were original quantitative or qualitative research, written in English, human participants ≥60 years, and published from January 2000 through January 2019. The total number of studies included was six. Main findings from the studies largely indicate that FI and CRN are significantly and positively correlated in older adults living in American communities. Further, CRN increases with the severity of FI. Most participants in these six studies were female, non-Hispanic white, with an annual household income <20k, and with less than a high school education. Although preliminary evidence is promising, research with more rigorous design is warranted to better understand the relationship of FI and CRN in older adults, and to develop appropriate interventions and programs for this growing public health concern.

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