The Cognitive Functioning of Language Deficient Children

1969 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul S. Weiner

The cognitive functioning of 25 language deficient children, six through eight years of age, was compared with that of 14 matched controls. Language deficiency was defined by verbal IQ below 90 and at least 15 points below Performance IQ on a short form of the WISC. Thus the experimental subjects were chosen because of their inadequacies in solving conceptual level tasks presented to the auditory modality. The test battery used to measure cognitive adequacy consisted of visually and auditorily presented tasks which explored both perceptual and conceptual level functioning. The results indicated that language deficiency is a relatively stable condition over a period of one year; that all auditory modality functioning of the experimental subjects, regardless of integrative level (perceptual or conceptual), is significantly below that of the controls; and that visual modality performance of the two groups does not differ significantly. Sensory modality thus proved to be the central organizing factor in the cognitive functioning of the language deficient children. This was not true of the control subjects, whose functioning appeared to be more integrated. Not unexpectedly, teacher reports indicated that the experimental subjects have reading difficulties. Further study of etiology, consequences, and remediation of language deficiency is needed.

1981 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Tallal ◽  
Rachel Stark ◽  
Clayton Kallman ◽  
David Mellits

A battery of nonverbal perceptual and memory tests were given to 35 language-impaired (LI) and 38 control subjects. Three modalities of tests were given: auditory, visual, and cross-modal (auditory and visual). The purpose was to reexamine some nonverbal perceptual and memory abilities of LI children as a function of age and modality of stimulation. Results failed to replicate previous findings of a temporal processing deficit that is specific to the auditory modality in LI children. The LI group made significantly more errors than did controls regardless of modality of stimulation when 2-item sequences were presented rapidly, or when more than two stimuli were presented in series. However, further analyses resolved this apparent conflict between the present and earlier studies by demonstrating that age is an important variable underlying modality specificity of perceptual performance in LI children. Whereas younger LI children were equally impaired when responding to stimuli presented rapidly to the auditory and visual modality, older LI subjects made nearly twice as many errors responding to rapidly presented auditory rather than visual stimuli. This developmental difference did not occur for the control group.


2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 635-640 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Luís Schmidt ◽  
Eunice do Nascimento Simões ◽  
Ana Lúcia Novais Carvalho

Objective: Continuous Performance Tests (CPTs) are known to measure inattention and impulsivity in students with ADHD. Many CPTs utilize a visual format. It is accepted that auditory tasks reflect attentional demand more closely in the classroom. Thus, the association between deficits found by auditory and visual CPTs needs to be studied. We hypothesized that impulsivity would be dependent on sensory modality and inattention would be a unitary cross-modal construct. Method: Forty-four students with ADHD performed two CPTs (visual and auditory). We analyzed correlations between the variables examined by the two tasks. Results: There were strong correlations between variables measuring inattention. Correlations between auditory and visual measures of impulsivity were weak. Conclusion: Inattention is partially independent of modality. In contrast, response inhibition is modality-specific. Although ADHD is defined regardless of modality, hyperactive students may exhibit deficits in the auditory modality but not in the visual modality or vice versa.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-84
Author(s):  
Diana Cutanda ◽  
Daniel Sanabria ◽  
Ángel Correa

AbstractThe anisochrony of a stimulus sequence was manipulated parametrically to investigate whether rhythmic entrainment is stronger in the auditory modality than in the visual modality (Experiment 1), and whether it relies on top-down attention (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, participants had to respond as quickly as possible to a target presented after a sequence of either visual or auditory stimuli. The anisochrony of this sequence was manipulated parametrically, rather than in an all or none fashion; that is, it could range from smaller to larger deviations of the isochrony (0, 10, 20, 50, 100, 150 and 200 ms). We compared rhythmic entrainment patterns for auditory and visual modalities. Results showed a peak of entrainment for both isochrony and deviations of isochrony up to 50 ms (i.e., participants were equally fast both after the isochronous sequences and after 10, 20 and 50 ms deviations), suggesting that anisochronous sequences can also produce entrainment. Beyond this entrainment window, the reaction times became progressively slower. Surprisingly, no differences were found between the entrainment patterns for auditory and visual rhythms. In Experiment 2, we used a dual-task methodology by adding a working memory n-back task to the procedure of Experiment 1. Results did not show interference of the secondary task in either auditory or visual modalities, with participants showing the same entrainment pattern as in Experiment 1. These results suggest that rhythmic entrainment constitutes a cognitive process that occurs by default (automatically), regardless of the modality in which the stimuli are presented, and independent of top-down attention, to generate behavioural benefits.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Candice Frances ◽  
Eugenia Navarra-Barindelli ◽  
Clara D. Martin

AbstractLanguage perception studies on bilinguals often show that words that share form and meaning across languages (cognates) are easier to process than words that share only meaning. This facilitatory phenomenon is known as the cognate effect. Most previous studies have shown this effect visually, whereas the auditory modality as well as the interplay between type of similarity and modality remain largely unexplored. In this study, highly proficient late Spanish–English bilinguals carried out a lexical decision task in their second language, both visually and auditorily. Words had high or low phonological and orthographic similarity, fully crossed. We also included orthographically identical words (perfect cognates). Our results suggest that similarity in the same modality (i.e., orthographic similarity in the visual modality and phonological similarity in the auditory modality) leads to improved signal detection, whereas similarity across modalities hinders it. We provide support for the idea that perfect cognates are a special category within cognates. Results suggest a need for a conceptual and practical separation between types of similarity in cognate studies. The theoretical implication is that the representations of items are active in both modalities of the non-target language during language processing, which needs to be incorporated to our current processing models.


2021 ◽  
pp. 214-220
Author(s):  
Wei Lin Toh ◽  
Neil Thomas ◽  
Susan L. Rossell

There has been burgeoning interest in studying hallucinations in psychosis occurring across multiple sensory modalities. The current study aimed to characterize the auditory hallucination and delusion profiles in patients with auditory hallucinations only versus those with multisensory hallucinations. Participants with psychosis were partitioned into groups with voices only (AVH; <i>n</i> = 50) versus voices plus hallucinations in at least one other sensory modality (AVH+; <i>n</i> = 50), based on their responses on the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS). Basic demographic and clinical information was collected, and the Questionnaire for Psychotic Experiences (QPE) was used to assess psychosis phenomenology. Relative to the AVH group, greater compliance to perceived commands, auditory illusions, and sensed presences was significantly elevated in the AVH+ group. The latter group also had greater levels of delusion-related distress and functional impairment and was more likely to endorse delusions of reference and misidentification. This preliminary study uncovered important phenomenological differences in those with multisensory hallucinations. Future hallucination research extending beyond the auditory modality is needed.


Author(s):  
Aaron Crowson ◽  
Zachary H. Pugh ◽  
Michael Wilkinson ◽  
Christopher B. Mayhorn

The development of head-mounted display virtual reality systems (e.g., Oculus Rift, HTC Vive) has resulted in an increasing need to represent the physical world while immersed in the virtual. Current research has focused on representing static objects in the physical room, but there has been little research into notifying VR users of changes in the environment. This study investigates how different sensory modalities affect noticeability and comprehension of notifications designed to alert head-mounted display users when a person enters his/her area of use. In addition, this study investigates how the use of an orientation type notification aids in perception of alerts that manifest outside a virtual reality users’ visual field. Results of a survey indicated that participants perceived the auditory modality as more effective regardless of notification type. An experiment corroborated these findings for the person notifications; however, the visual modality was in practice more effective for orientation notifications.


2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (03) ◽  
pp. 222-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riki Taitelbaum-Swead ◽  
Michal Icht ◽  
Yaniv Mama

AbstractIn recent years, the effect of cognitive abilities on the achievements of cochlear implant (CI) users has been evaluated. Some studies have suggested that gaps between CI users and normal-hearing (NH) peers in cognitive tasks are modality specific, and occur only in auditory tasks.The present study focused on the effect of learning modality (auditory, visual) and auditory feedback on word memory in young adults who were prelingually deafened and received CIs before the age of 5 yr, and their NH peers.A production effect (PE) paradigm was used, in which participants learned familiar study words by vocal production (saying aloud) or by no-production (silent reading or listening). Words were presented (1) in the visual modality (written) and (2) in the auditory modality (heard). CI users performed the visual condition twice—once with the implant ON and once with it OFF. All conditions were followed by free recall tests.Twelve young adults, long-term CI users, implanted between ages 1.7 and 4.5 yr, and who showed ≥50% in monosyllabic consonant-vowel-consonant open-set test with their implants were enrolled. A group of 14 age-matched NH young adults served as the comparison group.For each condition, we calculated the proportion of study words recalled. Mixed-measures analysis of variances were carried out with group (NH, CI) as a between-subjects variable, and learning condition (aloud or silent reading) as a within-subject variable. Following this, paired sample t tests were used to evaluate the PE size (differences between aloud and silent words) and overall recall ratios (aloud and silent words combined) in each of the learning conditions.With visual word presentation, young adults with CIs (regardless of implant status CI-ON or CI-OFF), showed comparable memory performance (and a similar PE) to NH peers. However, with auditory presentation, young adults with CIs showed poorer memory for nonproduced words (hence a larger PE) relative to their NH peers.The results support the construct that young adults with CIs will benefit more from learning via the visual modality (reading), rather than the auditory modality (listening). Importantly, vocal production can largely improve auditory word memory, especially for the CI group.


2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 490-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERTO FILIPPI ◽  
JOHN MORRIS ◽  
FIONA M. RICHARDSON ◽  
PETER BRIGHT ◽  
MICHAEL S.C. THOMAS ◽  
...  

Studies measuring inhibitory control in the visual modality have shown a bilingual advantage in both children and adults. However, there is a lack of developmental research on inhibitory control in the auditory modality. This study compared the comprehension of active and passive English sentences in 7–10 years old bilingual and monolingual children. The task was to identify the agent of a sentence in the presence of verbal interference. The target sentence was cued by the gender of the speaker. Children were instructed to focus on the sentence in the target voice and ignore the distractor sentence. Results indicate that bilinguals are more accurate than monolinguals in comprehending syntactically complex sentences in the presence of linguistic noise. This supports previous findings with adult participants (Filippi, Leech, Thomas, Green & Dick, 2012). We therefore conclude that the bilingual advantage in interference control begins early in life and is maintained throughout development.


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 283-287
Author(s):  
Thiago Kolachinski Brandão ◽  
André Nunes Machado ◽  
Bruno Vieira Moter ◽  
Adriano Masayuki Yonezaki ◽  
Fabrício Hidetoshi Ueno ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Objective: To perform a prospective analysis of the quality of life prognostic factors in patients undergoing lumbar discectomy after two years of the procedure, relating the tools Short Form Health Survey, Roland Morris, Oswestry Disability Index, and VAS. Methods: Seventy-two patients were evaluated through the questionnaires in the preoperative, and one month, six months, one year and two years in the postoperative period, being performed lumbar discectomy after failure of conservative treatment. Results: We observed an improvement in comparative analysis during follow-up regarding baseline values. Conclusion: The domains social aspect, pain, general state, emotional aspect, mental health and vitality presented an improvement from the first month after the surgery; however, the domain functional capacity only showed significant improvement after 6 months and the physical aspects only after one year. Roland-Morris and VAS scales improved after one month after surgery, but Oswestry scale showed that for the measured aspects there was only improvement after six months of surgery.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor B. Penney ◽  
Xiaoqin Cheng ◽  
Yan Ling Leow ◽  
Audrey Wei Ying Bay ◽  
Esther Wu ◽  
...  

A transient suppression of visual perception during saccades ensures perceptual stability. In two experiments, we examined whether saccades affect time perception of visual and auditory stimuli in the seconds range. Specifically, participants completed a duration reproduction task in which they memorized the duration of a 6 s timing signal during the training phase and later reproduced that duration during the test phase. Four experimental conditions differed in saccade requirements and the presence or absence of a secondary discrimination task during the test phase. For both visual and auditory timing signals, participants reproduced longer durations when the secondary discrimination task required saccades to be made (i.e., overt attention shift) during reproduction as compared to when the discrimination task merely required fixation at screen center. Moreover, greater total saccade duration in a trial resulted in greater time distortion. However, in the visual modality, requiring participants to covertly shift attention (i.e., no saccade) to complete the discrimination task increased reproduced duration as much as making a saccade, whereas in the auditory modality making a saccade increased reproduced duration more than making a covert attention shift. In addition, we examined microsaccades in the conditions that did not require full saccades for both the visual and auditory experiments. Greater total microsaccade duration in a trial resulted in greater time distortion in both modalities. Taken together, the experiments suggest that saccades and microsaccades affect seconds range visual and auditory interval timing via attention and saccadic suppression mechanisms.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document