scholarly journals A valid alternative for in-person language assessments in brain tumor patients: feasibility and validity measures of the new TeleLanguage test

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elke De Witte ◽  
Vitória Piai ◽  
Garret Kurteff ◽  
Ruofan Cai ◽  
Peter Mariën ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Brain Tumor ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Auditory Comprehension ◽  
Tumor Patients ◽  
Language Tests ◽  
Geographical Regions ◽  
Validity Measures ◽  
Language Assessments ◽  
Story Completion

Abstract Background Although language deficits after awake brain surgery are usually milder than post-stroke, postoperative language assessments are needed to identify these. Follow-up of brain tumor patients in certain geographical regions can be difficult when most patients are not local and come from afar. We developed a short telephone-based test for pre- and postoperative language assessments. Methods The development of the TeleLanguage Test was based on the Dutch Linguistic Intraoperative Protocol and existing standardized English batteries. Two parallel versions were composed and tested in healthy native English speakers. Subsequently, the TeleLanguage Test was administered in a group of 14 tumor patients before surgery and at 1 week, 1 month, and 3 months after surgery. The test includes auditory comprehension, repetition, semantic selection, sentence or story completion, verbal naming, and fluency tests. It takes less than 20 minutes to administer. Results Healthy participants had no difficulty performing any of the language tests via the phone, attesting to the feasibility of a phone assessment. In the patient group, all TeleLanguage test scores significantly declined shortly after surgery with a recovery to preoperative levels at 3 months postsurgery for naming and fluency tasks and a recovery to normal levels for the other language tasks. Analysis of the in-person language assessments (until 1 month) revealed a similar profile. Conclusion The use of the TeleLanguage battery to conduct language assessments from afar can provide convenience, might optimize patient care, and enables longitudinal clinical research. The TeleLanguage is a valid tool for various clinical and scientific purposes.

scholarly journals Token Frequency Effects in Homophone Production: An Elicitation Study

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 466-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Conwell
Keyword(s):  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Intended Meaning ◽  
Natural Production ◽  
Elicitation Study ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
Story Completion ◽  
Meaning Frequency

In natural production, adults differentiate homophones prosodically as a function of the frequency of their intended meaning. This study compares adult and child productions of homophones to determine whether prosodic differentiation of homophones changes over development. Using a picture-based story-completion paradigm, isolated tokens of homophones were elicited from English-learning children and adult native English speakers. These tokens were measured for duration, vowel duration, pitch, pitch range, and vowel quality. Results indicate that less frequent meanings of homophones are longer in duration than their more frequent counterparts in both adults and children. No other measurement differed as a function of meaning frequency. As speakers of all ages produce longer tokens of lower frequency homophones, homophone differentiation does not change over development, but is included in children’s early lexicons. These findings indicate that production planning processes alone may not fully account for differences in homophone duration, but rather that the differences could be learned and represented from experience even in the early stages of lexical acquisition.

scholarly journals Genetic variants and cognitive functions in patients with brain tumors

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 1297-1309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise D Correa ◽  
Jaya Satagopan ◽  
Axel Martin ◽  
Erica Braun ◽  
Maria Kryza-Lacombe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Oxidative Stress ◽  
Cell Cycle ◽  
Dna Repair ◽  
Brain Tumor ◽  
Brain Tumors ◽  
Cell Cycle Regulation ◽  
Cognitive Outcome ◽  
Cholesterol Transport ◽  
Tumor Patients ◽  
Cycle Regulation

AbstractBackgroundPatients with brain tumors treated with radiotherapy (RT) and chemotherapy (CT) often experience cognitive dysfunction. We reported that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the APOE, COMT, and BDNF genes may influence cognition in brain tumor patients. In this study, we assessed whether genes associated with late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (LOAD), inflammation, cholesterol transport, dopamine and myelin regulation, and DNA repair may influence cognitive outcome in this population.MethodsOne hundred and fifty brain tumor patients treated with RT ± CT or CT alone completed a neurocognitive assessment and provided a blood sample for genotyping. We genotyped genes/SNPs in these pathways: (i) LOAD risk/inflammation/cholesterol transport, (ii) dopamine regulation, (iii) myelin regulation, (iv) DNA repair, (v) blood–brain barrier disruption, (vi) cell cycle regulation, and (vii) response to oxidative stress. White matter (WM) abnormalities were rated on brain MRIs.ResultsMultivariable linear regression analysis with Bayesian shrinkage estimation of SNP effects, adjusting for relevant demographic, disease, and treatment variables, indicated strong associations (posterior association summary [PAS] ≥ 0.95) among tests of attention, executive functions, and memory and 33 SNPs in genes involved in: LOAD/inflammation/cholesterol transport (eg, PDE7A, IL-6), dopamine regulation (eg, DRD1, COMT), myelin repair (eg, TCF4), DNA repair (eg, RAD51), cell cycle regulation (eg, SESN1), and response to oxidative stress (eg, GSTP1). The SNPs were not significantly associated with WM abnormalities.ConclusionThis novel study suggests that polymorphisms in genes involved in aging and inflammation, dopamine, myelin and cell cycle regulation, and DNA repair and response to oxidative stress may be associated with cognitive outcome in patients with brain tumors.

The cognitive saliency of word associations of verbs of speech in English as a Lingua Franca interactions

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 417-443
Author(s):  
Yang Pang
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
Target Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Word Associations ◽  
Similar Word ◽  
Speech Communities

AbstractBuilding on the theoretical insights into the socio-cognitive approach to the study of interactions in which English is used as a lingua franca (ELF)), this paper reports on the idiosyncratic phenomenon that ELF speakers do not adhere to the norms of native speakers, but instead create their own particular word associations during the course of the interaction. Taking the verbs of speech talk, say, speak, and tell as examples, this study compares word associations from three corpora of native and non-native speakers. The findings of this study reveal that similar word associative patterns are produced and shared by ELF speech communities from different sociocultural backgrounds, and these differ substantially from those used by native English speakers. Idiom-like constructions such as say like, how to say, and speakin are developed and utilized by Asian and European ELF speakers. Based on these findings, this paper concludes that ELF speakers use the prefabricated expressions in the target language system only as references, and try to develop their own word associative patterns in ELF interactions. Moreover, the analysis of the non-literalness/metaphorical word associations of the verbs of speech in the Asian ELF corpus suggests that ELF speakers dynamically co-construct their shared common ground to derive non-literal/metaphorical meaning in actual situational context.

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