Speech and Language Therapy

Background-Implicit learning is a process of learning that occurs outside of conscious awareness and may be involved in implicit, exposure-based language training. However, research shows that implicit learning abilities are variable among individuals with aphasia, and it remains unknown whether individuals who show basic implicit learning abilities also benefit from implicit language training.

Τhe present study investigates whether Greek-speaking children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) face difficulties in the acquisition of gender in determiner-noun contexts, as expressed via agreement οn the determiner. The results of an elicitation task with real and novel nouns showed that children with SLI (a) show difficulties primarily with masculine and feminine gender marking, and do not use prototypicality of the noun suffix, as typically developing children do, to mark the gender on the determiner in conditions with real nouns, and (b) do not use, with the same consistency as typically developing children do, the noun ending as a cue to mark the gender value on the determiner in conditions with novel nouns. It is argued that although grammatical gender is considered an intrinsic lexical property of the noun, it is not learned by children with SLI along with other lexical features of the noun. Moreover, when lexical information is not provided in the nouns, children wit...

Studies on the processing of non-active (NACT) voice have indicated that passive sentences are more difficult to comprehend and require more time to process. Children with Reading Difficulties (RDs) face problems with sentence comprehension, which are often attributed to phonological processing, working memory, syntactic awareness limitations, or a maturation delay. Using an online self-paced reading task, we investigated the effect of voice morphology and argument structure on sentence processing in 3 groups of participants; 30 children RDs, 28 Age-Matched (AM) controls without RDs, and 28 young Beginning Readers (BRs). Our results suggest that although the RDs and BR groups present similar reading times, their reading patterns differ qualitatively. Beginning Readers experienced greater processing delays when processing NACT structures, suggesting that they have not yet fully grasped the properties of the various NACT verbs. However, the RDs group presents effects not found in the ...

Introduction: Sentence production impairments in aphasia often improve with treatment. However, little is known about how cognitive processes supporting sentence production, such as sentence planning, are impacted by treatment. Methods: The present study used eyetracking to examine changes in sentence production resulting from a 12-week language treatment program focused on passive sentences (Treatment of Underlying Forms (TUF); Thompson and Shapiro, 2005). In two pre-treatment and two post-treatment sessions, nine participants with mild-to-moderate agrammatic aphasia performed a structural priming task, which involved repeating primed sentences (actives or passives) and then, using the same verb, producing sentences describing pictured events. Two individuals with aphasia performed the eyetracking task on the same schedule without intervening language treatment. Ten unimpaired older adults also performed the task to identify normal performance patterns. Sentence production accuracy...

This study develops a single elicitation method to test the acquisition of thirdperson pronominal objects in five-year-olds for sixteen languages. This methodology allows us to compare the acquisition of pronominals in languages that lack object clitics ('pronoun languages') with languages that employ clitics in the relevant context ('clitic languages'), thus establishing a robust cross-linguistic baseline in the domain of clitic and pronoun production for five-year-olds. High rates of pronominal production are found in our results indicating that children have the relevant pragmatic knowledge required to select a pronominal in the discourse setting involved in the experiment as well as the relevant morphosyntactic knowledge involved in the production of pronominals. It is legitimate to conclude from our data that a child who at age 5 is not able to produce any or few pronominals is a child at risk for language impairment. In this way, pronominal production can be taken as a developmental marker, provided that one takes into account certain cross-linguistic differences discussed in the paper.

Numerous studies have shown that language impairments, particularly semantic deficits, are evident in the narrative speech of people with Alzheimer’s disease from the earliest stages of the disease. Here, we present a novel technique for capturing those changes, by comparing distributed word representations constructed from healthy controls and Alzheimer’s patients. We investigate examples of words with different representations in the two spaces, and link the semantic and contextual differences to findings from the Alzheimer’s disease literature.

Cross-linguistic studies in agrammatism have attested asymmetries in the comprehension of semantically reversible structures with canonical vs. non-canonical argument order. Recently, these asymmetries have been interpreted within the Relativized Minimality approach (RM) to locality in syntax (Garaffa & Grillo, 2008). • RM predicts that local relations cannot be established between two terms of a dependency if an intervening element possesses similar morphosyntactic features, since this element will be recognized as a possible candidate for the establishment of the dependency relation. • In an extension of the RM approach, Friedmann et al. (2009) reported that lexical NP-restriction plays an important role for the establishment of a dependency. Specifically, good comprehension in object relative clauses (RCs) was attested in children due to the absence of a lexical NP-restriction, while poor comprehension resulted from the presence of a lexical NP-restriction in the intervening subj...

In this paper, the process of designing an annotated Greek Corpus of Aphasic Discourse (GREECAD) is presented. Given that resources of this kind are quite limited, a major aim of the GREECAD was to provide a set of specifications which could serve as a methodological basis for the development of other relevant corpora, and, therefore, to contribute to the future research in this area. The GREECAD was developed with the following requirements: a) to include a rather homogeneous sample of Greek as spoken by individuals with aphasia; b) to document speech samples with rich metadata, which include demographic information, as well as detailed information on the patients’ medical record and neuropsychological evaluation; c) to provide annotated speech samples, which encode information at the micro-linguistic (words, POS, grammatical errors, clause types, etc.) and discourse level (narrative structure elements, main events, evaluation devices, etc.). In terms of the design of the GREECAD, ...

In this paper we present a web-based data collection method designed to elicit narrative discourse from adults with and without language impairments, both in an in-person set up and remotely. We describe the design, methodological considerations and technical requirements regarding the application development, the elicitation tasks, materials and guidelines, as well as the implementation of the assessment procedure. To investigate the efficacy of remote elicitation of narrative discourse with the use of the technology-enhanced method presented here, a pilot study was conducted, aiming to compare narratives elicited remotely to narratives collected in an in-person elicitation mode from ten unimpaired adults, using a within-participants research design. In the remote elicitation setting, each participant performed the tasks of a narrative elicitation protocol via the web application in their own environment, with the assistance of an investigator in the context of a virtual meeting (v...

The aim of this study was to explore the effect of dose-dense sequential chemotherapy with or without paclitaxel primarily on disease-free survival (DFS) and secondarily on overall survival (OS) in patients with high-risk operable breast cancer. Patients and methods: From June 1997 until November 2000, 604 patients with T 1-3 N 1 M 0 or T 3 N 0 M 0 tumors were randomized to three cycles of epirubicin 110 mg/m 2 followed by three cycles of paclitaxel 250 mg/m 2 followed by three cycles of 'intensified' CMF (cyclophosphamide 840 mg/m 2 , methotrexate 47 mg/m 2 and fluorouracil 840 mg/m 2) (group A), or to four cycles of epirubicin followed by four cycles of CMF, as in group A (group B). All cycles were given every 2 weeks with granulocyte colony-stimulating factor support. Results: A total of 595 patients were eligible. Median follow-up was 61.7 months for group A and 62 months for group B. The 3-year DFS was 80% in group A and 77% in group B. Survival rates were 93% and 90%, respectively. The effect of treatment on the hazard of death was different according to hormonal receptor status. More specifically, in patients with negative receptor status the hazard of death was significantly higher for group B (hazard ratio 2.42). Both regimens were well tolerated and severe acute side-effects were infrequent. No cases of severe cardiotoxicity or acute leukemia were recorded. Conclusions: The present study failed to demonstrate a significant difference in DFS or OS between the two treatment groups. However, our study has shown clearly that high-dose paclitaxel can be safely incorporated to dose-dense sequential chemotherapy.

Objective Nowadays, smartphones are becoming an indispensable tool due to the popular use of useful applications (apps) that can be downloaded and installed to aid our everyday lives. The quantity of apps manifested as tools for mobile health (mHealth) is undoubtedly high. The mHealth apps are very popular and cover various and different aspects of health. The first app for women in menopause was presented in 2014. Since then, more apps have been developed. The aim of this study is to identify mHealth apps that address the menopause with a focused view on the degree of medical professional involvement and documented evidence base practice in their design, as well as, underline their potential role in raising awareness regarding health in the community. Methods The official app stores by Google, Apple, Windows and Blackberry were chosen to pool the apps. The keywords used were ‘apps for menopause’, ‘women in menopause’ and ‘menopause’. Eligible apps were selected based on the target ...

Objectives Assessment of the psychometric characteristics of the Greek version of the brief World Health Organization Quality of Life Instrument (WHOQOL-BREF) in patients with advanced cancer and pain, and exploration of the association between psychological distress and quality of life (QoL). Method The sample consisted of 145 patients with advanced cancer and pain who completed the WHOQOL-BREF, the Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90), and the Pain Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). In analysis, the following methods were used: Cronbach's alpha, Item Response Theory (IRT), polychoric, Pearson and polyserial correlation, t-test, and Linear regression. Results The internal consistency was high for all domains of the WHOQOL-BREF (Cronbach's α ≥ 0.731). Similarly, with the exception of three items, the WHOQOL-BREF items has large discrimination parameters suggesting that they have a high ability in differentiating subjects. On SCL-90, the three dimensions with the highest scores were Depre...

Objective: The aim of the present study was to test whether psychological distress and personality variables are independently associated with health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in colorectal cancer patients, after adjusting for age, gender, education and disease severity.