Receptive language skills form the foundation for later expressive use and therefore play an important role in language development. The role of receptive language skills in the field of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) has received limited attention as, historically, the function of AAC has been to enhance the expressive language skills of persons who rely on AAC. While this is an important role and the primary outcome of AAC intervention, the role of AAC intervention on receptive language skills is equally important. The ability of persons who rely on AAC to understand spoken language ranges from age equivalent comprehension to minimal comprehension. AAC interventions that improve comprehension include a variety of strategies, but a synthesis of the effects of these strategies has not occurred. The aim of this scoping review was, therefore, to map and synthesise the research evidence on the effects of AAC interventions on receptive language skills of children with developmental disabilities. A four-pronged search strategy was used to identify studies that met the inclusion criteria. Twenty-three studies were included in the scoping review. The studies were described in terms of number of publications, participant characteristics, research design, AAC interventions, intervention outcomes, intervention effects, and quality appraisal. Furthermore, the studies were described in terms of three groups of effects: (i) the effect of aided AAC interventions, (ii) the effect of unaided AAC interventions, and (iii) a comparison of two types of AAC interventions. The trends and gaps in the literature are highlighted in terms of the use of AAC interventions and the receptive language skills addressed. Directions for future research are posited. Valuable preliminary evidence regarding the effects of AAC interventions on receptive language skills of children with developmental disabilities was obtained in the scoping review. / Mini Dissertation (M(AAC))--University of Pretoria, 2017. / National Research Foundation (NRF) / Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (CAAC) / M(AAC) / Unrestricted

An important question in teaching language is, what accounts for the emergence of either receptive or expressive labels when teaching only one of them? The teaching procedures in the present study were intended to reproduce the natural development of bidirectional naming in which caregivers comment on the items a child is interacting with and children echo those vocalizations they hear. Thus, the only vocalizations presented by the researcher during teaching occurred after the learner pointed to a specific stimulus, and were specific to the stimulus being targeted. These vocalizations are referred to in this study as stimulus-specific consequences. The purpose of this research was to investigate if the stimulus-specific consequences could become discriminative stimuli for receptive labels, and lead to the emergence of expressive labels. Three studies were conducted, each with four adults. Results demonstrated that using a stimulus-specific consequence during teaching led to receptive labels for all participants, but led to the emergence of expressive labels for only four participants. In other words, bidirectional naming did not occur for the majority of participants. Factors that may improve interrelations between receptive and expressive labels were analyzed, but further evaluations are needed to account for the inconsistent demonstrations of naming.

No description available.

Comprehension of spoken language skills are often taken for granted in research concerning early childhood language acquisition in typically developing children. While the onset of early word comprehension arguably precedes word production, traditional research has focused on language production rather than comprehension. A similar trend of focussing on expression is evident in the field of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). Traditionally, the role of AAC systems for individuals with little or no functional speech (LNFS) has been as an output mode for expressing messages. While this is an essential role and final outcome of AAC intervention strategies, the role of listeners is equally important. The comprehension of spoken language provides an essential foundation upon which language production competence can be built. AAC users' ability to comprehend spoken language is varied from age equivalent comprehension of spoken language to minimal comprehension. Some AAC users comprehend spoken language and therefore come to the AAC acquisition task with an established knowledge of spoken language. Others who experience difficulty comprehending spoken language require AAC as both input (receptive) and output (expressive) mode. Graphic symbols play a role in facilitating comprehension of messages either through facilitating the comprehension of the spoken language or the AAC symbols. The use of augmented input strategies like aided language stimulation is one type of instructional technique used in teaching graphic symbols to AAC users. Aided language stimulation refers to a technique in which a facilitator or communication partner combines the use of AAC with natural speech through simultaneously pointing to graphic symbols and speaking. The aim of this study was therefore to determine the impact of a three week long aided language stimulation program on the receptive language skills of children with LNFS. Four children participated in this multiple probe study. The aided language stimulation programme comprised three activities viz. arts and crafts, food preparation and story time activity. Each activity was repeated over duration of five subsequent sessions. Eight target vocabulary items were taught within each activity. The acquisition of all 24 target items were probed throughout the duration of the three week intervention period. The results indicated that all the participants acquired the target receptive vocabulary items. There were, however, variations in terms of the rate of acquisition. There was no statistically significant improvement in the general receptive language abilities of the participants. / Thesis (PhD (Augmentative and Alternative Communication))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (CAAC) / unrestricted

This study was a replication and an extension of the 2021 research performed by Spurgin and Borquez on the correspondence between receptive and expressive behavior. Spurgin examined the role of the echoic in a hear-say procedure with adult learners, while Borquez examined the role of the echoic in both hear-say and see-say procedures. Both studies found that receptive and expressive correspondence did not occur consistently across participants. The present study asked if the fading steps used during training contributed to the results of the previous researchers. In the present study, the fading steps were changed to minimize the chance that the participant developed a position bias. The conditions were also counterbalanced to analyze the effects of hear-say vs. see-say, easy vs. difficult words, and the order in which the words were trained on the acquisition of receptive labels and the emergence of expressive labels. The study consisted of five phases: pre-training, hear-say teaching, see-say teaching, receptive testing, and expressive testing. Results indicated that although that acquisition of receptive labels improved, the change in fading steps did not make a significant difference in the correspondence of receptive and expressive language. Results showed similar correspondence in the hear-say and see-say procedures. Easy words and words taught more recently were correlated with increased receptive-expressive correspondence.

Dans le cadre de l’évaluation pré-chirurgicale de patients épileptiques, il est impératif de déterminer la spécialisation hémisphérique du langage, ainsi que de localiser les aires du langage au sein de cet hémisphère. De nouvelles méthodes d’évaluation non- invasives doivent être mises au point afin de diminuer les risques associés aux méthodes plus invasives telles que le test à l’amobarbital intracarotidien (TAI). L’objectif principal de cette thèse est donc de développer un protocole d’évaluation pré-chirurgicale alternatif et non-invasif à l’aide de la magnétoencéphalographie (MEG) pour la latéralisation et la localisation du langage, incluant la mémoire verbale qui serait éventuellement accessible à une population pédiatrique francophone épileptique. L’article 1 présente une recension de la littérature résumant les différentes études en MEG ayant pour objectif l’évaluation pré-chirurgicale du langage. Trente-sept articles en MEG ont été analysés pour déterminer quelles tâches permettaient d’obtenir les meilleurs résultats de latéralisation intrahémisphérique et de localisation du langage pour l’évaluation du langage réceptif et expressif chez des sujets neurologiquement sains et épileptiques. Parmi les tests retenus, l’épreuve de reconnaissance de mots permet d’évaluer le langage réceptif et la mémoire verbale, tandis que des épreuves de fluence verbale telles que la génération de verbes permettent d’évaluer le langage expressif de façon à obtenir de très bons résultats. L’article 2 a permis de valider un protocole auprès de sujets neurologiquement sains à l’aide des épreuves identifiées dans l’article 1. Le protocole utilisé comprend une tâche de langage réceptif et de mémoire verbale (une épreuve de reconnaissance de mots) et une tâche de langage expressif (une épreuve de fluence verbale). Suite à la validation du protocole à l’aide d’analyses par composantes principales, les épreuves ont été administrées à un groupe de patients épileptiques. Les index de latéralité et les analyses de sources i révèlent que la MEG permet de localiser et de latéraliser les fonctions langagières et pourrait donc être utilisée comme méthode d'évaluation du langage lors de l'évaluation pré- chirurgicale auprès de patients épileptiques. Toutefois, alors que l’épreuve de mémoire verbale a permis d’obtenir les meilleurs résultats auprès de l’ensemble des participants, l’épreuve de fluence verbale n’a fourni des informations supplémentaires que chez un seul patient et chez aucun participant neurologiquement sain. En résumé, les deux articles de cette thèse démontrent le potentiel clinique de la MEG pour l’évaluation pré-chirurgicale de patients souffrant d’une épilepsie réfractaire. / It is imperative to determine hemispheric dominance of language and to localize language areas in this hemisphere as part of the presurgical evaluation of epileptic patients. New non-invasive evaluation methods should be developed to reduce the risks associated with more invasive methods such as the intracarotid sodium amobarbital procedure (ISAP). The main objective of this dissertation is to develop an alternative non-invasive presurgical evaluation protocol using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to determine the lateralisation and localization of language and verbal memory that would eventually be accessible to a French-speaking paediatric population suffering from epilepsy. Article 1 is a literature review summarizing MEG studies on the presurgical evaluation of language. Thirty-seven articles were analyzed to determine which tasks allow to obtain the best results with regards to language lateralization and localization with MEG in the assessment of receptive and expressive language in neurologically healthy individuals as well as epileptic patients. We conclude that the word recognition task is well suited to assess receptive language and verbal memory, while a verbal fluency task, such as the verb generation task allows the assessment of expressive language with very good results. Article 2 allowed the validation of a language protocol with neurological healthy participants based on the tasks identified in article 1. The protocol included a task evaluating receptive language functions and verbal memory (word recognition task) and a task evaluation expressive language (verbal fluency). After having validated the tasks using principal component analysis, they were administered to a group of patients with epilepsy. Laterality findings and source analysis showed that MEG can be used to lateralize and localize language and could therefore be used in the presurgical assessment of patients with epilepsy. However, the verbal fluency task, when compared to the verbal memory task, provided additional information for only one patient and in none of the neurologically healthy participants. In summary, the two articles of this dissertation demonstrate the clinical potential of MEG for the presurgical evaluation of patients with refractory epilepsy.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:39:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Miriam Segin.pdf: 2813413 bytes, checksum: f192e7858349d5ff3ad275af7e9ccf69 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-08-25 / Williams-Beuren Syndrome (WBS) is a genetic affection determined by the microdelation of contiguous genes in 7q11.23. The genetic profile of WBS is characterized by the visualconstructive deficit that contrasts with the good performance in verbal tasks, which sustains the hypothesis of dissociation between these abilities. This grants the syndrome peculiar cognitive and behavioral frames. The objective of this research is to describe the pattern of competences in tasks of linguistic abilities in 22 children and adolescents with WBS, aged between 7and 18 (M=11,6; DP=3,7), students of the 1st to 6th grades of elementary and special schools. We used the following instruments: WISC-III (to evaluate intellectual abilities); Wisconsin (used in neuropsychological assessment of abstract reasoning and cognitive strategies); CBCL/6-18 (behavioral assessment); Token-Comp (TT) used to working memory assessment; Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) used to receptive language assessment; Phonological Awareness by Oral Production Test; Syntactic Awareness Test; Word-Reading Efficiency Test; Test of Naming Images by Choosing Words; Test of Naming Images by Writing. The results of WISC-III, Wisconsin and CBCL/6-18 demonstrate mild to moderate intellectual disability, difficulty in concentration and identification of patterns of change, emotional and relationship problems, lack of attention, behavior disorders, challenge and opposition and somatic complaints. The results of TT and PPVT show that the receptive vocabulary is below expected for the level of schooling and age, and is close to the data found in 4-year-old-children. In the abilities of phonological and syntactic awareness, results indicate great deficiencies, with performances equivalent to those of 3-year-old children at the Phonological Awareness by Oral Production Test and of 4-year-olds at the Syntactic Awareness Test. No progression was found according to the increase of school grade. The tests Word-Reading Efficiency, Naming Images by Choosing Words and Naming Images by Writing were taken by 4 participants that presented deficits in the reading ability with graphophonemic decoding. They make more orthographic and semantic mistakes and show low capacity of naming by writing. Thus, it was possible to verify that the sample presents deficits in receptive language and work memory, difficulties in phonological and syntactic processing tasks, which are important factors to the proper development of the capacity to read and write / A Síndrome de Williams-Beuren (SWB) é uma afecção genética determinada pela microdeleção de genes contíguos em 7q11.23. O perfil cognitivo da SWB é conhecido pelo prejuízo viso-construtivo que contrasta com melhor desempenho em tarefas verbais, o que sustenta a hipótese de dissociação entre essas habilidades, conferindo a esta síndrome um quadro cognitivo e comportamental peculiar. O objetivo deste estudo é descrever o padrão das competências em provas de habilidades lingüísticas de 22 crianças e adolescentes com SWB, com idades entre 7 e 18 anos (M= 11,6; DP=3,7), estudantes do 1º ao 6º ano do ensino fundamental e de Escolas Especiais. Foram utilizados os instrumentos: WISC-III (avaliação do potencial intelectual); Wisconsin (avaliação neuropsicológica de habilidades de raciocínio abstrato e estratégias cognitivas); CBCL/6 18 (perfil comportamental); Token-Comp (TT) (memória de trabalho); Teste de Vocabulário por Imagens Peabody (TVIP) (linguagem receptiva); Prova de Consciência Fonológica por produção Oral (PCFO); Prova de Consciência Sintática (PCS); Teste de Competência de Leitura de Palavras (TCLP); Teste de nomeação de figuras por escolha de palavras (TNF1 escolha) e o Teste de nomeação de figuras por escrita (TNF2 escrita). Os resultados nos testes WISC-III, Wisconsin e CBCL/6 18 apresentaram deficiência intelectual de leve à moderada, maior dificuldade em concentração e identificação de padrões de mudança, problemas afetivos e de relacionamento, desatenção, transtornos de conduta, desafio e oposição e queixas somáticas. Nos testes TT e TVIP foi possível observar que o vocabulário receptivo está abaixo do esperado para a escolaridade e para a idade, próximo ao encontrado em crianças de 4 anos. Nas habilidades de consciência fonológica e consciência sintática, os resultados mostraram grande comprometimento, com desempenho equivalente ao de crianças de 3 anos de idade na PCFO e de 4 anos na PCS, sendo que não foi identificada progressão em relação á série. Os testes TCLP, TNF1 e TNF2 foram realizados por 4 sujeitos que apresentam déficits de habilidade de leitura com decodificação grafofonemica, cometem mais erros semânticos e ortográficos e revelam baixa capacidade de nomeação por escrita. Desta maneira, foi possível identificar que, nessa amostra, há comprometimento de linguagem receptiva e de memória de trabalho, dificuldades em tarefas de processamento fonológico e sintático, os quais são fatores importantes para o bom desenvolvimento da leitura e da escrita

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal