Dorothy Bishop

It has been proposed that children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have a selective deficit in procedural learning, with relatively spared declarative learning. In previous studies we and others confirmed deficits in procedural learning of sequences, using both verbal and nonverbal materials. Here we studied the same children using a task that implicates the declarative system, auditory-visual paired associate learning. There were parallel tasks for verbal materials (vocabulary learning) and nonverbal materials (meaningless patterns and sounds). Participants were 28 children with SLI aged 7-11 years, 28 younger typically-developing children matched for raw scores on a test of receptive grammar, and 20 typically-developing children matched on chronological age. Children were given four sessions of paired-associate training using a computer game adopting an errorless learning procedure, during which they had to select a picture from an array of four to match a heard stimulus. ...

Electroencephalographic data are easily contaminated by signals of non-neural origin. Independent component analysis (ICA) can help correct EEG data for such artifacts. Artifact independent components (ICs) can be identified by experts via visual inspection. But artifact features are sometimes ambiguous or difficult to notice, and even experts may disagree about how to categorise a particular component. It is therefore important to inform users on artifact properties, and give them the opportunity to intervene. Here we first describe artifacts captured by ICA. We review current methods to automatically select artifactual components for rejection, and introduce the SASICA software, implementing several novel selection algorithms as well as two previously described automated methods (ADJUST, Mognon et al. Psychophysiology 2011;48(2):229; and FASTER, Nolan et al. J Neurosci Methods 2010;48(1):152). We evaluate these algorithms by comparing selections suggested by SASICA and other metho...

This paper reports a longitudinal follow-up of 71 adolescents with a preschool history of speech-language impairment, originally studied by Bishop and Edmundson (1987). These children had been subdivided at 4 years into those with nonverbal IQ 2 SD below the mean (General Delay group), and those with normal nonverbal intelligence (SLI group). At age 5;6 the SLI group was subdivided into those whose language problems had resolved, and those with persistent SLI. The General Delay group was also followed up. At age 15-16 years, these children were compared with age-matched normal-language controls on a battery of tests of spoken language and literacy skills. Children whose language problems had resolved did not differ from controls on tests of vocabulary and language comprehension skills. However, they performed significantly less well on tests of phonological processing and literacy skill. Children who still had significant language difficulties at 5;6 had significant impairments in a...

DOI: 10.1177/014572178801400214 1988 14: 148 The Diabetes Educator J. Michael Sprafka, Michelle Crozier, David Whipple, Donald Bishop and Donna Kurth Response of Diabetic Patients to a Community-Based Education Program ... J. MICHAEL SPRAFKA, MPH, PhD ...

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Acquired disorders of language represent loss of previously acquired skills, usually with relatively specific impairments. In children with developmental disorders of language, we may also see selective impairment in some skills; but in this case, the acquisition of language or literacy is affected from the outset. Because systems for processing spoken and written language change as they develop, we should beware of drawing too close a parallel between developmental and acquired disorders. Nevertheless, comparisons between the two may yield new insights. A key feature of connectionist models simulating acquired disorders is the interaction of components of language processing with each other and with other cognitive domains. This kind of model might help make sense of patterns of comorbidity in developmental disorders. Meanwhile, the study of developmental disorders emphasizes learning and change in underlying representations, allowing us to study how heterogeneity in cognitive prof...

Traditionally, autism and specific language impairment (SLI) are regarded as distinct disorders, with differential diagnosis hinging on two features. First, in SLI one sees isolated language impairments in the context of otherwise normal development, whereas in autism a triad of impairments is seen, affecting communication, social interaction and behavioural repertoire. Second, there are different communication problems in these two conditions. Children with SLI have particular difficulty with structural aspects of language (phonology and syntax). In contrast, abnormal use of language (pragmatics) is the most striking feature of autism. However, recently, this conventional view has been challenged on three counts. First, children with autism have structural language impairments similar to those in SLI. Second, some children have symptoms intermediate between autism and SLT. Third, there is a high rate of language impairments in relatives of people with autism, suggesting aetiological continuities between SLI and autism. One interpretation of these findings is to regard autism as 'SLI plus', i.e. to assume that the only factor differentiating the disorders is the presence of additional impairments in autism. It is suggested that a more plausible interpretation is to regard structural and pragmatic language impairments as correlated but separable consequences of common underlying risk factors.

Background. An apparent paradox in the field of neuropsychology is that people with atypical cerebral lateralization do not appear to suffer any cognitive disadvantage, yet atypical cerebral lateralization is more common in children and adults with developmental language disorders. This study was designed to explore possible reasons for this puzzling pattern of results. Methods. We used functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound (fTCD) to assess cerebral blood flow during language production in 57 four-year-olds, including 15 children who had been late-talkers when first seen at 20 months of age. We categorized cerebral lateralization as left, right or bilateral, and compared proportions with each type of laterality with those seen in a previously tested sample of children aged 6-16 years. We also compared language scores at 4 years for those with typical and atypical lateralization, and then looked at the association the opposite way: comparing those with typical or impaired langua...

This twin study examined the relative contributions of genes and environment on 2nd language reading acquisition of Chinese-speaking children learning English. We examined whether specific skills-visual word recognition, receptive vocabulary, phonological awareness, phonological memory, and speech discrimination-in the 1st and 2nd languages have distinct or overlapping genetic and environmental origins. A sample of 279 Chinese twin pairs with a mean age of 6 years was tested. Univariate twin analyses were used to identify sources of individual variations in reading abilities and related cognitive-linguistic skills in Chinese and English, respectively. They were used to show both similar and distinctive patterns in these skills across Chinese and English. Bivariate Cholesky decomposition analyses indicated genetic overlaps between all parallel Chinese and English variables, as well as shared environmental overlaps in receptive vocabulary and phonological awareness. The phenotypic cor...

Although there is evidence for a close link between the development of oral vocabulary and reading comprehension, less clear is whether oral vocabulary skills relate to the development of word-level reading skills. This study investigated vocabulary and literacy in 81 children aged 8 to 10 years. In regression analyses, vocabulary accounted for unique variance in exception word reading and reading

The Tower of Hanoi (ToH) task was given to 238 children aged from 7 to 15 years, and 20 adults. Individual variation within an age band was substantial. ToH score did not correlate significantly with Verbal IQ, nor with ability to inhibit a prepotent response. We readministered the ToH to 45 children after 30 to 40 days. The test-retest correlation

Introduction. Many children with specific language impairment (SLI) have problems with language comprehension, and little is known about how to remediate these. We focused here on errors in interpreting sentences such as "the ball is above the cup", where the spatial configuration depends on word order. We asked whether comprehension of such short reversible sentences could be improved by computerized training, and whether learning by children with SLI resembled that of younger, typically-developing children. Methods. We trained 28 children with SLI aged 6-11 years, 28 typically-developing children aged from 4 to 7 years who were matched to the SLI group for raw scores on a test of receptive grammar, and 20 typically-developing children who were matched to the SLI group on chronological age. A further 20 children with SLI were given pre- and post-test assessments, but did not undergo training. Those in the trained groups were given training on four days using a computer game adopting an errorless learning procedure, during which they had to select pictures to correspond to spoken sentences such as "the cup is above the drum" or "the bird is below the hat". Half the trained children heard sentences using above/below and the other half heard sentences using before/after (with a spatial interpretation). A total of 96 sentences was presented over four sessions. Half the sentences were unique, whereas the remainder consisted of 12 repetitions of each of four sentences that became increasingly familiar as training proceeded. Results. Age-matched control children performed near ceiling (≥ 90% correct) in the first session and were excluded from the analysis. Around half the trained SLI children also performed this well. Training effects were examined in 15 SLI and 16 grammar-matched children who scored less than 90% correct on the initial training session. Overall, children's scores improved with training. Memory span was a significant predictor of improvement, even after taking into account performance on training session 1. Unlike the grammar-matched controls, children with SLI showed greater accuracy with repeated sentences compared with unique sentences. Training did not improve children's performance on a standardized test of receptive grammar. Discussion. Overall, these results indicate that a subset of children with SLI perform well below ceiling on reversible sentences with three key words and simple syntactic structure. For these children, weak verbal short-term memory appears to impair comprehension of spoken sentences. In contrast to the general finding that rule-learning benefits from variable input, these children seem to do best if given repeated exposure to the same nouns used with a given sentence frame. Generalisation to other sentences using the same syntactic frame may be more effective if preceded by such item-specific learning.

Data from two twin studies are examined,toassess genetic and environmental influences on literacy development, and the etiological relationship between language and literacy. Study 1 used children from 86 families recruited for a study of the genetics of specific language impairment (SLI), who completed tests of single-word reading and spelling. The risk of literacy problems increased with the extent of

Data from two twin studies were used to address two related questions. First, is there any association between handedness and specific speech and language impairment (SSLI) in children? Second, is there genetic influence on individual differences in handedness and, if so, are the same genes implicated in the cause of SSLI? The first study used data from 58 MZ and 26 DZ pairs previously recruited for an investigation into the genetic origins of SSLI. All pairs contained at least one child with SSLI. Handedness was assessed using a preference inventory and a tapping task from which a laterality quotient (LQ) was derived. There were no handedness differences between these twins and 172 singleborn controls, and neither measure revealed any association between handedness and SSLI. The data were equally well-fitted by a CE model (no genetic influence) and an AE model (no effect of shared environment) for both hand preference and tapping LQ. Nonshared environment was the largest influence on handedness for both measures. Bivariate analysis indicated no overlapping genetic influences on SSLI and handedness. In the second study, handedness was assessed in a general population sample of 48 MZ and 44 DZ twin pairs, aged 7 to 13 years, using a preference inventory and a peg-moving task. A subset of children was also given a test that assessed persistence of hand preference when reaching across the midline. The latter was the only measure to relate to children's language status, with language-impaired children showing less midline crossing. This appears to reflect neurodevelopmental immaturity, rather than a stable trait. To investigate familial transmission of handedness, inventory data for parents and their twins were combined for both samples. The most parsimonious model was one that accounted for parent-child resemblance solely in terms of cultural transmission. Overall, there was no evidence that genes play a role in determining stable individual differences in hand preference. Insofar as there are links between handedness and speech and language difficulties, these reflect delayed neuromotor maturation.

Many children with specific language impairment (SLI) have persisting problems in the correct use of verb tense, but there has been disagreement as to the underlying reason. When we take into account studies using receptive as well as expressive language tasks, the data suggest that the difficulty for children with SLI is in knowing when to inflect verbs for tense, rather than how to do so. This is perhaps not surprising when we consider that tense does not have a transparent semantic interpretation, but depends on complex relationships between inflections and hierarchically organized clauses. An explanation in terms of syntactic limitations contrasts with a popular morpho-phonological account, the Words and Rules model. This model, which attributes problems to difficulties with applying a rule to generate regular inflected forms, has been widely applied to adult-acquired disorders. There are striking similarities in the pattern of errors in adults with anterior aphasia and children with SLI, suggesting that impairments in appreciation of when to mark tense may apply to acquired as well as developmental disorders.

Previous work suggests that most clinically significant language difficulties in children do not result from acquired brain lesions or adverse environmental experiences but from genetic factors that presumably influence early brain development. We conducted the first twin study of language delay to evaluate whether genetic and environmental factors at the lower extreme of delayed language are different from those operating in the normal range. Vocabulary at age two was assessed for more than 3000 pairs of twins. Group differences heritability for the lowest 5% of subjects was estimated as 73% in model-fitting analyses, significantly greater than the individual differences heritability for the entire sample (25%). This supports the view of early language delay as a distinct disorder. Shared environment was only a quarter as important for the language-delayed sample (18%) as for the entire sample (69%).

Turner's syndrome is a sporadic disorder of human females in which all or part of one X chromosome is deleted. Intelligence is usually normal but social adjustment problems are common. Here we report a study of 80 females with Turner's syndrome and a single X chromosome, in 55 of which the X was maternally derived (45,X[m]) and in 25 it was of paternal origin (45,X[p]). Members of the 45,X[p] group were significantly better adjusted, with superior verbal and higher-order executive function skills, which mediate social interactions. Our observations suggest that there is a genetic locus for social cognition, which is imprinted and is not expressed from the maternally derived X chromosome. Neuropsychological and molecular investigations of eight females with partial deletions of the short arm of the X chromosome indicate that the putative imprinted locus escapes X-inactivation, and probably lies on Xq or close to the centromere on Xp. If expressed only from the X chromosome of...

The “anti-equipotentiality” hypothesis maintains that language cannot develop as well in the right as in the left hemisphere after lateralised brain damage, even if the brain damage is sustained very early in life before the child has started to speak. Out of eight papers published on this topic between 1980 and 1986, seven claim to support the anti-equipotentiality view. However, only one of these papers provides data which fulfil normal scientific criteria, i.e., adequate numbers for statistical analysis and appropriate control data, and the results from this study are discrepant with those obtained by other researchers using the same measures. The remaining papers either present results which are uninterpretable, because of small sample sizes and lack of normative data, or, in some cases, provide data supporting the equipotentiality position. It is concluded that no satisfactory evidence against equipotentiality has yet been published.

X-monosomy,is a form,of Turner syndrome,(TS) in which,an entire X chromosome,is missing. It is usually assumed,that neuropsychological deficits in females,with,TS result from,insuÅcient,dosage,of gene,products,from,alleles on,the sex chromosomes. If so, then parental origin of the single X chromosome should be immaterial. However, if there are imprinted genes on the X chromosome aÄecting brain development, neuropsychological development will depend on the parental origin of the single X chromosome.,We contrasted,verbal and,visuospatial memory,in females,with a single paternal,X chromosome (45,X, females showed disproportionate forgetting relative to controls. We propose there may be one or more,imprinted,genes on the X chromosome,that aÄect the development,of lateralised brain regions important,for memory function. # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Imprinting; Verbal; Visuospatial; Monosomy;,Brain; Lateralization

A point mutation has recently been found in a gene from affected members of a family with an autosomal dominant pattern of inheritance for specific speech and language impairment. However, this does not mean we have localized the ‘gene for language’. The phenotype is complex, and the affected gene, which is concerned with regulating activity of other genes, is common to human and mouse. The discovery is nevertheless important, because it will help us to identify target genes that play a role in development of the neural circuitry involved in language.

Cognitive neuropsychology provides a theoretical framework and methods that can be of value in the study of developmental disorders, but the ``dissociation'' logic at the centre of this approach is not well suited to the developmental context. This is illustrated with ex-amples from ...

... latory suppression”). The subject is required to repeat rapidly a word or non-word such as “the the the. . .” or “blah blah blah . . .” while doing a task, and performance is compared under this condition and a control condition. The ...

An experiment investigated whether exposure to orthography facilitates oral vocabulary learning. A total of 58 typically developing children aged 8-9 years were taught 12 nonwords. Children were trained to associate novel phonological forms with pictures of novel objects. Pictures were used as referents to represent novel word meanings. For half of the nonwords children were additionally exposed to orthography, although they were not alerted to its presence, nor were they instructed to use it. After this training phase a nonword-picture matching posttest was used to assess learning of nonword meaning, and a spelling posttest was used to assess learning of nonword orthography. Children showed robust learning for novel spelling patterns after incidental exposure to orthography. Further, we observed stronger learning for nonword-referent pairings trained with orthography. The degree of orthographic facilitation observed in posttests was related to children's reading levels, with more advanced readers showing more benefit from the presence of orthography.

Developmental dyslexia and specific language impairment (SLI) were for many years treated as distinct disorders but are now often regarded as different manifestations of the same underlying problem, differing only in severity or developmental stage. The merging of these categories has been motivated by the reconceptualization of dyslexia as a language disorder in which phonological processing is deficient. The authors argue that this focus underestimates the independent influence of semantic and syntactic deficits, which are widespread in SLI and which affect reading comprehension and impair attainment of fluent reading in adolescence. The authors suggest that 2 dimensions of impairment are needed to conceptualize the relationship between these disorders and to capture phenotypic features that are important for identifying neurobiologically and etiologically coherent subgroups.

Previous work has found that auditory event-related potentials show maturational changes, with latency and amplitude of late components (N1 and P2) decreasing and increasing with age respectively. Our goal was to test the hypothesis that these changes reflect increased speed of neural processing in the auditory system. Thirty-three listeners, aged 10-50 years, were tested on a frequency discrimination task and an auditory backward recognition masking task. P1 and N1b event-related potential components were measured to tones. The N1b became larger and earlier with age, and the latency of P1 decreased with age. However, thresholds on the behavioural tasks did not change with age. Nevertheless, individual differences in the peak amplitude of N1b were independently related to frequency discrimination and degree of masking. Thus, the relationship that does exist between individual differences in psychoacoustic performance and the auditory N1b reflect a stable characteristic of the individual rather than a maturational change.