Reversal of impairment losses, firm performance and reporting incentives: Evidence from Malaysia

Malaysian Financial Reporting Standard (FRS) No. 136, Impairment of Assets, was issued in 2005. The standard requires public listed companies to report their non-current assets at no more than their recoverable amount. When the value of impaired assets is recovered, or partly recovered, FRS 136 requires the impairment charges to be reversed to its new recoverable amount. This study tests whether the reversal of impairment losses by Malaysian firms is more closely associated with economic reasons or reporting incentives. The sample of this study consists of 182 public companies listed on Bursa Malaysia (formerly known as the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange) that reported reversals of their impairment charges during the period 2006-2009. These firms are matched with firms which do not reverse impairment on the basis of industrial classification and size. In the year of reversal, this study finds that the reversal firms are more profitable (before reversals) than their matched firms. On average, the Malaysian stock market values the reversals of impairment losses positively. These results suggest that the reversals generally reflect increases in the value of the previously impaired assets. After partitioning firms that are likely to manage earnings and those that are not, this study finds that there are some Malaysian firms which reverse the impairment charges to manage earnings. Their reversals are not value-relevant, and are negatively associated with future firm performance. On the other hand, the reversals of firms which are deemed not to be earnings managers are positively associated with both future firm performance and current stock price performance, and this is the dominant motivation for the reversal of impairment charges in Malaysia. In further analysis, this study provides evidence that the opportunistic reversals are also associated with other earnings management manifestations, namely abnormal working capital accruals and the motivation to avoid earnings declines. In general, the findings suggest that the fair value measurement in impairment standard provides useful information to the users of financial statements.

The Quick Mild Cognitive Impairment (Qmci) screen: developing a new screening test for mild cognitive impairment and dementia

Introduction: Identifying mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is challenging. Few short instruments have sufficient sensitivity and specificity for use in busy clinical practice. This thesis explores the development, psychometric evaluation and validation of a new short (3–5 min) cognitive screening instrument, designed to screen for MCI and early dementia, called the Quick Mild Cognitive Impairment (Q

Argument structure and specific language impairment: retrospect and prospect

This article reflects a collaboration between the Universities of Groningen and Reading of which Frans Zwarts was the promoter. One of the outcomes was a close attention to the learning of various aspects of argument structure by children with specific language impairment (SLI) in Dutch and English. At that time and since, the focus on deficits in grammatical morphology in these children has left verb complementation as something of a syntactic Cinderella. Here we review the findings from our studies in the 1990s. We confirm that children with SLI in both languages have problems with verb specificity, with argument structure alternations and with resultative verb predicates. The very limited number of subsequent studies on verb syntax appear to support our findings. We conclude that this is an area which will repay further scrutiny – it is high time argument structure received an invitation to the ball.

Investigating relative clauses in children with specific language impairment

Background: It is well documented that children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) experience significant grammatical deficits. While much of the focus in the past has been on their morphosyntactic difficulties, less is known about their acquisition of complex syntactic structures such as relative clauses. The role of memory in language performance has also become increasingly prominent in the literature. Aims: This study aims to investigate the control of an important complex syntactic structure, the relative clause, by school age children with SLI in Ireland, using a newly devised sentence recall task. It also aims to explore the role of verbal and short-termworking memory in the performance of children with SLI on the sentence recall task, using a standardized battery of tests based on Baddeley’s model of working memory. Methods and Procedures: Thirty two children with SLI, thirty two age matched typically developing children (AM-TD) between the ages of 6 and 7,11 years and twenty younger typically developing (YTD) children between 4,7 and 5 years, completed the task. The sentence recall (SR) task included 52 complex sentences and 17 fillers. It included relative clauses that are used in natural discourse and that reflect a developmental hierarchy. The relative clauses were also controlled for length and varied in syntactic complexity, representing the full range of syntactic roles. There were seven different relative clause types attached to either the predicate nominal of a copular clause (Pn), or to the direct object of a transitive clause (Do). Responses were recorded, transcribed and entered into a database for analysis. TheWorkingMemory Test Battery for children (WMTB-C—Pickering & Gathercole, 2001) was administered in order to explore the role of short-term memory and working memory on the children’s performance on the SR task. Outcomes and Results: The children with SLI showed significantly greater difficulty than the AM-TD group and the YTD group. With the exception of the genitive subject clauses, the children with SLI scored significantly higher on all sentences containing a Pn main clause than those containing a transitive main clause. Analysis of error types revealed the frequent production of a different type of relative clause than that presented in the task—with a strong word order preference in the NVN direction indicated for the children with SLI. The SR performance for the children with SLI was most highly correlated with expressive language skills and digit recall. Conclusions and Implications: Children with SLI have significantly greater difficulty with relative clauses than YTD children who are on average two years younger—relative clauses are a delay within a delay. Unlike the YTD children they show a tendency to simplify relative clauses in the noun verb noun (NVN) direction. They show a developmental hierarchy in their production of relative clause constructions and are highly influenced by the frequency distribution of the relative clauses in the ambient language.