Healthy child, healthy future - Speech and language therapy: Factsheet for parents 1. Does my child speak clearly?

This factsheet describes how parents can help their child speak more clearly.

Healthy child, healthy future - Speech and language therapy: Factsheet for parents 5. Does my child have a voice problem?

This factsheet describes voice disorders such as 'hoarseness' in children and what parents can do to help their child with a voice problem.

Healthy child, healthy future - Speech and language therapy: Factsheet for parents 4. Dummies and talking

This factsheet gives advice to parents on the use of dummies and their effect on a child's speech.

Counsellor behaviours and patient language during brief motivational interventions: a sequential analysis of speech

AIMS: To investigate empirically the hypothesized relationship between counsellor motivational interviewing (MI) skills and patient change talk (CT) by analysing the articulation between counsellor behaviours and patient language during brief motivational interventions (BMI) addressing at-risk alcohol consumption. DESIGN: Sequential analysis of psycholinguistic codes obtained by two independent raters using the Motivational Interviewing Skill Code (MISC), version 2.0. SETTING: Secondary analysis of data from a randomized controlled trial evaluating the effectiveness of BMI in an emergency department. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 97 patients tape-recorded when receiving BMI. MEASUREMENTS: MISC variables were categorized into three counsellor behaviours (MI-consistent, MI-inconsistent and 'other') and three kinds of patient language (CT, counter-CT (CCT) and utterances not linked with the alcohol topic). Observed transition frequencies, conditional probabilities and significance levels based on odds ratios were computed using sequential analysis software. FINDINGS: MI-consistent behaviours were the only counsellor behaviours that were significantly more likely to be followed by patient CT. Those behaviours were significantly more likely to be followed by patient change exploration (CT and CCT) while MI-inconsistent behaviours and 'other' counsellor behaviours were significantly more likely to be followed by utterances not linked with the alcohol topic and significantly less likely to be followed by CT. MI-consistent behaviours were more likely after change exploration, whereas 'other' counsellor behaviours were more likely only after utterances not linked with the alcohol topic. CONCLUSIONS: Findings lend support to the hypothesized relationship between MI-consistent behaviours and CT, highlight the importance of patient influence on counsellor behaviour and emphasize the usefulness of MI techniques and spirit during brief interventions targeting change enhancement.

Gènere i bilingüisme: connectant experiències i teories. Introductory paper in Santaemilia, José, Patricia Bou, Sergio Maruenda i Gora Zaragoza International Perspectives on Gender and Language

Peer-reviewed

Regional and hemispheric determinants of language laterality: Implications for preoperative fMRI.

Language is typically a function of the left hemisphere but the right hemisphere is also essential in some healthy individuals and patients. This inter-subject variability necessitates the localization of language function, at the individual level, prior to neurosurgical intervention. Such assessments are typically made by comparing left and right hemisphere language function to determine "language lateralization" using clinical tests or fMRI. Here, we show that language function needs to be assessed at the region and hemisphere specific level, because laterality measures can be misleading. Using fMRI data from 82 healthy participants, we investigated the degree to which activation for a semantic word matching task was lateralized in 50 different brain regions and across the entire cortex. This revealed two novel findings. First, the degree to which language is lateralized across brain regions and between subjects was primarily driven by differences in right hemisphere activation rather than differences in left hemisphere activation. Second, we found that healthy subjects who have relatively high left lateralization in the angular gyrus also have relatively low left lateralization in the ventral precentral gyrus. These findings illustrate spatial heterogeneity in language lateralization that is lost when global laterality measures are considered. It is likely that the complex spatial variability we observed in healthy controls is more exaggerated in patients with brain damage. We therefore highlight the importance of investigating within hemisphere regional variations in fMRI activation, prior to neuro-surgical intervention, to determine how each hemisphere and each region contributes to language processing. Hum Brain Mapp, 2010. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

The interactional space in CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) and EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classrooms

Aquest estudi pretén investigar els intercanvis verbals mestre/a – aprenent(s) en dos contextos d'instrucció diferents: classes amb un enfocament AICLE (Aprenentatge Integrat de Continguts Curriculars i Llengua Estrangera) on s’aprenen continguts no lingüístics a través de l’anglès, per una banda, i classes 'tradicionals' d'anglès com a llengua estrangera, on l’anglès és alhora objecte d’estudi i vehicle de comunicació, per una altra banda. Més concretament, les preguntes que formula el/la mestre/a, la producció oral dels aprenents i el 'feedback' del/de la mestre/a en els episodis d’atenció a la forma s’han estudiat a la llum de les principals teories provinents del camp de l’Adquisició de Segones Llengües (SLA) per tal de demostrar el seu paper en l’aprenentatge de l’anglès. El corpus de dades prové de l’enregistrament de 7 sessions AICLE i d'11 sessions EFL enregistrades en format àudio i vídeo en dos centres públics d’Educació Primària (EP) de Catalunya. A cadascuna de les escoles, el/la mateix/a mestre/a és l’encarregat/da dels dos tipus d’instrucció amb el mateix grup d’aprenents (10-11 anys d’edat), fet que permet eliminar variables individuals com l'aptitud dels aprenents o l'estil del/de la mestre/a.Els resultats mostren un cert nombre de similituds discursives entre AICLE i EFL donat que ambdós enfocaments tenen lloc en el context-classe amb unes característiques ben definides. Tal com apunta la recerca realitzada en aquest camp, la instrucció AICLE reuneix un seguit de condicions idònies per un major desenvolupament dels nivells de llengua anglesa més enllà de les classes ‘tradicionals’ d’anglès. Malgrat això, aquest estudi sembla indicar que el potencial d'AICLE pel que fa a facilitar una exposició rica a l’anglès i una producció oral significativa no s’explota degudament. En aquest sentit, els resultats d’aquest estudi poden contribuir a la formació dels futurs professors d'AICLE si es busca l’assoliment d’una complementarietat d’ambdós contextos amb l’objectiu últim de millorar els nivells de domini de la llengua anglesa.

Universal complex structures in written language

Quantitative linguistics has provided us with a number of empirical laws that characterise the evolution of languages and competition amongst them. In terms of language usage, one of the most influential results is Zipf’s law of word frequencies. Zipf’s law appears to be universal, and may not even be unique to human language. However, there is ongoing controversy over whether Zipf’s law is a good indicator of complexity. Here we present an alternative approach that puts Zipf’s law in the context of critical phenomena (the cornerstone of complexity in physics) and establishes the presence of a large-scale “attraction” between successive repetitions of words. Moreover, this phenomenon is scale-invariant and universal – the pattern is independent of word frequency and is observed in texts by different authors and written in different languages. There is evidence, however, that the shape of the scaling relation changes for words that play a key role in the text, implying the existence of different “universality classes” in the repetition of words. These behaviours exhibit striking parallels with complex catastrophic phenomena.

On the origin and scope of the second language speech production disadvatage

Los hablantes bilingües tienen un acceso al léxico más lento y menos robusto que los monolingües, incluso cuando hablan en su lengua materna y dominante. Este fenómeno, comúnmente llamado “la desventaja bilingüe” también se observa en hablantes de una segunda lengua en comparación con hablantes de una primera lengua. Una causa que posiblemente contribuya a estas desventajas es el uso de control inhibitorio durante la producción del lenguaje: la inhibición de palabras coactivadas de la lengua actualmente no en uso puede prevenir intrusiones de dicha lengua, pero al mismo tiempo ralentizar la producción del lenguaje. El primer objetivo de los estudios descritos en este informe era testear esta hipótesis mediante diferentes predicciones generadas por teorías de control inhibitorio del lenguaje. Un segundo objetivo era investigar la extensión de la desventaja bilingüe dentro y fuera de la producción de palabras aisladas, así como avanzar en el conocimiento de las variables que la modulan. En lo atingente al primer objetivo, la evidencia obtenida es incompatible con un control inhibitorio global, desafiando la idea de mecanismos específicos en el hablante bilingüe utilizados para la selección léxica. Esto implica que una explicación común para el control de lenguaje y la desventaja bilingüe en el acceso al léxico es poco plausible. En cuanto al segundo objetivo, los resultados muestran que (a) la desventaja bilingüe no tiene un impacto al acceso a la memoria; (b) la desventaja bilingüe extiende a la producción del habla conectada; y (c) similitudes entre lenguas a diferentes niveles de representación así como la frecuencia de uso son factores que modulan la desventaja bilingüe.