1,721,012 research outputs found
The visual magnocellular deficit in Chinese-speaking children with developmental dyslexia
No full textMany alphabetic studies have evidenced that individuals with developmental dyslexia (DD) have deficits in visual magnocellular (M) pathway. However, there are few studies to investigate the M function of Chinese DD. Chinese is a logographic language, and Chinese characters are complicated in structure. Visual skills and orthographic processing abilities are particularly important for efficient reading in Chinese as compared to alphabetic languages. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the visual M function of Chinese DD and whether the M function was associated with orthographic skills. In the present study, 26 dyslexic children (mean age: 10.03 years) and 27 age-matched normal children (mean age: 10.37 years) took part in a coherent motion (CM) detection task and an orthographic awareness test. The results showed that dyslexic children had a significantly higher threshold than age-matched children in CM detection task. Meanwhile, children with DD responded more slowly in orthographic awareness test, although the group difference was marginally significant. The results suggested that Chinese dyslexics had deficits both in visual M pathway processing and orthographic processing. In order to investigate the relationship between M function and orthographic skills, we made a correlation analysis between CM threshold and orthographic awareness by merging performance of dyslexic children and age-matched children. The results revealed that CM thresholds were positively correlated with reaction times in orthographic awareness test, suggesting that better M function was related to better orthographic processing skills
The effect of magnocellular-based visual-motor intervention on Chinese children with developmental dyslexia
No full textMagnocellular (M) deficit theory points out that the core deficit of developmental dyslexia (DD) is the impairment in M pathway, which has been evidenced in many previous studies. Based on the M deficit, some researchers found that visual intervention focusing on M deficit improved dyslexics' M function as well as reading abilities. However, the number and reliability of these training studies were limited. Therefore, the present study conducted an M-based visual-motor intervention on Chinese children with DD to investigate the relationship between M deficit and Chinese DD. Intervention programs included coherent motion detection, visual search, visual tracking, and juggling, which were related to M function. The results showed that M function and phonological awareness of training dyslexic group were improved to a normal level as age-matched normal children after intervention, while non-training dyslexics did not. It supported M deficit theory, and suggested M deficit might be the core deficit of Chinese DD
Researches on Atypical Lateralization of Autisms' Language Development
No full textAutism spectrum disorders (ASD) is a widely developmental disabilities, with the main clinical features including barriers to social interaction, verbal and non-verbal communication defects, narrow interests and stereotyped behaviors. The present article aims to introduce some information about language impairment of autism, including relative researches published from 1986 to the current time on the neural mechanisms underlying autism's language impairment. This issue was addressed from brain structural, brain functional asymmetry, and the influence of handness, and at last, a summary was given based on the literatures, which is that the autism has an atypical right language lateralization both of structural and functional, there also exist available evidence that atypical handness is associated with poorer neurocognition or anomalous cerebral asymmetries. This article will be helpful for diagnosis and therapy to the autism in the future and will facilitate the research of ASDs under Chinese culture
Input-based structure-specific proficiency predicts the neural mechanism of adult L2 syntactic processing
No full textThis study used Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to explore the role of input-based structure-specific proficiency in L2 syntactic processing, using English subject-verb agreement structures as the stimuli. A pre-test/trainings/post-test paradigm of experimental and control groups was employed, and Chinese speakers who learned English as a second language (L2) participated in the experiment. At pre-test, no ERP component related to the subject-verb agreement structures violations was observed in either group. At training session, the experimental group learned the subject-verb agreement structures, while the control group learned other syntactic structures. After two continuously intensive input trainings, at post-test, a significant P600 component related to the subject-verb agreement structures violations was elicited in the experimental group, but not in the control group. These findings suggest that input training improves structure-specific proficiency, which is reflected in the neural mechanism of L2 syntactic processing. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
The Influence of Visual Magnocellular Pathway on The Recognition of Chinese Character
No full text
The present study aimed to examine the role of visual magnocellular pathway in the recognition of Chinese character. Twenty-four university students took part in this study. We simultaneously manipulated the spatial frequency and temporal frequency of Chinese characters in order to dissociate two visual conditions, that is, the visual magnocellular (M) condition and visual control condition. And a global/local decision task was adopted here to get the comparison between global processing and local processing within each visual condition. The reaction time and error rate were recorded. Results showed that in the M condition, participants responded faster in global decision than in local decision, a global precedence effect appeared; while non-significant difference in the control condition. Similarly, higher error rate was found for local decision comparing with global decision only in the M condition. It suggested that the visual magnocellular system contributes to the global processing of Chinese character.</p
The visual magnocellular-dorsal dysfunction in Chinese children with developmental dyslexia impedes Chinese character recognition
No full textThe visual magnocellular-dorsal (M-D) deficit theory of developmental dyslexia (DD) is still highly debated. Many researchers have made great efforts to investigate the relationship between M-D dysfunction and reading disability. Given that visual analysis plays an important role in Chinese reading, the present study tried to examine how the M-D dysfunction affected Chinese character recognition in Chinese children with DD. Sixteen DD children with M-D deficit, fifteen DD children with normal M-D function and twenty-seven age-matched typically developing children participated in this study. A global/local decision task was adopted, in which we manipulated the spatial frequency of target characters to separate an M-D condition from an unfiltered condition. Results of reaction times and error rates showed that in the M-D condition both M-D normal dyslexics and controls exhibited a significant global precedence effect, with faster responses and lower error rates in global decision than in local decision. In contrast, this global advantage was absent for the M-D impaired dyslexics. Accordingly, we propose that the M-D impairment present in some but not all dyslexics might influence global recognition of Chinese characters in this subgroup of children with DD, which might be implicated in their difficulties in learning to read
The Characteristics of Chinese Orthographic Neighborhood Size Effect for Developing Readers
No full textOrthographic neighborhood size (N size) effect in Chinese character naming has been studied in adults. In the present study, we aimed to explore the developmental characteristics of Chinese N size effect. One hundred and seventeen students (40 from the 3rd grade with mean age of 9 years; 40 from the 5th grade with mean age of 11 years; 37 from the 7th grade with mean age of 13 years) were recruited in the study. A naming task of Chinese characters was adopted to elucidate N-size- effect development. Reaction times and error rates were recorded. Results showed that children in the 3rd grade named characters from large neighborhoods faster than named those from small neighborhoods, revealing a facilitatory N size effect; the 5th graders showed null N size effect; while the 7th graders showed an inhibitory N size effect, with longer reaction times for the characters from large neighborhoods than for those from small neighborhoods. The change from facilitation to inhibition of neighborhood size effect across grades suggested the transition from broadly tuned to finely tuned lexical representation in reading development, and the possible inhibition from higher frequency neighbors for higher graders
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
The mechanism of deveopmental dyslexia: From behavior to genetics
No full textDevelopmental dyslexia (DD) is a specific learning disability. Exploring the mechanism of DD is of great assistance in developing the technique for diagnosis and therapy. There is a battery of researches about DD in west countries using alphabetic language as their mother tongue, though some opinions have not been widely accepted. The studies about Chinese DD are limited because it started relatively later. The authors review the advances of DD researches at three levels of behavior, neuron and genetics, surrounding three leading theories of DD: the phonological theory, the magnocellular (visual and auditory) theory and the cerebellar theory. At the same time, the authors compare the findings of DD between alphabetic languages and Chinese in order to uncover the differences of DD due to their mother tongue. Finally, the authors point out that Chinese dyslexics have their special characters different from those in alphabetic language, it's greatly necessary to strengthen the researches of Chinese DD, not only for establishing the theory of Chinese DD, but also for providing Chinese evidence of language specialization
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