13 research outputs found
Concurrent Validity of the Beery–Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual–Motor Integration and the Bruininks–Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency in the Assessment of Children Ages 5 to 12 Years Referred for Occupational Therapy
No full textAbstract
Date Presented 3/31/2017
This study provides clinicians with a comparative analysis of the psychometric property of concurrent validity of two tests of motor proficiency, the Beery–Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual–Motor Integration, sixth edition, and the Bruininks–Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency–2 and to assess their usefulness in the evidence-based clinical decision-making process.
Primary Author and Speaker: Doris Obler
Additional Authors and Speakers: Tamara Avi-Itzhak</jats:p
Concurrent Validity of the Wide Range Assessment of Visual Motor Abilities in Typically Developing Children Ages 4 to 11 Years
No full text Pediatric clinicians working with school-age children use the Wide Range Assessment of Visual Motor Abilities (WRAVMA) as a method for evaluating visual perception and motor skills in children despite limited information on concurrent validity. Whether it may be substituted for the Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration (VMI) and has suitable estimates of concurrent validity were examined with a convenience sample of 91 typically developing children ages 4 to 11 years. No systematic concurrent validity between the WRAVMA and the VMI emerged. Only two subtests of the WRAVMA (Matching with Visual Perception, and Pegboard with Motor Coordination) gave scores statistically significantly correlated with those on the VMI, and these correlations were weak, accounting for very small amounts of the shared variance. As such, they have low clinical relevance. These findings do not provide evidence of concurrent validity to support the use of WRAVMA as an alternative method for the VMI for assessing children's visual perception and motor skills. </jats:p
Recall of rapidly presented random chess positions is a function of skill.
No full textA widely cited result asserts that experts’ superiority over novices in recalling meaningful material from their domain of expertise vanishes when random material is used. A review of recent chess experiments where random positions served as control material (presentation time between 3 and 10 seconds) shows, however, that strong players generally maintain some superiority over weak players even with random positions, although the relative difference between skill levels is much smaller than with game positions. The implications of this finding for expertise in chess are discussed and the question of the recall of random material in other domains is raised
Language Biographies of two Croatian Lecturers: Comparison of Foreign Language Acquisition
No full textForeign language acquisition research based on language biographies is a relatively new research method. A new explicit form was created in the mid-nineties of the last century, whereas the interest in researching personal experience of language and language acquisition has existed even earlier, as for instance can be seen in Obler, L.; Fein, D. (1988): The exceptional brain. Language biographies can basically be described as biographical method established in social sciences, where war biographies and women's biographies are generally known as research methods to study and describe certain topics. Language biographies are used to portray personal experiences on the topic of language acquisition and language repertoire based on interviews and/or questionnaires. Language acquisition and language usage differ from person to person, depending on their social, historically-biographical surrounding, heavily depending on their personal living situation. Languages are linked to certain biographical situations, i.e. family relations and/or other places where people get in contact with language(s) (see: Krumm: 18). Moreover, language acquisition is not a linear process; social and situational influences as well as personal attitudes and individual language contacts have a big impact on it, thus it is a necessity to focus research on individual language identity concepts. Inspired by an article under the title „Als Kind, im Ausland oder nie“ [1] (As child, abroad or never) written by Heinrich Stalg this contribution focuses on the analysis of second/foreign language acquisition of two Croatian lecturers at the University of Rijeka based on differences in their language biographies. The author of the above mentioned article states that a foreign language is learned as child, abroad or never, striking me as a central question which is being followed-up in the course of the research and analysis of the two language biographies. As a result, the hypothesis of Stalg that a language is learned “as child, abroad or never” should be confirmed or destroyed based on analysis of the language biographies of the two lecturers which were recorded in a questionnaire and an additional interview. This study is not meant to be holistic and representative, it is merely an insight into two different language biographies, varying in the way the second/foreign language was acquired based on different life situations, analyzed and described from the point of view of the two interviewees. Furthermore, the study concentrates on acquisition of German as a second/foreign language and other foreign languages are mentioned but not taken into consideration in the analysis.[1] Stalg, H., Handbuch für ausländische Studienbewerber , Kap. X, Manuskrip
Identification of emotion in a dichotic listening task: event-related brain potential and behavioral findings
No full textThe lateralization of emotion perception has been examined using stimuli in both auditory and visual modalities. Studies using dichotic stimuli have generally supported the hypothesis of right-hemisphere dominance for emotion perception, whereas studies of facial and verbal emotion perception have provided evidence for the right-hemisphere and valence hypotheses. A dichotic target detection task was developed to enable acquisition of event-related potentials (ERP) from subjects engaged in emotion detection. Nonsense syllables (e.g., ba, pa) stated in seven different emotional intonations were dichotically presented to 24 young adults, in a target detection task during four separate blocks (target emotions: happiness, interest, anger, or sadness). Accuracy and reaction time and ERP measures were also collected. ERPs were recorded from 14 scalp electrodes with a nose reference and quantified for N100, sustained negativity, late positivity, and slow wave. Significantly greater left-than right-ear accuracy was obtained for the identification of target prosodic emotion. Hemispheric asymmetries of N100 and sustained negativity This study is based on a doctoral dissertation conducted by the first author for Queens College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York. Partial support was provided by National Institutes of Mental Health Grants MH36295 (GB) and MH42172 ( JB). We are grateful to Drs. H. Ehrlichman, R. Johnson, and H. Sackeim for their insightful comments as members of the dissertation committee; to Dr. J. Towey for his contributions and support; to Dr. J. Welkowitz for consultation regarding aspects of methodology; to Dr. L. K. Obler for access to equipment during the stimulus development phase; and to D. Schechter for access to the normal subject pool at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Address were found, with left-hemisphere amplitudes greater than right-hemisphere amplitudes. These ERP asymmetries were not significantly correlated with the left-ear dichotic advantage and may be related more to early phonetic processing than to emotion perception. Since the behavioral evidence supports the right-hemisphere hypothesis for emotion perception, behavioral and ERP asymmetries evident in this task reflect separable patterns of brain lateralization
Hemispheric dominance and language proficiency levels in the four macro skills of Western Mindanao State university college students
No full textThis study was conducted to determine the relationship between the hemispheric dominance (HD) and the English proficiency (EP) scores in the four macro skills of the Western Mindanao State University college students. It hypothesized that students’ HD would have a significant correlation a) with their EP scores in listening, speaking, reading and writing, b) with their global EP score, c) with both the macro and global scores when respondents would be grouped according to age, gender and area of specialization. In this study, there were 240 respondents selected through purposive, stratified, and random sampling techniques from the 5,096 students of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Engineering and Education. Using the standardized HD Test, the standardized Listening and Reading Comprehension Tests, the researcher-made Speaking and Writing Skill Tests and Cloze Test and employing mainly the Pearson r for the statistical analysis, the study concluded: 1) that most of the students of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Engineering and Education of Western Mindanao State University were left-brained (74.6%); 2) that the students were “good” in speaking, “fair” in listening and writing skills but “ poor” in reading and in global English; 3) that there was no significant relationship between the students’ hemisphericity and their EP scores in listening, speaking, reading, writing and global proficiency tests; and 4) that a significant relationship was shown between HD and EP scores when respondents were grouped according to age and area of specialization only.hemisphericity, language performance, English, hemispheric dominance, right brain, left brain, whole brain, speaking, listening, reading, writing
Psycholinguistic factors of fossilization in the english language learning
No full textFossilization as a unique feature of interlanguage systems manifests itself in the cessation of the development of certain linguistic phenomena that remain unchanged in relation to the target language. Although the vast majority of students’ errors evolve towards normal structures and then disappear, some of them stabilize permanently. The purpose of this paper is to try to find the answer to the question: are there any features of persistent fossilization of lexical-grammatical structures in the interlanguage of Polish students learning English? The research material was provided by a study conducted on a group of 15 secondary school students in the years 2013–2016. The four-year study consisted of a systematic analysis of language errors that kept appearing in the students’ written tasks, regardless of the type and quantity of teaching material provided, the length of the study period, the age of the students and the exposure to a variety of teaching techniques. The author attempts to present the phenomenon of fossilization and its main psycholinguistic [email protected] w BiałymstokuAdjemian C. (1976), On the nature of interlanguage systems, „Language Learning” 26(2), 297–320.Arabski J. (2007), Transfer międzyjęzykowy, w: Psychologiczne aspekty dwujęzyczności, red. I. Kurcz, Gdańsk: Gdańskie Wydawnictwo Psychologiczne, s. 341–352.Bley-Vroman R. (1989), What is the logical problem of foreign language learning?, w: Linguistic Perspective on Second Language Acquisition, red. S. Gass i J. Schachter, Cambridge: CUP, s. 41–68.Ellis R. (2000), Second Language Acquisition, Oxford: OUP.Ellis R. (1995), Understanding Second language Acquisition, Oxford: OUP.Han Z-H. (2003), Fossilization: From Simplicity to Complexity, „International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism”, 6/2, 95–128.Kellerman E. (1989), The imperfect conditional: fossilization, cross-linguistic influence and natural tendencies in a foreign language setting, w: Bilingualism across the life span, red. K. Hyltenstam i L. Obler, Cambridge: CUP, s. 87–115.Komorowska H. (1980), Nauczanie gramatyki języka obcego a interferencja, Warszawa: WSiP.Larsen-Freeman D. (2006), Second Language Acquisition and the Issue of Fossilization: There Is No End, And There Is No State, w: Studies in Fossilization in Second Language Acquisition, red. Z. Han i T. Odlin, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, s. 189–200.Lightbown P. (2000), Classroom SLA Research and Second Language Teaching, „Applied Linguistics”, 21/4, 431–462.Lightbown P., Spada N. (1999), How languages are learnt, Oxford: OUP.Long M. (2003), Stabilization and fossilization in interlanguage development, w: The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, red. C. Doughty i M. Long, Oxford: Blackwell, s. 487–536.Odlin T. (1989), Language Transfer. Cross-linguistic Influence in Language Learning, Cambridge: CUPSchachter J. (1990), On the Issues of completeness In Second Language Acquisition, „Second Language Research”, 6, 93–124.Selinker L. (1972), Interlanguage, „IRAL”, 10, 209–231.Selinker L. (1992), Rediscovering Interlanguage, Londyn: Longman Group UK Limited.Selinker L. (2006), Afterword:Fossilization ‘or’ Does Your Mind Mind, w: Studies in Fossilization in Second Language Acquisition, red. Z. Han i T. Odlin, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, s. 201–210.Selinker L., Lakshmanan U. (1992), Language Transfer and Fossilization: The Multiple Effects Principle, w: Language Transfer in Language Learning, red. S. Gass i L. Selinker, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, s. 197–216.Tarone E. (2006), Interlanguage, w: Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, red. K. Brown, wyd. IV, Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, s. 1715–1719.White L. (2003), On the Nature of Interlanguage Representation: Universal Grammar in the Second Language, w: The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, red. C.J. Doughty i M.H. Long, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, s. 19–39.Zybert J. (1999), Errors in Foreign Language Learning. The Case of Polish Learners of English, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo UW.17133
Estudio del componente léxico y morfosintáctico en pacientes afásicos bilingües del catalán y del castellano.
No full textThe present study examines the lingusitic performance of a group of bilingual aphasics patients regarding the lexical and morphosyntactic language components. We have adopted the cognitive neuropsychological approach and the case study methodology .The main aim has been to determine what specific language problems the patients have in the two language components, and to find possible dissociations that can contribute to elaborate a model to account of language processing in individuals without brain damage.We have studied a sample offive aphasic patients (three Catalan-Spanish bilinguals and two Spanish monolinguals), four men and one woman, who were between 53 and 79 years old (69.4 on average). All of them were right handed. The ethiology of the brain injury was in all cases a cerebral vascular accident, and the average latency was 55.4 months. For each of the patients, a right handed control subject was selected who had the same age, sex, education level and first language as the corresponding patient. Both patients and control subjects were asked to perform different oral production and comprehesion tasks. The production tasks included spontaneous speech, object and action naming, and a word -nonword repetition task. The comprehension tasks were object and action identification, lexical decision, grammaticality judgement, sentence construction, and picture-sentence matching tasks.The analysis of the performance of the five patients in the tasks mentioned above revealed a common symptomatology, although differences were also observed. The main findings can be summarized as follow:a).- All the patients showed, to different degrees, symptoms associated with agrammatism.b).- Their production was more altered than their comprehension, although the later was very often asyntactic.c).- As it is expected in agnimmatic patients, they had difficulties with free and bound grammatical morphemes. The type of emors observed with the free morphemes were omissions (that are characteristic of Broca aphasics) and substitutions (that are normally found in Wernicke patients, but they can also be found in agrammatic patients; see Blesser, 1984 and Menn and Obler, 1990). In the case ofbound morphemes, only substitutions were observed. It is important to mention that two of the patients showed a free and bound doble dissociation; that is, one had only problems with free morphemes (R.C.), and the other with bound morphemes (J.P.). Taking Garrett's (1991) model as a theoretical framework, the problems the patients had with grammatical morphemes could be due to deficits concerning the positional processing level. If we adopt Levelt's (1999 )model, these problems could have originated in the access process of the lexeme, either due to an inability to retrieve the word morphological information (omissions) or because of an incorrect selection of this information (substitutions). The double dissociation shown by J .P .and R. C. suggests that the mechanisms that ubderlie the processing of free and bound grammatical morhemes may be different.d).- The five patients had difficulties in retrieving the verbs in the context of a sentence, specifically their argument structure; a symptom that is also associated to agrammatism. These difficulties and the frequent use of light verbs could account for the patients' problems in constructing sentences. In addition, all of them had problems with sentences that involved movement of constituents (e.g., passive sentences).e).- Finally, we observed that all the patients had, to different degrees, word fmding difficulties (i.e., anomia) in tasks where the language material was presented in isolation (i.e., naming an object), as well as in connected speech. The anomia probably contributed to the patients' low speech rate. One of the patients, J.P., had more difficulties in retrieving nouns than verbs (i.e., a noun-verb dissociation). These difficulties cannot be attributed to a semantic deficit, since the patient showed a good performance in object and action identification. The noun-verb dissociation rules out an articulatory deficit. Following Caramazza ' s ( 1997) proposal, we suggest that the patient's anomia is due to a grammatical category deficit. In particular, this author proposes that grammatical category information is located in the input and output phonological lexicons, and that a noun-verb dissociation of the sort we observed in our patient would be located in the output phonological lexicon.Regarding the performance of the bilingual patients, we can conclude that the problems are generally very similar in the two languages. In those cases in which some differences were observed, the patient's performance in the second language was better than that of their first language; a recovery pattern that has been observed in 40% of the reported cases of bilingual aphasia.Para llevar a cabo el presente trabajo se ha adoptado el enfoque de la Neuropsicología cognitiva, utilizando la metodología de estudio de casos, con la finalidad de estudiar los distintos tipos de alternaciones que presentan los pacientes. Asimismo, con esta metodología se pretenden encontrar disociaciones que contribuyan a estructurar un modelo de procesamiento del lenguaje en personas sin dafio cerebral.La muestra estaba formada por cinco pacientes (tres de ellos bilingües del catalán y del castellano y dos monolingües castellanos), y cinco sujetos control que coincidían en características como edad, sexo, nivel cultural y primera lengua. La muestra experimental la componían cuatro hombres y una mujer de edades que oscilaban entre los 53 y los 79 afios de edad, siendo la edad media de 69.4 afios, todos diestros. La etiología en todos los casos fue por accidente cerebro vascular y la latencia media fue de 55.4 meses. A todos los sujetos se les administraron tareas tanto de producción como de comprensión oral. Dentro de las primeras, se incluyeron tareas de producción oral espontanea, tareas de denominación tareas de repetición y construcción de oraciones. Dentro de las segundas, se utilizaron tareas de identificación, de decisión léxica, de juicios de gramaticalidad, y tareas de relacionar una oración con undibujo.Los resultados obtenidos mostraron la existencia de una sintomatologia com(m en todos los pacientes, aunque también se observaron algunas diferencias.a).- En primer lugar, se comprobó que todos los pacientes, monolingües y bilingües, mostraron en mayor o menor medida sintomatologia propia del agramatismo.b).- En segundo lugar, se observo una mayor alternación de la producción que de la comprensión, aunque esta fue asintáctica en todos los pacientes.c).- En tercer lugar, todos los pacientes presentaron dificultades generales en el uso de los morfemas gramaticales libres y ligados. Los pacientes cometieron tanto omisiones (típicas de los Broca) como sustituciones de morfemas libres (típicas de los Wernicke aunque autores como Blesser, 1984 y Menn y Obler, 1990 también comprobaron que sus pacientes agramaticos producían errores de sustitución en estas partículas), y sustituciones en el caso de los morfemas gramaticales ligados. Basándonos en el modelo de Garrett (1991), los problemas con el uso de los morfemas gramaticales podrían localizarse en el nivel posicional de procesamiento, mientras que si nos centrarnos en el modelo de Levelt et al (1999), las alternaciones de tipo morfológico se situarían en el proceso de acceso a los lexema a partir de los lemmas, no recuperando la información morfológica en el caso de las omisiones y seleccionando de forma errónea dicha información en el caso de las sustituciones. Es importante mencionar que dos de los pacientes mostraron una disociación doble en relación a estos morfemas; es decir , uno de los pacientes tuvo problemas con los morfemas gramaticales libres (RC) y otro solo con los ligados (J.P.). El hecho de haberse observado esta disociación podría indicar que los mecanismos de procesamiento que subyacen a unos y a otros son distintos.d).- En cuarto lugar, se comprobó que todos los pacientes manifestaron problemas a la hora de recuperar los verbos principalmente en contexto oracional, como es característico de los agramaticos. Estos problemas se concretaron en dificultades para recuperar la información de la estructura argumental de los verbos. Estas dificultades, junto al uso frecuente de verbos ligeros, pudieron contribuir a los fallos de los pacientes en la construcción de oraciones, especialmente con movimiento de constituyentes (ej., pasivas).e).- En quinto y último lugar, nuestros pacientes presentaron en mayor o menor medida dificultades para encontrar palabras (i.e., anomia), tanto en tareas que presentaron el material de forma aislada (i.e., denominar unos objetos), como en el habla conectada. Estas dificultades anomicas pudieron ser en parte responsables de la tasa de habla tan reducida que presentaron todos ellos. Uno de los pacientes, J.P., tuvo mayores problemas para recuperar los nombres que los verbos (disociación nombre-verbo). Estos problemas no pueden ser debidos a un déficit semántico, dada la buena ejecución de J.P. en las tareas de identificación de objetos y de acciones. La rnisma disociación excluye un déficit articulatorio. Siguiendo la propuesta de Caramazza (1997), sugerimos que la anomia de J.P. es debida a un déficit de categoría gramatical. En particular, Caramazza propone que la informacion sobre la categoría gramatical esta representada en léxico fonologico de entrada y de salida, y que una disociación como la observada en J .P. se localizaría en el output fonologico de salida.En relación a la ejecución de los pacientes bilingües, podemos concluir que los problemas fueron muy similares en ambas lenguas. Cuando se observaron diferencias, la ejecución en la segunda lengua (castellano) fue mejor que en la primera (catalán). Este patrón de recuperación ha sido observado en un 40% de los casos publicados sobre afasia bilingüe
THE effects of ageing on driving related performance
No full textAccording to one estimate, about 40 percent of the driving population will be over the age of 60by the year 2020 in the UK and currently, several hundred thousand drivers with dementia holddriving licenses. The number of motor vehicle crashes per unit distance of automobile travel is“U”-shaped, with risk increasing slightly between the ages of 55 and 60, but risk increasing witheach successive five-year interval. Some individuals who have mild dementia possess sufficientdriving skills to be designated as fit drivers. The most challenging assessment and decision for thephysician/licensing authority as regards fitness to drive lies in drivers who are questionablydemented or are in a state of very mild dementia.In the absence of a reliable standard protocol, some clinicians make judgment based on selfreporting,which has risks associated with it as lack of insight and judgment are potential commontraits of the population experiencing cognitive decline. Seldom is recourse made by healthprofessionals to on-road assessment as a first alternative as it requires a fee and such testingcenters are not readily available everywhere. This research addresses this issue of theidentification of cognitive tests that can be used to assess an individual’s ability to drive andespecially of those individuals that are questionably demented and are the most difficult toidentify. A younger and an older group consisting of 56 drivers in total were administered ninedifferent cognitive tests and two drives (Drive-I and Drive-II) on the STISIM driving simulator.The cognitive test ufov3 (involving the identification of a central target and simultaneously theradial localization of a peripheral target embedded in distracter triangles), which is the thirdsubtest of the UFOV (Useful Field of View) test showed the highest discriminating ability inseparating “poor-drivers” from “not-poor-drivers”, with 92.86 % of the drivers correctlyclassified. The next best discriminating ability in decreasing order of strength was that of dichoticlistening test, trail making test, rey-copy test and paper folding test. Also, age was found to be anexcellent discriminator of “poor-drivers” and “not-poor-drivers” with 91.07 % of the driverscorrectly classified. A composite cognitive measure consisting of the sum of all nine cognitivetests was not a better predictor than the ufov3 test alone; overall it was still an excellentdiscriminator, classifying 89.29 % of drivers correctly. The commonly recommended ClockDrawing test and the Trail Making test did not emerge as significant predictors of driving ability.A general driving skills linear model for prediction purposes was derived that explained 59 % ofthe variation in a general driving performance index with the ufov3 test, the dichotic listening testand the rey-recall test as significant predictors. Recommendations are made as to how this testshould be used to screen potentially at risk drivers
Rhetorical features and disciplinary cultures : a genre-based study of academic book reviews in linguistics, chemistry, and economics
No full textTese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e ExpressãoInvestigação das conexões existentes entre retórica e discursos disciplinares, através da análise textual de cento e oitenta resenhas acadêmicas em inglês em lingüística, economia e química, e de entrevistas com editores de resenhas de revistas acadêmicas internacionais em cada área. Exame das diferenças e semelhanças existentes entre os movimentos retóricos e os termos de elogio e crítica comumente empregados por resenhadores em cada disciplina para avaliar e descrever novas publicações. As regularidades de função, conteúdo e forma da informação podem definir a existência de um mesmo gênero textual. As variações específicas em cada disciplina sugerem a necessidade de se desenvolver programas de ensino de línguas para fins acadêmicos que explorem as características macroestruturais de gêneros textuais, sem deixar de considerar as idiossincrasias das práticas discursivas em cada disciplina. Concluiu-se que a apropriação de um mesmo gênero textual responde à organização epistemológica da área de conhecimento específica, evidenciando-se assim as conexões entre texto e contexto de produção. A exploração da diversidade de valores e recortes epistemológicos das culturas disciplinares pode contribuir para a formação de leitores e escritores mais críticos em relação às práticas discursivas encontradas em textos acadêmicos em suas respectivas disciplinas
