Language phenotypes in children with sex chromosome trisomies.

Sex chromosome trisomies (47,XXX, 47,XXY and 47,XYY) are known to be a risk factor for language disorder, but it is hard to predict outcomes, because many cases are identified only when problems are found. We recruited children aged 5-16 years with all three types of trisomy, and divided them into a High Bias group, identified in the course of investigations for neurodevelopmental problems, and a Low Bias group, identified via prenatal screening or other medical investigations. Children from a twin sample were used to compare pattern and severity of language problems: they were subdivided according to parental concerns about language/history of speech-language therapy into a No Concerns group (N = 118) and a Language Concerns group (N = 57).

What Box: A task for assessing language lateralization in young children.

The assessment of active language lateralization in infants and toddlers is challenging. It requires an imaging tool that is unintimidating, quick to setup, and robust to movement, in addition to an engaging and cognitively simple language processing task. Functional Transcranial Doppler Ultrasound (fTCD) offers a suitable technique and here we report on a suitable method to elicit active language production in young children.

Correction: No population bias to left-hemisphere language in 4-year-olds with language impairment.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.7717/peerj.507.

Erratum: Parental phonological memory contributes to prediction of outcome of late talkers from 20 months to 4 years: a longitudinal study of precursors of specific language impairment.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/1866-1955-4-3.].

No population bias to left-hemisphere language in 4-year-olds with language impairment.

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.

Parental phonological memory contributes to prediction of outcome of late talkers from 20 months to 4 years: a longitudinal study of precursors of specific language impairment.

Background: Many children who are late talkers go on to develop normal language, but others go on to have longer-term language difficulties. In this study, we considered which factors were predictive of persistent problems in late talkers.

Methods: Parental report of expressive vocabulary at 18 months of age was used to select 26 late talkers and 70 average talkers, who were assessed for language and cognitive ability at 20 months of age.

dopOSCCI: a functional transcranial Doppler ultrasonography summary suite for the assessment of cerebral lateralization of cognitive function.

We present a description of a new software package, 'dopOSCCI', which summarises data from experimental studies where functional transcranial Doppler ultrasonography (fTCD) is used to compare hemispheric rates of blood flow in order to assess lateralization of a cognitive process. The software provides a graphical user interface to summarise analogue and digital data collected using Multi-Dop Doppler Ultrasound devices (DWL Multidop T2: manufacturer, DWL Elektronische Systeme, Singen, Germany). The unique aspects of dopOSCCI allow multi-file processing, multi-event marker processing, behavioural and multi-session summaries, image file data visualization, and tab-delimited output files which includes split-half, single-trial summaries and data quality variables.

Assessment of cerebral lateralization in children using functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound (fTCD).

There are many unanswered questions about cerebral lateralization. In particular, it remains unclear which aspects of language and nonverbal ability are lateralized, whether there are any disadvantages associated with atypical patterns of cerebral lateralization, and whether cerebral lateralization develops with age. In the past, researchers interested in these questions tended to use handedness as a proxy measure for cerebral lateralization, but this is unsatisfactory because handedness is only a weak and indirect indicator of laterality of cognitive functions.