Comprehension of clitic pronouns by children with cochlear implants: the role of sentence stress.

Objectives: This study investigates the role of sentence stress on the comprehension of sentences with clitic pronouns (unstressed morphemes and a typical feature of Romance languages) by children with cochlear implants (CIs).

Methods: Thirteen children (seven girls) with CIs and 15 children (seven girls) with NH between eight and 12 years who are monolingual speakers of Brazilian Portuguese participated on a computerized sentence comprehension task that involved manipulation of stress placement of possible antecedent words to clitic pronouns.

Results: Children with CIs were significantly less accurate than children with NH in comprehending sentences with clitics, regardless of sentence stress.

Longitudinal trends (2011-2020) of premature mortality and years of potential life loss (YPLL) and associated covariates of the 62 New York State counties.

Background: New York State (NYS) is the 27 largest state and the 4 most populous state in the U.S., with close to 20 million people in 62 counties.

Are prosodic effects on sentence comprehension dependent on age?

Purpose: to investigate prosodic boundary effects on the comprehension of attachment ambiguities in Brazilian Portuguese and to test two hypotheses relying on the notion of boundary strength: the absolute boundary hypothesis (ABH) and the relative boundary hypothesis (RBH). Manipulations of prosodic structure influence how listeners interpret syntactically ambiguous sentences. However, the role of prosody in spoken language comprehension of sentences has received limited attention in languages other than English, particularly from a developmental perspective.

How Word/Non-Word Length Influence Reading Acquisition in a Transparent Language: Implications for Children's Literacy and Development.

Decoding skills are crucial for literacy development and they tend to be acquired early in transparent languages, such as Brazilian Portuguese. It is essential to better understand which variables may affect the decoding process. In this study, we investigated the processes of decoding as a function of age of children who are exposed to a transparent language.

Prosodic Boundary Effects on Syntactic Disambiguation in Children With Cochlear Implants.

Purpose: This study investigated prosodic boundary effects on the comprehension of attachment ambiguities in children with cochlear implants (CIs) and normal hearing (NH) and tested the absolute boundary hypothesis and the relative boundary hypothesis. Processing speed was also investigated.

Method: Fifteen children with NH and 13 children with CIs (ages 8-12 years) who are monolingual speakers of Brazilian Portuguese participated in a computerized comprehension task with sentences containing prepositional phrase attachment ambiguity and manipulations of prosodic boundaries.

Syntactic comprehension and working memory in children with specific language impairment, autism or Down syndrome.

This study examined syntactic assignment for predicates and reflexives as well as working memory effects in the sentence comprehension of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), Down syndrome (DS), high functioning Autism (HFA) and Typical Language Development (TLD). Fifty-seven children (35 boys and 22 girls) performed a computerised picture-selection sentence comprehension task. Predicate attachment and reflexive antecedent assignment (with working memory manipulations) were investigated.

Lexical priming in fluent and with developmental stuttering children.

Purpose: To examine the possible relationship between lexical variables (categorization and naming) and developmental stuttering.

Methods: Thirty Brazilian Portuguese speaking children with ages ranging from 7 to 9 years and 11 months participated in the study. We applied a lexical priming paradigm to experimentally investigate whether children with developmental stuttering (Research Group) differed from their fluent peers (Control Group), with respect to reaction time in three conditions - control (without prime); semantically related prime, and semantically independent prime - of two experimental tasks: categorization and naming of the target stimulus.

Children with cochlear implants: communication skills and quality of life.

Unlabelled: Given the multidimensional scope of cochlear implants, there is a growing need to assess clinical measures related communicative abilities and more general aspects involved in the effectiveness of treatment, such as quality of life.

Aim: To translate and adapt an international questionnaire of quality of life to Brazilian Portuguese; to apply the questionnaire in parents of children with cochlear implant to assess quality of life of children after cochlear implantation; to analyze correlations among factors related to quality of life; to analyze correlations between quality of life and clinical measures of outcome.

Method: Prospective study in which parents of children with cochlear implants responded to validated instruments on quality of life and communication abilities.

Syntactic structural assignment in Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children with specific language impairment.

Purpose: In this study, the authors examined the comprehension of sentences with predicates and reflexives that are linked to a nonadjacent noun as a test of the hierarchical ordering deficit (HOD) hypothesis. That hypothesis and more modern versions posit that children with specific language impairment (SLI) have difficulty in establishing nonadjacent (hierarchical) relations among elements of a sentence. The authors also tested whether additional working memory demands in constructions containing reflexives affected the extent to which children with SLI incorrectly structure sentences as indicated by their picture-pointing comprehension responses.

Speech and myofunctional exercise physiology: a critical review of the literature.

Purpose: To analyze the scientific literature about the physiology and effects of exercises used in the treatment of oral myofunctional disorders.

Research Strategy: The methodology used followed the concepts of the Cochrane Handbook and involved question formulation related to the topic of investigation, identification and selection of the studies, and a critical evaluation of the selected articles.

Selection Criteria: Papers were selected on PubMed database using the following keyword combinations: "physiology exercise AND speech, language and hearing science", "exercise physiology AND speech therapy", "exercise physiology AND myofunctional therapy", and "physiology exercise AND swallowing therapy".

Linguistic and auditory temporal processing in children with specific language impairment.

Background: Several studies suggest the association of specific language impairment (SLI) to deficits in auditory processing. It has been evidenced that children with SLI present deficit in brief stimuli discrimination. Such deficit would lead to difficulties in developing phonological abilities necessary to map phonemes and to effectively and automatically code and decode words and sentences.