Modulations of right hemisphere connectivity in young children relates to the perception of spoken words.

The early school years shape a young brain's capability to comprehend and contextualize words within milliseconds of exposure. Parsing word sounds (phonological interpretation) and word recognition (enabling semantic interpretation) are integral to this process. Yet little is known about the causal mechanisms of cortical activity during these early developmental stages.

Auditory training for adults with cochlear implants: a systematic review.

Objective: To systematically review the peer-reviewed literature on the efficacy of auditory training (AT) on auditory outcomes in post lingually deafened adults with cochlear implants (CIs).

Design: A systematic review.

Study Sample: Searches of five electronic databases yielded 10 studies published after 2010 that met the inclusion criteria.

Effects of emotional cues on novel word learning in typically developing children in relation to broader autism traits.

Emotion can influence various cognitive processes. Communication with children often involves exaggerated emotional expressions and emotive language. Children with autism spectrum disorder often show a reduced tendency to attend to emotional information.

Outcomes for School-Aged Children with Aural Atresia.

This study compared the language, reading, classroom, and quality of life outcomes of primary school-aged children with aural atresia (AA) to matched controls. Participants included 10 children with AA (eight unilateral) and 10 children with typical hearing matched by chronological and mental age. All children with AA had been fitted with an amplification device.

Cross-modal emotion recognition and autism-like traits in typically developing children.

The ability to explicitly recognize emotions develops gradually throughout childhood, and children usually have greater difficulty in recognizing emotions from the voice than from the face. However, little is known about how children integrate vocal and facial cues to recognize an emotion, particularly during mid to late childhood. Furthermore, children with an autism spectrum disorder often show a reduced ability to recognize emotions, especially when integrating emotion from multiple modalities.

White noise facilitates new-word learning from context.

Listening to white noise may facilitate cognitive performance, including new word learning, for some individuals. This study investigated whether auditory white noise facilitates the learning of novel written words from context in healthy young adults. Sixty-nine participants were required to determine the meaning of novel words placed within sentence contexts during a silent reading task.

Reading Development in Children With Cochlear Implants Who Communicate via Spoken Language: A Psycholinguistic Investigation.

Purpose This study sought to comprehensively examine the reading skills and subskills of children with cochlear implants (CIs) and gain insight into the processes underlying their early reading development. Method Fourteen 6- to 9-year-old children with CIs were assessed on a range of reading and spoken language measures. Their performances were compared to a control group of 31 children with normal hearing (NH) of the same chronological and mental age.

Semantic processing in children with cochlear implants: Evidence from event-related potentials.

: Existing research has shown that children with significant hearing loss who use cochlear implants (CIs) perform worse than their hearing peers on behavioral measures of spoken language. The present study sought to examine how children with CIs process lexical-semantic incongruence, as indexed by electrophysiological evidence of the N400 effect. : Twelve children with CIs, aged between 6 and 9 years, participated in a spoken word-picture matching task while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded.

Spelling in Children With Cochlear Implants: Evidence of Underlying Processing Differences.

This study compared the spelling skills and sub-skills of young children with cochlear implants (CIs) who use spoken language only (n = 14) with those of a same-aged typically hearing (TH) control group (n = 30). Spelling accuracy was assessed using irregular and nonsense word stimuli. Error and regression analyses were conducted to provide insight into the phonological and orthographic spelling strategies used by each group.

Predicting Language Difficulties in Middle Childhood From Early Developmental Milestones: A Comparison of Traditional Regression and Machine Learning Techniques.

Purpose: The current study aimed to compare traditional logistic regression models with machine learning algorithms to investigate the predictive ability of (a) communication performance at 3 years old on language outcomes at 10 years old and (b) broader developmental skills (motor, social, and adaptive) at 3 years old on language outcomes at 10 years old.

Method: Participants (N = 1,322) were drawn from the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study (Straker et al., 2017).

The impact of auditory white noise on semantic priming.

It has been proposed that white noise can improve cognitive performance for some individuals, particularly those with lower attention, and that this effect may be mediated by dopaminergic circuitry. Given existing evidence that semantic priming is modulated by dopamine, this study investigated whether white noise can facilitate semantic priming. Seventy-eight adults completed an auditory semantic priming task with and without white noise, at either a short or long inter-stimulus interval (ISI).

Effects of Prosodic and Semantic Cues on Facial Emotion Recognition in Relation to Autism-Like Traits.

The current study investigated whether those with higher levels of autism-like traits process emotional information from speech differently to those with lower levels of autism-like traits. Neurotypical adults completed the autism-spectrum quotient and an emotional priming task. Vocal primes with varied emotional prosody, semantics, or a combination, preceded emotional target faces.

White noise enhances new-word learning in healthy adults.

Research suggests that listening to white noise may improve some aspects of cognitive performance in individuals with lower attention. This study investigated the impact of white noise on new word learning in healthy young adults, and whether this effect was mediated by executive attention skills. Eighty participants completed a single training session to learn the names of twenty novel objects.

Late talkers and later language outcomes: Predicting the different language trajectories.

Purpose: The aim of the current study was to investigate the risk factors present at 2 years for children who showed language difficulties that persisted from 2 to 10 years and difficulties that emerged later, at 10 years.

Method: Participants (n = 783) were drawn from the Raine Study in Western Australia. Patterns of change from 2 to 10 years were identified based on child performance on the Language Development Survey and the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, respectively.

A Relationship Between Early Language Skills and Adult Autistic-Like Traits: Evidence from a Longitudinal Population-Based Study.

The current study examined the relationship between early language ability and autistic-like traits in adulthood, utilising data from 644 participants from a longitudinal study of the general population. Language performance at 2 years was measured with the Language Development Survey (LDS), and at 20 years the participants completed the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ). Vocabulary size at 2 years was negatively associated with Total AQ score, as well as scores on the Communication, and Social Skills subscales.

Change in receptive vocabulary from childhood to adulthood: associated mental health, education and employment outcomes.

Background: Population-based studies have found that early language delays are associated with poorer long-term outcomes in adolescence and adulthood. Few studies have explored the influence of change in language ability over time on adult outcomes.

Aim: To examine the educational, vocational and mental health outcomes for adults accounting for different vocabulary developmental profiles over a 16-year period.

Predicting receptive vocabulary change from childhood to adulthood: A birth cohort study.

This study examined the parental and early childhood risk factors of different receptive vocabulary developmental profiles from childhood to adulthood. The sample (n=1914), comprised of monolingual English speaking participants, from the Mater University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy (MUSP). Receptive vocabulary was measured using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) at the 5 and 21-year follow ups.

Parent-implemented home therapy programmes for speech and language: a systematic review.

Background: Parent-delivered home programmes are frequently used to remediate speech and language difficulties in young children. However, the evidence base for this service delivery model is limited.

Aims: The aim of this systematic review is to investigate the effectiveness of parent-implemented home programmes in facilitating the development of children's speech and language skills, and to evaluate the cost-effectiveness and feasibility of this service delivery method.

Fidaxomicin versus Vancomycin in the Treatment of Clostridium difficile Infection: Canadian Outcomes.

Background. This analysis examined the efficacy of fidaxomicin versus vancomycin in 406 Canadian patients with Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), based on data from 2 randomized, clinical trials. Methods.

Long-term Communication Outcomes for Children Receiving Cochlear Implants Younger Than 12 Months: A Multicenter Study.

Objective: Examine the influence of age at implant on speech perception, language, and speech production outcomes in a large unselected paediatric cohort.

Study Design: This study pools available assessment data (collected prospectively and entered into respective databases from 1990 to 2014) from three Australian centers.

Patients: Children (n = 403) with congenital bilateral severe to profound hearing loss who received cochlear implants under 6 years of age (excluding those with acquired onset of profound hearing loss after 12 mo, those with progressive hearing loss and those with mild/moderate/severe additional cognitive delay/disability).

The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule and narrative assessment: Evidence for specific narrative impairments in autism spectrum disorders.

Purpose: The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) contains a narrative generation task in which clients tell a story from a wordless picture book; however, the resulting narrative is not usually examined for its linguistic properties. This study aimed to examine narrative generation in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by comparing narratives elicited from children with ASD during the ADOS to those produced by language-matched typically-developing (TD) peers.

Method: Participants were children with ASD (n = 11) and TD controls (n = 17).

The filtered words test and the influence of lexicality.

Purpose: In the present study, the authors aimed to investigate the language confounds of filtered words tests by examining the repetition of real words versus nonsense words as a function of level of filtering.

Method: Fifty-five young, native-English-speaking women with normal hearing were required to repeat 80 real-word and 80 nonsense-word monosyllables that were matched for phonemic content and low-pass filtered. Thirty participants were tested using a harsher filter range of 2000 to 500 Hz, and 25 participants were tested using a milder filter range of 3000 to 1500 Hz.

Efficiency of lexical access in children with autism spectrum disorders: does modality matter?

The provision of visual support to individuals with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is widely recommended. We explored one mechanism underlying the use of visual supports: efficiency of language processing. Two groups of children, one with and one without an ASD, participated.

A systematic review of electrophysiological outcomes following auditory training in school-age children with auditory processing deficits.

Objective: To systematically review the peer-reviewed literature on electrophysiological outcomes following auditory training (AT) in school-age children with (central) auditory processing disorder ([C]APD).

Design: A systematic review.

Study Sample: Searches of 16 electronic databases yielded four studies involving school-aged children whose auditory processing deficits had been confirmed in a manner consistent with ASHA (2005) and AAA (2010) and compared to a treated and/or an untreated control group before and after AT.

Using different criteria to diagnose (central) auditory processing disorder: how big a difference does it make?

Purpose: To quantify how 9 different diagnostic criteria affected potential (central) auditory processing disorder ([C]APD) diagnoses in a large sample of children referred for (central) auditory processing ([C]AP) assessment.

Method: A file review was conducted on 150 children (94 boys and 56 girls; ages 7.0-15.