Adults with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome have a different velopharyngeal anatomy with predisposition to velopharyngeal insufficiency.

Aim: To find out if subjects with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (DS) have a different velopharyngeal anatomy which could cause velopharyngeal insufficiency (VPI).

Methods: A prospective study of 16 subjects >16 years of age with 22q11.

'I want the way I look to matter less': A case study describing psychological aspects of changing appearance.

There is a need for a better understanding of psychological processes when appearance is changed dramatically through surgery. The aim of this article is to shed light on how complex the process of changing appearance can be, and highlight the importance of including a psychological perspective to the treatment offered to children and adolescents with a visible condition affecting appearance. In order to illustrate some psychological aspects involved in a change of appearance, the case study of a young woman born with a cleft palate is presented.

Language assessment of a Farsi-Norwegian bilingual speaker with aphasia.

The increased occurrence of strokes combined with the high incidence of bilingualism in many regions of the world has led to an increasing number of bilingual adults with aphasia. The literature on bilingual aphasia shows the need for valid, comprehensive and reliable assessment tools for diagnostic and treatment purposes. In spite of a growing number of case studies of bilingual speakers with aphasia, there is still a need for more studies of speakers with different language combinations.

Verb and sentence processing in Norwegian aphasic speakers compared to Dutch and English aphasic speakers: experimental evidence.

The article reports on a comparative study of the abilities of aphasic speakers and normal control subjects to comprehend and produce verbs and sentences. The analysis is based on test results obtained as part of the standardization procedure for a test battery originally developed for Dutch and since translated and adapted for English and Norwegian. With a few exceptions, there is extensive similarity in the test results between the different languages.

Prosodic contextualization of minimal responses to yes/no-questions in aphasic talk-in-interaction: a descriptive single-case study of a Norwegian aphasic speaker.

The article explores aspects of the role of prosody as a contextualization cue in aphasic conversation through auditory and acoustic analysis of an aphasic speaker's use of pitch variation in responses to closed yes/no-requests. The results reveal two prosodic realizations of 'yes' and 'no' contextualizing different kinds of responses: a flat realization with no prolongation and minimal pauses, signalling decisiveness, and a realization with movement in pitch, prolongation and preceding pauses, signalling indecisiveness. The analysis also shows how the aphasic uses a particular realization manipulatively for interactional purposes.

Semantic and phonological skills in predicting reading development: from 3-16 years of age.

The present longitudinal study investigated the relationship between pre-school semantic skills (vocabulary, comprehension and sentence construction), phonological awareness and later word decoding and reading comprehension skills. More than 200 Danish children were followed from a speech therapist screening at the age of three, through a phonological group screening at six, word decoding tests in Grade 2, sentence reading tests in Grades 3, 4, and 6, and to a text reading test in Grade 9 (age 16). The predictor variables consisted of both standardized test results, professional ratings, and a factor of interest in books.

Confirmatory factor analysis of the WPPSI for language-impaired children.

The present study used a maximum-likelihood confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test the hypothesis that a four-factor model is the most parsimonious explanation of the structure of the WPPSI for language-impaired children. Four separate maximum-likelihood confirmatory factor analyses were performed on a sample of 198 Norwegian language-impaired children tested with the WPPSI, and on the Norwegian (n = 563) and American (n = 1200) standardization samples. A one-factor (general), a two-factor (verbal and performance), three-factor (parallel to the WISC-R) and a four-factor solution composed of "processing dependent" ("knowing how" and "seeing how") and "knowledge dependent" ("knowing that" and "seeing that") were imposed on the average intercorrelation matrices of the 11 WPPSI subtests.