Lexical and semantic ability in groups of children with cochlear implants, language impairment and autism spectrum disorder.

Objective: Lexical-semantic ability was investigated among children aged 6-9 years with cochlear implants (CI) and compared to clinical groups of children with language impairment (LI) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as well as to age-matched children with normal hearing (NH). In addition, the influence of age at implantation on lexical-semantic ability was investigated among children with CI.

Methods: 97 children divided into four groups participated, CI (n=34), LI (n=12), ASD (n=12), and NH (n=39).

Early ERP Signature of Hearing Impairment in Visual Rhyme Judgment.

Postlingually acquired hearing impairment (HI) is associated with changes in the representation of sound in semantic long-term memory. An indication of this is the lower performance on visual rhyme judgment tasks in conditions where phonological and orthographic cues mismatch, requiring high reliance on phonological representations. In this study, event-related potentials (ERPs) were used for the first time to investigate the neural correlates of phonological processing in visual rhyme judgments in participants with acquired HI and normal hearing (NH).

Levels of processing and language modality specificity in working memory.

Neural networks underpinning working memory demonstrate sign language specific components possibly related to differences in temporary storage mechanisms. A processing approach to memory systems suggests that the organisation of memory storage is related to type of memory processing as well. In the present study, we investigated for the first time semantic, phonological and orthographic processing in working memory for sign- and speech-based language.

Working memory compensates for hearing related phonological processing deficit.

Unlabelled: Acquired hearing impairment is associated with gradually declining phonological representations. According to the Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model, poorly defined representations lead to mismatch in phonologically challenging tasks. To resolve the mismatch, reliance on working memory capacity (WMC) increases.

Disability and supported employment: impact on employment, income, and allowances.

In this article, we examine supported employment and its impact on the level of employment, disposable income, and sum of allowances, targeting a group of individuals with disabilities. We have particularly focused on individuals with psychiatric disabilities. Supported employment is a vocational rehabilitation service with an empowerment approach that has competitive employment as an expressed goal.

Vocational rehabilitation, interagency collaboration and social representations.

Objective: The aim of this study is to describe and analyse two important dimensions of vocational rehabilitation for disadvantaged groups and persons with disabilities: interagency collaboration and social representations.

Participants: Four focus group discussions were conducted. The participants were 20 officials of various agencies who had taken part in collaboration projects in vocational rehabilitation.

Health behavior change in hearing healthcare: a discussion paper.

Health behavior change (HBC) refers to facilitating changes to habits and/or behavior related to health. In healthcare practice, it is quite common that the interactions between practitioner and patient involve conversations related to HBC. This could be mainly in relation to the practitioner trying to directly persuade the patients to make some changes in their health behavior.

Strengths and weaknesses in executive functioning in children with intellectual disability.

Children with intellectual disability (ID) were given a comprehensive range of executive functioning measures, which systematically varied in terms of verbal and non-verbal demands. Their performance was compared to the performance of groups matched on mental age (MA) and chronological age (CA), respectively. Twenty-two children were included in each group.

The more you remember the more you decide: collaborative memory in adolescents with intellectual disability and their assistants.

The aim of the present study was to investigate collaborative memory in adolescents with intellectual disabilities when collaborating with an assistant, and also the extent to which decisiveness is related to individual memory performance. Nineteen students with intellectual disabilities (mean age=18.5, SD=0.

When cognition kicks in: working memory and speech understanding in noise.

Perceptual load and cognitive load can be separately manipulated and dissociated in their effects on speech understanding in noise. The Ease of Language Understanding model assumes a theoretical position where perceptual task characteristics interact with the individual's implicit capacities to extract the phonological elements of speech. Phonological precision and speed of lexical access are important determinants for listening in adverse conditions.

Executive functions in individuals with intellectual disability.

The aim of the present study was to investigate executive functions in adults with intellectual disability, and compare them to a closely matched control group longitudinally for 5 years. In the Betula database, a group of adults with intellectual disability (ID, n=46) was defined from measures of verbal and non-verbal IQ. A control group, with two people for every person with intellectual disability (n=92), was chosen by matching on the following criterion in order of priority: IQ higher than 85, age, sex, sample, level of education, and years of education.

The position of the deaf in the Swedish labor market.

The position of deaf people in the Swedish labor market is described and analyzed. A population of 2,144 people born from 1941 to 1980 who attended special education programs for the deaf was compared to 100,000 randomly chosen individuals from the total Swedish population born during the same period. Data on these individuals consisted of registered information from 2005.

International classification of functioning, disability, and health core sets for hearing loss: a discussion paper and invitation.

The World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) has adopted a multifactorial understanding of functioning and disability, merging a biomedical paradigm with a social paradigm into a wider understanding of human functioning. Altogether there are more than 1400 ICF-categories describing different aspects of human functioning and there is a need to developing short lists of ICF categories to facilitate use of the classification scheme in clinical practice. To our knowledge, there is currently no such standard measuring instrument to facilitate a common validated way of assessing the effects of hearing loss on the lives of adults.

Towards a working life? Experiences in a rehabilitation process for people with psychiatric disabilities.

The aim of this study was to reveal the meaning some people with psychiatric disabilities assigned to important personal experiences in relation to an ongoing rehabilitation process. The data comprises open-ended interviews of eight participants. A hermeneutic approach together with a content analysis was used to analyse the data.

Adults with acquired traumatic brain injury: experiences of a changeover process and consequences in everyday life.

The purpose of this study is to illuminate the changeover process, support, and consequences experienced by adults who acquired traumatic brain injury (TBI). Fifteen persons were in-depth interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. Data were analyzed by latent-content analysis and structured into six themes.

Toward an equal level of educational attainment between deaf and hearing people in Sweden?

Various educational reforms in Sweden have resulted in a formally equivalent educational system for deaf and hearing pupils. Has this resulted in equal levels of educational attainment? This article compares 2,144 people born between 1941 and 1980 who attended a special education program for the deaf and 100,000 randomly chosen individuals from the total population born between 1941 and 1980. Data consist of registered information about the individuals in the year 2005.

Adults with acquired traumatic brain injury: a theoretical analysis from a social recognition perspective.

The purpose of this study is to illuminate the changeover process experienced by people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and increase the understanding of social recognition occurring after injury. Fifteen persons, ages 28-56, with TBI have been in-depth interviewed. Data were first analyzed by latent-content analysis using a hermeneutic approach, and later re-contextualized within a matrix constructed from theories of social recognition.

Communication as an ecological system.

A conceptual framework for human communication, based on traditional biological ecology, is further developed. The difference between communication at the message and behavioural levels is emphasized. Empirical data are presented from various studies, showing that degree of satisfaction with communication is correlated with how close the outcome is to the memory of function prior to hearing impairment.

Cognition counts: a working memory system for ease of language understanding (ELU).

A general working memory system for ease of language understanding (ELU, Rönnberg, 2003a) is presented. The purpose of the system is to describe and predict the dynamic interplay between explicit and implicit cognitive functions, especially in conditions of poorly perceived or poorly specified linguistic signals. In relation to speech understanding, the system based on (1) the quality and precision of phonological representations in long-term memory, (2) phonologically mediated lexical access speed, and (3) explicit, storage, and processing resources.

Cognitive development in children with cochlear implants: relations to reading and communication.

The purpose of the present article is to present an overview of a set of studies conducted in our own laboratory on cognitive and communicative development in children with cochlear implants (CI). The results demonstrate that children with CIs perform at significantly lower levels on the majority of the cognitive tasks. The exceptions to this trend are tasks with relatively lower demands on phonological processing.

Cognitive and linguistic skills in Swedish children with cochlear implants - measures of accuracy and latency as indicators of development.

The purpose of the present study was to examine working memory (WM) capacity, lexical access and phonological skills in 19 children with cochlear implants (CI) (5;7-13;4 years of age) attending grades 0-2, 4, 5 and 6 and to compare their performance with 56 children with normal hearing. Their performance was also studied in relation to demographic factors. The findings indicate that children with CI had visuospatial WM capacities equivalent to the comparison group.

A simple method for heuristic modeling of expert knowledge in chronic disease: identification of prognostic subgroups in rheumatology.

Identification of prognostic subgroups is of key clinical interest at the early stages of chronic disease. The aim of this study is to examine whether representation of physicians' expert knowledge in a simple heuristic model can improve data mining methods in prognostic assessments of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Five rheumatology consultants' experiences of clinical data patterns among RA patients, as distinguished from healthy reference populations, were formally represented in a simple heuristic model.

Explicit processing demands reveal language modality-specific organization of working memory.

The working memory model for Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) predicts that processing differences between language modalities emerge when cognitive demands are explicit. This prediction was tested in three working memory experiments with participants who were Deaf Signers (DS), Hearing Signers (HS), or Hearing Nonsigners (HN). Easily nameable pictures were used as stimuli to avoid confounds relating to sensory modality.