In most people, language is processed predominantly by the left hemisphere of the brain, but we do not know how or why. A popular view is that developmental language disorders result from a poorly ...lateralized brain, but until recently, evidence has been weak and indirect. Modern neuroimaging methods have made it possible to study normal and abnormal development of lateralized function in the developing brain and have confirmed links with language and literacy impairments. However, there is little evidence that weak cerebral lateralization has common genetic origins with language and literacy impairments. Our understanding of the association between atypical language lateralization and developmental disorders may benefit if we reconceptualize the nature of cerebral asymmetry to recognize its multidimensionality and consider variation in lateralization over developmental time. Contrary to popular belief, cerebral lateralization may not be a highly heritable, stable characteristic of individuals; rather, weak lateralization may be a consequence of impaired language learning.
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There are substantial differences in the amount of research concerned with different disorders. This paper considers why.
Bibliographic searches were conducted to identify publications (1985-2009) ...concerned with 35 neurodevelopmental disorders: Developmental dyslexia, Developmental dyscalculia, Developmental coordination disorder, Speech sound disorder, Specific language impairment, Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Autistic spectrum disorder, Tourette syndrome, Intellectual disability, Angelman syndrome, Cerebral palsy, Cornelia de Lange syndrome, Cri du chat syndrome, Down syndrome, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Fetal alcohol syndrome, Fragile X syndrome, Galactosaemia, Klinefelter syndrome, Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, Lowe syndrome, Marfan syndrome, Neurofibromatosis type 1, Noonan syndrome, Phenylketonuria, Prader-Willi syndrome, Rett syndrome, Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome, Trisomy 18, Tuberous sclerosis, Turner syndrome, Velocardiofacial syndrome, Williams syndrome, XXX and XYY. A publication index reflecting N publications relative to prevalence was derived.
The publication index was higher for rare than common conditions. However, this was partly explained by the tendency for rare disorders to be more severe.
Although research activity is predictable from severity and prevalence, there are exceptions. Low rates of research, and relatively low levels of NIH funding, characterise conditions that are the domain of a single discipline with limited research resources. Growth in research is not explained by severity, and was exceptionally steep for autism and ADHD.
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A recent project entitled CATALISE used the Delphi method to reach a consensus on terminology for unexplained language problems in children. ‘Developmental language disorder’ (DLD) was the term ...agreed by a panel of 57 experts. Here I reflect on points of difficulty that arose when attempting to reach a consensus, using qualitative information from comments made by panel members to illustrate the kinds of argument used. One issue of debate was the use of labels, in particular the term ‘disorder’, which was seen as having both pros and cons. The potential for labels to stigmatize or create low expectations was a particular concern. However, labels could also ensure language problems were not trivialized and could help avoid stigma by providing an explanation for behaviours that might otherwise meet with disapproval. Further debate surrounded issues of how best to identify cases of disorder. Although it was agreed there should be a focus on cases with a poor prognosis, it was recognized that our knowledge of factors related to prognosis was still incomplete. Furthermore, there was a tension between use of standardized tests, which allow for a relatively objective and reliable assessment of language, and more qualitative observations, which can capture functional aspects of communication that are not always picked up on formal assessment. Debate also surrounded the issue of the relationship between DLD and other conditions. Some favoured drawing a distinction between DLD and language disorders associated with other conditions, and others regarded such distinctions as unnecessary. We concluded that it was misleading to assume co‐occurring conditions were causes of language disorder, but it was helpful to distinguish DLD from cases of language disorder associated with ‘differentiating conditions’ that had a known or likely biomedical origin, including brain injury, sensorineural hearing loss, genetic syndromes, intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder. Furthermore, DLD could co‐occur with milder neurodevelopmental disorders that did not have a clear biomedical aetiology. Normal‐range non‐verbal IQ has traditionally been incorporated in the diagnosis of DLD, but this was rejected as unsupported by evidence. DLD is a category that has utility in identifying children who would benefit from speech–language therapy services, but it should not be thought of as a well‐defined condition. DLD has a multifactorial aetiology, is heterogeneous in terms of language features and overlaps with other neurodevelopmental disorders. Our notions of DLD are likely to be refined by further research into aetiology, associated characteristics and intervention effectiveness.
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Recent investigations of the acquisition of scalar implicature report that young children do not reliably reject a sentence with a weak scalar term, e.g. ‘some of the books are red’, when it is used ...as a description of a situation where a stronger statement is true, e.g. where all the books are red. This is taken as evidence that children do not interpret the sentence with the implicature that the stronger statement does not hold. We propose that (a) these tasks cannot differentiate between actual implicature derivation and mere sensitivity to violations of informativeness; and that (b) children’s apparent failure is not due to lack of competence (whether with informativeness or implicature) but due to their tolerance of pragmatic violations. We report three studies with 5-to-6-year-old English-speaking children and adults employing utterances involving scalar and non-scalar expressions. These show that both age-groups are competent with informativeness, but also tolerant of pragmatic infelicity. These findings have implications for the well-established literature on whether children are aware of ambiguity in referential communication tasks.
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In this article, we critically review the evidence for overlap among three developmental disorders, namely speech sound disorder (SSD), language impairment (LI), and reading disability (RD), at three ...levels of analysis: diagnostic, cognitive, and etiological. We find that while overlap exists at all three levels, it varies by comorbidity subtype, and the relations among these three disorders are complex and not fully understood. We evaluate which comorbidity models can be rejected or supported as explanations for why and how these three disorders overlap and what new data are needed to better define their relations.
Electroencephalographic data are easily contaminated by signals of non-neural origin. Independent component analysis (ICA) can help correct EEG data for such artifacts. Artifact independent ...components (ICs) can be identified by experts via visual inspection. But artifact features are sometimes ambiguous or difficult to notice, and even experts may disagree about how to categorise a particular component. It is therefore important to inform users on artifact properties, and give them the opportunity to intervene.
Here we first describe artifacts captured by ICA. We review current methods to automatically select artifactual components for rejection, and introduce the SASICA software, implementing several novel selection algorithms as well as two previously described automated methods (ADJUST, Mognon et al. Psychophysiology 2011;48(2):229; and FASTER, Nolan et al. J Neurosci Methods 2010;48(1):152).
We evaluate these algorithms by comparing selections suggested by SASICA and other methods to manual rejections by experts. The results show that these methods can inform observers to improve rejections. However, no automated method can accurately isolate artifacts without supervision. The comprehensive and interactive plots produced by SASICA therefore constitute a helpful guide for human users for making final decisions.
Rejecting ICs before EEG data analysis unavoidably requires some level of supervision. SASICA offers observers detailed information to guide selection of artifact ICs. Because it uses quantitative parameters and thresholds, it improves objectivity and reproducibility in reporting pre-processing procedures. SASICA is also a didactic tool that allows users to quickly understand what signal features captured by ICs make them likely to reflect artifacts.
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This study tested the procedural deficit hypothesis of specific language impairment (SLI) by comparing children's performance in two motor procedural learning tasks and an implicit verbal sequence ...learning task. Participants were 7‐ to 11‐year‐old children with SLI (n = 48), typically developing age‐matched children (n = 20) and younger typically developing children matched for receptive grammar (n = 28). In a serial reaction time task, the children with SLI performed at the same level as the grammar‐matched children, but poorer than age‐matched controls in learning motor sequences. When tested with a motor procedural learning task that did not involve learning sequential relationships between discrete elements (i.e. pursuit rotor), the children with SLI performed comparably with age‐matched children and better than younger grammar‐matched controls. In addition, poor implicit learning of word sequences in a verbal memory task (the Hebb effect) was found in the children with SLI. Together, these findings suggest that SLI might be characterized by deficits in learning sequence‐specific information, rather than generally weak procedural learning.
This study tested the procedural deficit hypothesis of specific language impairment (SLI) by comparing children's performance in two motor procedural learning tasks and an implicit verbal sequence learning task. Participants were 7‐ to 11‐year‐old children with SLI (n = 48), typically developing age‐matched children (n = 20) and younger typically developing children matched for receptive grammar (n = 28). In a serial reaction time task, the children with SLI performed at the same level as the grammar‐matched children, but poorer than age‐matched controls in learning motor sequences. When tested with a motor procedural learning task that did not involve learning sequential relationships between discrete elements (i.e. pursuit rotor), the children with SLI performed comparably with age‐matched children and better than younger grammar‐matched controls.
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A manifesto for reproducible science Munafò, Marcus R; Nosek, Brian A; Bishop, Dorothy V M ...
Nature human behaviour,
01/2017, Volume:
1, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Improving the reliability and efficiency of scientific research will increase the credibility of the published scientific literature and accelerate discovery. Here we argue for the adoption of ...measures to optimize key elements of the scientific process: methods, reporting and dissemination, reproducibility, evaluation and incentives. There is some evidence from both simulations and empirical studies supporting the likely effectiveness of these measures, but their broad adoption by researchers, institutions, funders and journals will require iterative evaluation and improvement. We discuss the goals of these measures, and how they can be implemented, in the hope that this will facilitate action toward improving the transparency, reproducibility and efficiency of scientific research.
Alongside the growing concerns regarding predatory journal growth, other questionable editorial practices have gained visibility recently. Among them, we explored the usefulness of the Percentage of ...Papers by the Most Prolific author (PPMP) and the Gini index (level of inequality in the distribution of authorship among authors) as tools to identify journals that may show favoritism in accepting articles by specific authors. We examined whether the PPMP, complemented by the Gini index, could be useful for identifying cases of potential editorial bias, using all articles in a sample of 5,468 biomedical journals indexed in the National Library of Medicine. For articles published between 2015 and 2019, the median PPMP was 2.9%, and 5% of journal exhibited a PPMP of 10.6% or more. Among the journals with the highest PPMP or Gini index values, where a few authors were responsible for a disproportionate number of publications, a random sample was manually examined, revealing that the most prolific author was part of the editorial board in 60 cases (61%). The papers by the most prolific authors were more likely to be accepted for publication within 3 weeks of their submission. Results of analysis on a subset of articles, excluding nonresearch articles, were consistent with those of the principal analysis. In most journals, publications are distributed across a large number of authors. Our results reveal a subset of journals where a few authors, often members of the editorial board, were responsible for a disproportionate number of publications. To enhance trust in their practices, journals need to be transparent about their editorial and peer review practices.
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Background
Lack of agreement about criteria and terminology for children's language problems affects access to services as well as hindering research and practice. We report the second phase of a ...study using an online Delphi method to address these issues. In the first phase, we focused on criteria for language disorder. Here we consider terminology.
Methods
The Delphi method is an iterative process in which an initial set of statements is rated by a panel of experts, who then have the opportunity to view anonymised ratings from other panel members. On this basis they can either revise their views or make a case for their position. The statements are then revised based on panel feedback, and again rated by and commented on by the panel. In this study, feedback from a second round was used to prepare a final set of statements in narrative form. The panel included 57 individuals representing a range of professions and nationalities.
Results
We achieved at least 78% agreement for 19 of 21 statements within two rounds of ratings. These were collapsed into 12 statements for the final consensus reported here. The term ‘Language Disorder’ is recommended to refer to a profile of difficulties that causes functional impairment in everyday life and is associated with poor prognosis. The term, ‘Developmental Language Disorder’ (DLD) was endorsed for use when the language disorder was not associated with a known biomedical aetiology. It was also agreed that (a) presence of risk factors (neurobiological or environmental) does not preclude a diagnosis of DLD, (b) DLD can co‐occur with other neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g. ADHD) and (c) DLD does not require a mismatch between verbal and nonverbal ability.
Conclusions
This Delphi exercise highlights reasons for disagreements about terminology for language disorders and proposes standard definitions and nomenclature.
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