•Rapid auditory processing was associated with performance on tasks assessing basic components of language.•Direct associations between rapid processing and overall language performance were not ...identified; rather, phonological processing mediated this relationship.•M100 latency was not associated with any measures of verbal communication.
The goal of this study was to identify the specific domains of language that may be affected by deficits in rapid auditory processing in individuals with ASD. Auditory evoked fields were collected from 63 children diagnosed with ASD in order to evaluate processing of puretone sounds presented in rapid succession. Measures of language and its components were assessed via standardized clinical tools to quantify expressive and receptive language, vocabulary, articulation, and phonological processing abilities. Rapid processing was significantly and bilaterally associated with phonological awareness, vocabulary, and articulation. Phonological processing was found to mediate the relationship between rapid processing and language. M100 response latency was not significantly associated with any language measures. Results suggest that rapid processing deficits may impact the basic components of language such as phonological processing, and the downstream effect of this impact may in turn impact overall language development.
Abstract
Objective
The growing multilingual population in the United States calls for culturally adapted norms for neuropsychological tools. Language testing, for example, is paramount in ...pre-surgical assessment in patients with dominant temporal lobe epilepsy. The Boston Naming Test (BNT) and the Auditory Naming Test (ANT) are frequently used in pre-surgical epilepsy evaluations; yet, while bilingual norms exist for the BNT, these are lacking for the ANT. To parse out how much of a bilingual patient’s language performance is accounted for by bilingualism versus language deficits, we studied whether there is a significant difference in ANT performance between bilingual and monolingual English-speaking epilepsy patients.
Method
Our sample of patients with localized epilepsy from the UCSF Epilepsy Center included 22 bilingual (English-dominant; non-dominant languages included Spanish, Arabic, Dutch, Taiwanese, and Japanese) and 61 monolingual English-speakers (39% female, M age = 36.3). All patients took anti-seizure medication and completed the ANT and BNT as part of a pre-surgical neuropsychological assessment.
Results
Compared to monolingual English-speaking patients, bilingual patients had significantly lower scores on the ANT (Bilingual M = −4.03 SD = 5.6, Monolingual M = −0.7 SD = 1.9; t(81) = 3.89, p < 0.001) and BNT (t(77) = 2.76, p = 0.007). This performance difference was significantly greater for the ANT than BNT (F(1,77) = 7.71, p = 0.007).
Conclusion
These results highlight the importance of considering multilingualism in neuropsychological assessments. This is especially needed for pre-surgical language mapping in epilepsy surgical candidates. Future research should establish bilingual normative standards for neuropsychological language-based tests such as the ANT.
The ability to rapidly process speech sounds is integral not only for processing other's speech, but also for auditory processing of one's own speech, which allows for maintenance of speech accuracy. ...Deficits in rapid auditory processing have been demonstrated in autistic individuals, particularly those with language impairment. We examined rapid auditory processing for speech sounds in relation to performance on a battery of verbal communication measures to determine which aspects of verbal communication were associated with cortical auditory processing in a sample of individuals with autism.
Participants were 57 children and adolescents (40 male and 17 female) ages 5-18 who were diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Rapid auditory processing of speech sounds was measured via a magnetoencephalographic (MEG) index of the quality of the auditory evoked response to the second of two differing speech sounds ("Ga" / "Da") presented in rapid succession. Verbal communication abilities were assessed on standardized clinical measures of overall expressive and receptive language, vocabulary, articulation, and phonological processing. Associations between cortical measures of left- and right-hemisphere rapid auditory processing and verbal communication measures were examined.
Rapid auditory processing of speech sounds was significantly associated with speech articulation bilaterally (
= 0.463,
= 0.001 for left hemisphere and
= 0.328,
= 0.020 for right hemisphere). In addition, rapid auditory processing in the left hemisphere was significantly associated with overall expressive language abilities (
= 0.354,
= 0.013); expressive (
= 0.384,
= 0.005) vocabulary; and phonological memory (
= 0.325,
= 0.024). Phonological memory was found to mediate the relationship between rapid cortical processing and receptive language.
These results demonstrate that impaired rapid auditory processing for speech sounds is associated with dysfunction in verbal communication in ASD. The data also indicate that intact rapid auditory processing may be necessary for even basic communication skills that support speech production, such as phonological memory and articulatory control.
Intellectual abilities factor into levels of functioning used to characterize autism. Language difficulties are highly prevalent in autism and may impact performance on measures of intellectual ...abilities. As such, nonverbal tests are often prioritized in classifying intelligence in those with language difficulties and autism. However, the relationship between language abilities and intellectual performance is not well characterized, and the superiority of tests with nonverbal instructions is not well established. The current study evaluates verbal and nonverbal intellectual abilities in the context of language abilities in autism and the potential benefit of tests with nonverbal instructions. Participants were 55 children and adolescents on the autism spectrum who underwent a neuropsychological evaluation as part of a study examining language functioning in autism. Correlation analyses were performed to examine relations between expressive and receptive language abilities. Language abilities (CELF−4) were significantly correlated with all measures of both verbal (WISC-IV VCI) and nonverbal intelligence scores (WISC-IV PRI and Leiter-R). There were no significant differences between nonverbal intelligence measures with verbal or nonverbal instructions. We further discuss the role of assessment of language abilities in interpreting results of intelligence testing in populations with higher prevalence of language difficulties
Objective
In 2017, the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) convened the AAN Quality Measurement Set working group to define the improvement and maintenance of quality of life (QOL) as a key outcome ...measure in epilepsy clinical practice. A core outcome set (COS), defined as an accepted, standardized set of outcomes that should be minimally measured and reported in an area of health care research and practice, has not previously been defined for QOL in adult epilepsy.
Methods
A cross‐sectional Delphi consensus study was employed to attain consensus from patients and caregivers on the QOL outcomes that should be minimally measured and reported in epilepsy clinical practice. Candidate items were compiled from QOL scales recommended by the AAN 2017 Quality Measurement Set. Inclusion criteria to participate in the Delphi study were adults with drug‐resistant epilepsy diagnosed by a physician, no prior diagnosis of psychogenic nonepileptic seizures or a cognitive and/or developmental disability, or caregivers of patients meeting these criteria.
Results
A total of 109 people satisfied inclusion/exclusion criteria and took part in Delphi Round 1 (patients, n = 95, 87.2%; caregivers, n = 14, 12.8%), and 55 people from Round 1 completed Round 2 (patients, n = 43, 78.2%; caregivers, n = 12, 21.8%). One hundred three people took part in the final consensus round. Consensus was attained by patients/caregivers on a set of 36 outcomes that should minimally be included in the QOL COS. Of these, 32 of the 36 outcomes (88.8%) pertained to areas outside of seizure frequency and severity.
Significance
Using patient‐centered Delphi methodology, this study defines the first COS for QOL measurement in clinical practice for adults with drug‐resistant epilepsy. This set highlights the diversity of factors beyond seizure frequency and severity that impact QOL in epilepsy.
Objective: The primary aim of this study was to examine whether there is an association between magnetoencephalography-based (MEG) indices of basic cortical auditory processing and vocal affect ...recognition (VAR) ability in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Method: MEG data were collected from 25 children/adolescents with ASD and 12 control participants using a paired-tone paradigm to measure quality of auditory physiology, sensory gating, and rapid auditory processing. Group differences were examined in auditory processing and vocal affect recognition ability. The relationship between differences in auditory processing and vocal affect recognition deficits was examined in the ASD group. Results: Replicating prior studies, participants with ASD showed longer M1n latencies and impaired rapid processing compared with control participants. These variables were significantly related to VAR, with the linear combination of auditory processing variables accounting for approximately 30% of the variability after controlling for age and language skills in participants with ASD. Conclusions: VAR deficits in ASD are typically interpreted as part of a core, higher order dysfunction of the "social brain"; however, these results suggest they also may reflect basic deficits in auditory processing that compromise the extraction of socially relevant cues from the auditory environment. As such, they also suggest that therapeutic targeting of sensory dysfunction in ASD may have additional positive implications for other functional deficits.
Background Research has implicated IQ and executive function (EF) as contributors to episodic memory impairments in schizophrenia. However, it has been difficult to quantitatively apportion the ...respective contributions of these factors. We conducted a series of analyses to objectively parse the associated variance and to determine to what extent episodic memory impairment in schizophrenia is independent of IQ and EF. Methods Participants included 323 schizophrenia patients and 327 healthy controls from the National Insitute of Mental Health Sibling Study. Neurocognitive tests assessing IQ, EF, and episodic memory were administered. We examined group differences while controlling for IQ or EF in analyses of covariance, we used linear regression to quantify the amount of variance not explained by IQ or EF, and we matched control and patient subgroups on IQ or EF to determine if memory measures remained different. Results Analyses of covariance revealed significant group differences between schizophrenia individuals and healthy control subjects across multiple episodic memory measures after controlling for IQ or EF. Furthermore, regressions with IQ and/or EF factors entered left more than 50% of variance in memory unaccounted. Follow-up true score variance analyses indicated that the majority of this variance was directly related to memory function. Matched subgroups also yielded subgroup differences on all memory measures. Conclusions Findings across the multiple statistical strategies suggested that the mechanisms underlying the memory impairment in schizophrenia are fully attributable neither to IQ nor EF. Rather, they most likely reflect compromises in episodic memory processing itself and, by inference, the medial temporal system.
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