Davida Fromm

A longitudinal study of word-reading ability in Alzheimer's disease: evidence from the National Adult Reading Test.

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine word-reading ability of subjects with probable Alzheimers disease (AD), using the National Adult Reading Test (NART). In addition to the NART, a battery of neuropsychological tests was administered to 18 AD and 20 elderly control subjects at yearly intervals over 3 years. Repeated measures analysis with grouping factors showed that the controls scored better than AD subjects on the NART at each test date and the AD subjects scored significantly worse over time. NART scores were significantly correlated with dementia severity in AD subjects at final testing only, suggesting that the NART is sensitive to dementia severity only at the later stages of the disease. Associations between the NART and other cognitive measures yielded few significant results. Finally, error responses to NART words were summarized by type and percentage for each group at each test session.

Labial coordination in children: Preliminary considerations

The development of the coordination of the upper lip and lower lip was investigated in children ages four, seven, and ten. Strain gauge transduction techniques were employed to monitor lip movement during the production of selected disyllables. Significant changes in lip coordination were observed between the ages of seven and ten. Results are discussed in light of current understanding of neuromuscular maturation.

Rapid recovery from aphasia: A detailed language analysis ☆

The paper presents a daily analysis of the language recovery of a patient who was globally aphasic at the time of her first observation and who had recovered language, as measured by the Western Aphasia Battery, at the time of her discharge 14 days later. The paper emphasizes the relatively regular growth of normal syntactic, lexical, and pragmatic features coupled with similar regular decreases in aphasic features. Observations of both phenomena are necessary to describe language recovery.

An introduction to logistic regression with an application to the analysis of language recovery following a stroke

The aim of a statistical model is to present a simplified representation of the underlying structure in a data set by separating systematic features from random variation. Sometimes the purpose of a statistical model is to provide a simple descriptive summary of the data and sometimes it is to use the data for comparative or inferential purposes. In practice, the specification of a statistical model requires a thorough understanding of the substantive area of application, an assessment of the validity of the assumptions of the model, and an evaluation of the fit of the model to the data. In this paper, as an illustration of these aspects of the statistical modeling of data, we consider the specification, application, and interpretation of a logistic regression model for the investigation of relationships between binary response data and a collection of explanatory variables. We illustrate applications of the methodology using data from a prospective study of spontaneous language recovery following a stroke (Holland, Greenhouse, Fromm, & Swindell, 1989).