Elisabeth H. Wiig

Language disabilities in children and adolescents

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PERCEPTION AND INTERPRETATION OF NONVERBALLY EXPRESSED EMOTIONS BY ADOLESCENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES

The perception and interpretation by 17 learning disabled and 17 achieving adolescents of a young females video taped nonverbal expressions of anger, embarrassment, fear, frustration, joy, and love were compared. Learning disabled adolescents misinterpreted the emotions significantly more frequently than achieving controls. Substitution patterns also differed in quality. The number of correct interpretations of emotions correlated significantly and positively with scaled scores on the Block Design and Object Assembly subtests of the WISC or WAIS and converted scores on the Design subtest of the Detroit Tests of Learning Aptitude. It was concluded that adolescents with learning disabilities exhibited quantitative and qualitative reductions in the recognition of affective cues which related to visual-motor organization ability.

Productive Language Abilities in Learning Disabled Adolescents

This study assessed and compared the accuracy and speed with which 32 LD and 32 academically achieving adolescents (1) named verbal opposites, pictorial presentations, and members of the classes Foods, Animals, and Toys, (2) produced sentences when given stimulus words, and (3) defined words. Ratings of speech characteristics (melodic line, phrase length, verbal agility, grammatical form, paraphasia, word finding) were also compared. LD adolescents were significantly less quick and accurate in naming verbal opposites and pictorial presentations. To a significant degree they also (1) named fewer foods, (2) produced more agrammatical sentences and grammatical sentences of shorter length, (3) had longer response lags in producing sentences, and (4) gave more incorrect word definitions than academic achievers. Ratings of speech characteristics indicated greatest reductions for phrase length and grammatical form. These findings suggest productive language deficits in learning disabilities are related to (1) delays in specific aspects of cognition and convergent and divergent production of semantic units and (2) reductions in the retrieval of verbal labels and syntactic structures.

Comparison of Rapid Naming Abilities in Language-Learning-Disabled and Academically Achieving Eight-Year-Olds.

This study evaluated the sensitivity of two independent rapid naming tests, Naming Pictured Objects and Producing Names on Confrontation, in differentiating 16 children with language and learning disabilities from 16 age peers with normal language development and academic achievement. Total naming time and accuracy measures on the Naming Pictured Objects Test and Producing Names on Confrontation: Card III task (color-form combinations) differentiated between the two groups at the .01 level of significance. Among children with language and learning disabilities, measures of total naming time increased significantly as the accuracy of naming decreased on both tasks (pictured objects and color-form combinations). The interrelationship between total naming time and accuracy measures proved positive and significant in this group on both naming tasks. All LLD children with evidence of word-finding difficulties in spontaneous speech (14 of 16) were identified by total naming time measures on the Naming Pictured ...

A Clinical Rationale for Assessing Rapid Automatized Naming in Children with Language Disorders

Three continuous rapid naming tasks (Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 1995) were administered to 2,450 American, English-speaking, academically achieving individuals with typical language development and intellectual ability (ages 6 to 21 years) and 136 individuals with primary language disorders (LD; ages 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 15-16). Naming time in seconds differed significantly (p < .01) between the groups for color naming (Task 1) at age 12, shape naming (Task 2) at age 6, and color-shape naming (Task 3) at ages 6, 7, 9, and 12. Naming accuracy did not differ significantly (p > .01) between groups at the majority of the age levels compared. In the normative group, naming speed increased with age in a monotonic progression. The developmental trajectory in the LD group was essentially parallel, but elevated. The percentages of individuals who failed the naming-time criteria for Task 3 (color-shape naming) differed significantly in the two groups at all ages compared (p < .05). These findings indicate that the requirements for two-dimensional, continuous naming (Task 3 color-shape naming) resulted in reduced naming speed (longer total times) and interference with fluency in language production in about half of the clinical sample.

DEVELOPMENT OF COMPREHENSION OF LOGICO-GRAMMATICAL SENTENCES BY GRADE SCHOOL CHILDREN

The development of comprehension of 50 sentences expressing comparative, passive, temporal, spatial, and familial relationships was evaluated in 210 grade school children. Significant increases in correct responses occurred during the first five grades but not between Grades 5 and 8. The periods during which significant increases occurred differed for sentence categories. In the early grades comparative relationships were easiest followed by passive, temporal, spatial, and familial relationships. The findings suggest that spatial relationships are established earlier in a developmental sequence than temporal relationships. In Grades 1 and 2 WISC Full Scale IQ and comprehension of logico-grammatical sentences correlated significantly.

Multiple rapid automatic naming measures of cognition: Normal performance and effects of aging

Rapid automatic naming tasks are clinical tools for probing brain functions that underlie normal cognition. To compare performance for various stimuli in normal subjects and assess the effect of aging, we administered six single-dimension stimuli (color, form, number, letter, animal, and object) and five dual-dimension stimuli (color-form, color-number, color-letter, color-animal, and color-object) to 144 normal volunteers who ranged in age from 15 to 85 years. Rapid automatic naming times for letters and numbers were significantly less than for forms, animals, and objects. Rapid automatic naming times for color-number and color-letter stimuli were significantly less than for color-form, color-animal, or color-object stimuli. Age correlated significantly with rapid automatic naming time for each single-dimension stimulus and for color-form, color-number, color-animal, and color-object stimuli. Linear regression showed that rapid automatic naming times increased with age for aggregated color stimuli, aggregated single-dimension stimuli, and aggregated dual-dimension stimuli. This age effect persisted in subgroups less than 60 years of age and greater than 60 years of age. We conclude that normal performance time is dependent on the task, with letter and number stimuli eliciting most rapid responses, and that most rapid automatic naming times increase with age.

Parietal lobe: Activation in rapid, automatized naming by adults

Three automatic naming tasks (Wiig & Nielsen, 1999) were administered to 60 normally functioning adults. The mean time required for naming 40 single-dimension (colors, forms, numbers, and letters) and 40 dual-dimension stimuli (color-form, color-number, and color-letter combinations) were compared in young (17–38 yr.) and older (40–68 yr.) men and women. Analysis of variance for the combined groups indicated significant naming-time differences for age but not foe sex. There were no significant interaction effects. For men there was a significant naming time difference between age groups for forms, and for women for colors and forms. The sex-specific analyses indicated no significant differences in naming time based on age groups for color-form, color-number, or color-letter combinations. In a second study of adult subjects (n = 14), functional brain activity was measured with regional cerebral blood flow during the performance of the color, form, and color-form naming tasks. One subject was repeatedly measured during the performance of each task, whereas 13 subjects were measured during the performance of color-form naming. In comparison to normal reference values for rest and FAS verbal fluency, blood-flow measurements showed a consistent parietal-lobe activation during form and color-form naming, but only a slight activation during color naming. During all naming tasks, a significant frontal and frontotemporal flow decrease was seen in comparison to both rest and verbal fluency reference values. This functional brain activation pattern of a parietal increase and a frontotemporal decrease was consistently confirmed across subjects during the color-form naming task.

IMMEDIATE RECALL OF SEMANTICALLY VARIED "SENTENCES" BY LEARNING-DISABLED ADOLESCENTS

The immediate recall of 20 semantically and syntactically varied sentences was assessed and compared for 30 learning-disabled and 30 academically achieving adolescents. Learning-disabled adolescents repeated significantly fewer of the sentences verbatim than their achieving age peers. They exhibited significant reductions in the recall of sentences which violated semantic (selectional) rules, contained correctly and incorrectly sequenced modifier-strings, contained a random word-string, or were syntactically complex. Perseveration errors occurred more frequently among the learning-disabled adolescents than among the achievers and inter-sentence perseverative errors were exhibited only by those who were learning disabled. The rank order of difficulty for the sentences agreed for the two groups, suggesting primarily quantitative reductions in the immediate recall by the learning-disabled adolescents. The findings suggest that learning-disabled adolescents depend heavily upon semantic aspects for language processing, experience immediate memory and sequencing problems for modifier-strings, and exhibit a prevalence of interfering perseverative responses.

Relationships Among Language Processing and Production Abilities of Learning Disabled Adolescents

This study assessed the relationships among various language processing and production abilities of 32 learning disabled adolescents. Kendall rank correlation coefficients indicated that 1 chronological age correlated negatively with performance on three of the language tests, and 2 WISC Verbal IQs correlated positively with performance on all but one of the language processing subtests and with performance on two of the language production subtests: Performance on the various language processing subtests tended to correlate positively with each other and negatively with performance on language production subtests. Measures of the accuracy of responses on the language production subtests generally correlated positively with each other and negatively with measures of speed of retrieval. These findings suggest that the learning disabled adolescents had reached a performance plateau and that developmental factors no longer produced an increase in their language abilities. They also suggest the presence of at least two distinct language deficit syndromes within the learning disabled population. These are: 1 cognitive-linguistic processing deficits characterized by reductions in morphology and syntax and in the comprehension of linguistic concepts and 2 “dysnomia” characterized by verbal paraphasias and word finding and retrieval deficits.