Jonathan Fine

Cohesive discourse in pervasive developmental disorders

Investigated the use of cohesive links to create a reciprocal conversation in individuals with autism, Asperger syndrome, and a control group of children and adolescents with nonspecific social problems. All subjects engaged in a 10-minute conversation with an examiner that touched on various topics. The conversation was audiotaped, transcribed, and coded blindly for several types of cohesive links. Compared to controls, the higher functioning autistic group referred less to a previous stretch of the conversation and more to an aspect of the physical environment. The Asperger group, on the other hand, was very similar to the controls except they made more unclear references that were difficult to interpret. Implications of these findings for understanding the communicative failure of subjects with pervasive developmental disorder are discussed.

Assessing the Language of Children With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) involves, according to theory, an underlying impairment of executive function—the cognitively based control system that regulates behavior. It is pos...

Cohesion as an Index of Social-Cognitive Factors: Oral Language of the Reading Disabled.

This paper examines the analysis of cohesion as an index of both social and cognitive factors. The oral language of the reading disabled is studied and found to indicate some difficulties of the subjects when dealing with information under specific social and cognitive conditions. It is suggested the social and cognitive factors can and should be studied together and the cohesion is a useful and sensitive measure of oral language as an index of social and cognitive factors.

Towards understanding and studying cohesion in schizophrenic speech

Cohesion analysis has been used to investigate the language of schizophrenics and that associated with other psychiatric syndromes. Alverson and Rosenberg (1990) reviewed this technique. Such analyses properly imply the necessity and value of a broad approach to language and language use. To be optimally useful, cohesion analysis must be seen in its theoretical context. Cohesion is one means of creating text, and therefore it cannot account for all aspects of the pretheoretical notion of coherence. Cohesion may realize elements of register and code, but these concepts are distinct and account for different kinds of variation in language use. As a research tool, cohesion is one initial step of linguistic analysis that can meet the dual criteria of both an analysis of language in context and in reliability.

On the puzzle of language, pragmatics, and schizophrenia.

The nature of circularity in thinking about language in schizophrenia is described, and initial observations by Byrne, et al. appropriate for breaking that circularity identified.

The effect of anxiety on linguistic parameters of public speech: A verbal impairment model

This study presents a new research paradigm designed to explore the effect of anxiety on semantic information processing. It is based on the premise that the demonstrated effect of anxiety on cognitive performance and apparent inconsistencies reported in the literature might be better understood in terms of linguistic properties of inner speech which underlies analytic (vs. intuitive) thought processes. The study employed several parameters of functional linguistics in order to analyse properties of public speech by high- and low-anxious individuals. Results indicate that anxiety is associated with greater use of associative clauses that take the speaker further away from the original starting point before coming back and concluding (identified as reduced semantic efficiency). This is accompanied by a speech pattern that includes greater amounts of factual information unaccompanied by elaborate argumentation. While these results are considered tentative due to methodological and empirical shortcomings, they suggest the viability of this approach.

Second language as a compensatory resource for maintaining verbal fluency in bilingual immigrants with schizophrenia

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Due to the large migrations over the past three decades, large numbers of individuals with schizophrenia are learning a second language and being seen in clinics in that second language. We conducted within-subject comparisons to clarify the contribution of clinical, linguistic and bilingual features in the first and second languages of bilinguals with schizophrenia. METHODS Ten bilingual Russian(L1) and Hebrew(L2) proficient patients, who developed clinical schizophrenia after achieving proficiency in both languages, were selected from 60 candidates referred for the study; they were resident in Israel 7-32 years with 3-10 years from immigration to diagnosis. Clinical, linguistic and fluency markers were coded in transcripts of clinical interviews. RESULTS There was a trend toward more verbal productivity in the first language (L1) than the second language (L2). Clinical speech markers associated with thought disorder and cognitive impairment (blocking and topic shift) were similar in both languages. Among linguistic markers of schizophrenia, Incomplete syntax and Speech role reference were significantly more frequent in L2 than L1; Lexical repetition and Unclear reference demonstrated a trend in the same direction. For fluency phenomena, Discourse markers were more prevalent in L1 than L2, and Codeswitching was similar across languages, showing that the patients were attuned to the socio-pragmatics of language use. CONCLUSIONS More frequent linguistic markers of schizophrenia in L2 show more impairment in the syntactic/semantic components of language, reflecting greater thought and cognitive dysfunction. Patients are well able to acquire a second language. Nevertheless, schizophrenia finds expression in that language. Finally, more frequent fluency markers in L1 suggests motivation to maintain fluency, evidenced in particular by codeswitched L2 lexical items, a compensatory resource.

Verb Inflections as Indicators of Bilingual SLI: Qualitative Vs. Quantitative Measurements

This study focuses on verb inflectional morphology, which is known to pose a problem for language impaired children, in order to assess the relative contribution of each language to the child’s linguistic representations and underlying processes. This paper compares the linguistic production of bilingual English-Hebrew preschool children, who attend “language preschools” following a prior assessment for language impairment, with that of bilingual children in regular preschools from the same neighborhood. While linguistic representation is manifested differently in the two languages, the bilingual situation does not seem to influence the performance of language impaired children in this domain. The same indicators of language impairment which have been documented for monolinguals are also manifested among bilingual children in special preschool programs. Notably, no qualitative difference was found in the use of inflections and type of errors between typically developing bilinguals and bilinguals with language impairment, except for the use of non-existent forms by some of the latter children. Qualitative differences were found, though, for the children in the language preschools, distinguishing children with Specific Language Impairment from children whose L1 is intact but find it difficult to acquire their L2. These findings suggest that as far as the acquisition of verbal morphology is concerned, bilingualism is neither an advantage, nor a disadvantage for SLI children.

Schizophrenia in Bilingual Immigrants: is Verbal Fluency Preserved in Second Language Acquisition?

Objectives Language disturbances are the core symptoms of schizophrenia [Crow,2000]. Considering the influence of migration on the symptoms of schizophrenia [Bhugra, Gupta,2011] and few studies on the interaction of schizophrenia and bilingualism [Bersudsky, et al.,2005], we hope to clarify the linguistic profile of disorder and emphasize the role of language in schizophrenia research. Aim To examine the linguistic features of schizophrenia in the first (L1) and the second (L2) languages, particularly in fluency as the ability to cope with native and nonnative pragmatics. Methods Among sixty Russian immigrants to Israel diagnosed with schizophrenia, ten Russian-Hebrew fluent bilinguals met criteria for inclusion in the study (age: M=33.8,s.d.=11.0; length of residence: M=14.6,s.d.=6.8; time of immigration to diagnosis:M=5.3,s.d=3.9; PANSS Total score: M = 94.9,s.d = 9.8). Interviews were analyzed using clinical, linguistic and fluency speech markers. Statistical evaluation included t-test for dependent samples, two-way ANOVA(Fisher LSD post-hoc test). Results The mean length of language samples demonstrated more productivity in L1 (Table1). Clinical speech markers associated with thought disorders were similarly represented in both languages. Linguistic markers of schizophrenia occurred more often in L2. Discourse markers, as bilingual phenomenona, reflected more dysfluency in L1. Download : Download full-size image Conclusions 1) The higher frequency of linguistic schizophrenia markers in L2 shows more impairments in the syntax/semantic components of language, where different neural representations may underlay the two languages in a bilingual brain damaged by schizophrenia. 2) The higher frequency of fluency markers in L1 reflects attempts to maintain verbal fluency, evidenced by the use of L2 lexical items, which afford a compensatory resource for communicative discourse in schizophrenia.