Differences in the literacy skills of Danish dyslexic students in two types of higher education programmes.

Previous research has treated high-functioning dyslexic students as a homogeneous group. This study explores the clinical observation that dyslexic students attending university programmes differ from dyslexic students attending tertiary education professional programmes in some aspects of their literacy skills. Four groups, dyslexic university students (n = 32), dyslexic students attending professional programmes (n = 32), control university students (n = 31), and control students from professional programmes (n = 30), were assessed on measures of pseudoword reading, phonological choice, vocabulary, reading and spelling of morphologically complex single words, and reading aloud from a syntactically complex text. The results showed that the two dyslexic groups were comparable only on the phonological tasks, the dyslexic university students outperforming the professional programme students in all reading and spelling measures. Controlling vocabulary and number of semesters studied, the difference was no longer significant. Nevertheless, the analyses indicate that phonological deficits underlie the performance of professional programme students with dyslexia across a wide range of tasks, whereas university students with dyslexia may be able to limit the impact of phonological deficits to some extent by relying on some alternative cognitive attributes. Reading experience, orthographic learning, and working memory efficiency are discussed as possible explanations for this pattern of results.

A Verbal Illusion: Now in Three Languages.

The so-called depth charge sentences (e.g., no head injury is too trivial to be ignored) were investigated in a comprehension experiment measuring both whether participants understood the stimuli and how certain they were of their interpretation. The experiment revealed that three factors influence the difficulty of depth charge type sentences: the number of negations, the plausibility of the relation between the subject and the verb, and finally the logic of the relation between the adjective and the verb. When a sentence is maximally complex (i.e., when there are multiple negations, the relation between subject and verb is implausible, and the relation between adjective and verb is illogical) participants misunderstood the sentence, but were at the same time certain of their answers. The experiment supports the idea that depth charge sentences create a verbal illusion-the sentences mean one thing, but people systematically understand them to mean the opposite.

Different in different ways: A network-analysis approach to voice and prosody in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The current study investigated whether the difficulty in finding group differences in prosody between speakers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and neurotypical (NT) speakers might be explained by identifying different acoustic profiles of speakers which, while still perceived as atypical, might be characterized by different acoustic qualities. We modelled the speech from a selection of speakers (N = 26), with and without ASD, as a network of nodes defined by acoustic features. We used a community-detection algorithm to identify clusters of speakers who were acoustically similar and compared these clusters with atypicality ratings by naïve and expert human raters. Results identified three clusters: one primarily composed of speakers with ASD, one of mostly NT speakers, and one comprised of an even mixture of ASD and NT speakers. The human raters were highly reliable at distinguishing speakers with and without ASD, regardless of which cluster the speaker was in. These results suggest that community-detection methods using a network approach may complement commonly-employed human ratings to improve our understanding of the intonation profiles in ASD.

Caregiver linguistic alignment to autistic and typically developing children: A natural language processing approach illuminates the interactive components of language development.

BACKGROUND: Language development is a highly interactive activity. However, most research on linguistic environment has focused on the quantity and complexity of linguistic input to children, with current models showing that complexity facilitates language in both typically developing (TD) and autistic children. AIMS: After reviewing existing work on caregiver engagement of children's utterances, we aim to operationalize such engagement with automated measures of linguistic alignment, thereby providing scalable tools to assess caregivers' active reuse of their children's language. By assessing the presence of alignment, its sensitivity to the child's individual differences and how well it predicts language development beyond current models across the two groups, we showcase the usefulness of the approach and provide initial empirical foundations for further conceptual and empirical investigations. METHODS: We measure lexical, syntactic and semantic types of caregiver alignment in a longitudinal corpus involving 32 adult-autistic child and 35 adult-TD child dyads, with children between 2 and 5 years of age. We assess the extent to which caregivers repeat their children's words, syntax, and semantics, and whether these repetitions predict language development beyond more standard predictors. RESULTS: Caregivers tend to re-use their child's language in a way that is related to the child's individual, primarily linguistic, differences. Caregivers' alignment provides unique information improving our ability to predict future language development in both typical and autistic children. CONCLUSIONS: We provide evidence that language development also relies on interactive conversational processes, previously understudied. We share carefully detailed methods, and open-source scripts so as to systematically extend our approach to new contexts and languages.

Repeat After Me? Both Children With and Without Autism Commonly Align Their Language With That of Their Caregivers.

Linguistic repetitions in children are conceptualized as negative in children with autism - echolalia, without communicative purpose - and positive in typically developing (TD) children - linguistic alignment involved in shared engagement, common ground and language acquisition. To investigate this apparent contradiction we analyzed spontaneous speech in 67 parent-child dyads from a longitudinal corpus (30 minutes of play activities at 6 visits over 2 years). We included 32 children with autism and 35 linguistically matched TD children (mean age at recruitment 32.76 and 20.27 months). We found a small number of exact repetitions in both groups (roughly 1% of utterances across visits), which increased over time in children with autism and decreased in the TD group. Partial repetitions were much more frequent: children reused caregivers' words at high rates regardless of diagnostic group (24% of utterances at first visit), and this increased in frequency (but not level) over time, faster for TD children (at final visit: 33% for autism, 40% for TD). The same happened for partial repetition of syntax and semantic alignment. However, chance alignment (as measured by surrogate pairs) also increased and findings for developmental changes were reliable only for syntactic and semantic alignment. Children with richer linguistic abilities also displayed a higher tendency to partially re-use their caregivers' language (alignment rates and semantic alignment). This highlights that all children commonly re-used the words, syntax, and topics of their caregivers, albeit with some quantitative differences, and that most repetition was at least potentially productive, with repeated language being re-contextualized and integrated with non-repeated language. The salience of echolalia in ASD might be partially explained by slight differences in frequency, amplified by lower semantic alignment, persistence over time, and expectations of echolalia. More in-depth qualitative and quantitative analyses of how repetitions are used and received in context are needed.

Identifying dyslexia at the university: assessing phonological coding is not enough.

A dyslexia diagnosis in Denmark can have significant consequences for individuals, as support is not available to others with reading difficulties. Currently, the diagnosis is given solely on the basis of an electronically administered test consisting of two tasks assessing grapheme-phoneme correspondences. To examine whether the Danish diagnostic test is sufficient to identify university students with dyslexia, we compared the performance of 239 Danish university students who reported literacy difficulties and were tested for dyslexia with the Danish diagnostic test on three word-level tests (low-frequency word reading, high-frequency word reading and spelling to dictation) with the performance of separate control groups for each test: 220, 212 and 218 students, respectively. The results showed that 61% of students labelled "not dyslexic" by the Danish diagnostic test performed significantly worse than controls on at least two out of three word-level tests. In terms of self-report of literacy difficulties, students labelled "not dyslexic" by the diagnostic test were indistinguishable from those labelled "dyslexic." These findings suggest that the current method of diagnosing dyslexia in Denmark is too narrow and that adding a few simple tests of word reading and spelling would minimize the risk of overlooking students in need of literacy support.

Toward a cumulative science of vocal markers of autism: A cross-linguistic meta-analysis-based investigation of acoustic markers in American and Danish autistic children.

Acoustic atypicalities in speech production are argued to be potential markers of clinical features in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A recent meta-analysis highlighted shortcomings in the field, in particular small sample sizes and study heterogeneity. We showcase a cumulative (i.e., explicitly building on previous studies both conceptually and statistically) yet self-correcting (i.e., critically assessing the impact of cumulative statistical techniques) approach to prosody in ASD to overcome these issues. We relied on the recommendations contained in the meta-analysis to build and analyze a cross-linguistic corpus of multiple speech productions in 77 autistic and 72 neurotypical children and adolescents (>1000 recordings in Danish and US English). We used meta-analytically informed and skeptical priors, with informed priors leading to more generalizable inference. We replicated findings of a minimal cross-linguistically reliable distinctive acoustic profile for ASD (higher pitch and longer pauses) with moderate effect sizes. We identified novel reliable differences between the two groups for normalized amplitude quotient, maxima dispersion quotient, and creakiness. However, the differences were small, and there is likely no one acoustic profile characterizing all autistic individuals. We identified reliable relations of acoustic features with individual differences (age, gender), and clinical features (speech rate and ADOS sub-scores). Besides cumulatively building our understanding of acoustic atypicalities in ASD, the study shows how to use systematic reviews and meta-analyses to guide the design and analysis of follow-up studies. We indicate future directions: larger and more diverse cross-linguistic datasets, focus on heterogeneity, self-critical cumulative approaches, and open science. LAY SUMMARY: Autistic individuals are reported to speak in distinctive ways. Distinctive vocal production can affect social interactions and social development and could represent a noninvasive way to support the assessment of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We systematically checked whether acoustic atypicalities highlighted in previous articles could be actually found across multiple recordings and two languages. We find a minimal acoustic profile of ASD: higher pitch, longer pauses, increased hoarseness and creakiness of the voice. However, there is much individual variability (by age, sex, language, and clinical characteristics). This suggests that the search for one common "autistic voice" might be naive and more fine-grained approaches are needed.

Vocal markers of autism: Assessing the generalizability of machine learning models.

Machine learning (ML) approaches show increasing promise in their ability to identify vocal markers of autism. Nonetheless, it is unclear to what extent such markers generalize to new speech samples collected, for example, using a different speech task or in a different language. In this paper, we systematically assess the generalizability of ML findings across a variety of contexts. We train promising published ML models of vocal markers of autism on novel cross-linguistic datasets following a rigorous pipeline to minimize overfitting, including cross-validated training and ensemble models. We test the generalizability of the models by testing them on (i) different participants from the same study, performing the same task; (ii) the same participants, performing a different (but similar) task; (iii) a different study with participants speaking a different language, performing the same type of task. While model performance is similar to previously published findings when trained and tested on data from the same study (out-of-sample performance), there is considerable variance between studies. Crucially, the models do not generalize well to different, though similar, tasks and not at all to new languages. The ML pipeline is openly shared. Generalizability of ML models of vocal markers of autism is an issue. We outline three recommendations for strategies researchers could take to be more explicit about generalizability and improve it in future studies. LAY SUMMARY: Machine learning approaches promise to be able to identify autism from voice only. These models underestimate how diverse the contexts in which we speak are, how diverse the languages used are and how diverse autistic voices are. Machine learning approaches need to be more careful in defining their limits and generalizability.

Acoustic Measures of Prosody in Right-Hemisphere Damage: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Purpose The aim of the study was to use systematic review and meta-analysis to quantitatively assess the currently available acoustic evidence for prosodic production impairments as a result of right-hemisphere damage (RHD), as well as to develop methodological recommendations for future studies. Method We systematically reviewed papers reporting acoustic features of prosodic production in RHD in order to identify shortcomings in the literature and make recommendations for future studies. We estimated the meta-analytic effect size of the acoustic features. We extracted standardized mean differences from 16 papers and estimated aggregated effect sizes using hierarchical Bayesian regression models. Results RHD did present reduced fundamental frequency variation, but the trait was shared with left-hemisphere damage. RHD also presented evidence for increased pause duration. No meta-analytic evidence for an effect of prosody type (emotional vs. linguistic) was found. Conclusions Taken together, the currently available acoustic data show only a weak specific effect of RHD on prosody production. However, the results are not definitive, as more reliable analyses are hindered by small sample sizes, lack of detail on lesion location, and divergent measuring techniques. We propose recommendations to overcome these issues: Cumulative science practices (e.g., open data and code sharing), more nuanced speech signal processing techniques, and the integration of acoustic measures and perceptual judgments are recommended to more effectively investigate prosody in RHD.

Hearing me hearing you: Reciprocal effects between child and parent language in autism and typical development.

Language development in typically developing children (TD) has traditionally been investigated in relation to environmental factors, while language in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has primarily been related to child-based factors. We employ a longitudinal corpus of 32 preschoolers with ASD and 35 linguistically matched TD peers recorded over 6 visits (ranging between 2 and 5 years of age) to investigate the relative importance of child-based and environmental factors in language development for both populations. We also investigate the reciprocal interaction between children's response to parents' input, and parents' response to children's production. We report six major findings. (1) Children's production of word types, tokens, and MLU increased across visits, and were predicted by their Expressive Language (EL) (positively) and diagnosis (negatively) from Visit 1. (2) Parents' production also increased across visits, and was predicted by their child's nonverbal cognition (positively) and diagnosis (negatively) from Visit 1. (3) At all visits and across groups, children and parents matched each other in lexical and syntactic production; (4) Parents who produced longer MLUs during a given visit had children who produced more word types and tokens, and had longer MLUs, at the subsequent visit. (5) When both child EL at Visit 1 and parent MLU were included in the model, both contributed significantly to future child language; however, EL accounted for a greater proportion of the variance. (6) Finally, children's speech significantly predicted parent speech at the next visit. Taken together, these results draw more attention to the importance of child-based factors in the early language development of TD children, and to the importance of parental language factors in the early language development of children with ASD.

Brain responses to musical feature changes in adolescent cochlear implant users.

Cochlear implants (CIs) are primarily designed to assist deaf individuals in perception of speech, although possibilities for music fruition have also been documented. Previous studies have indicated the existence of neural correlates of residual music skills in postlingually deaf adults and children. However, little is known about the behavioral and neural correlates of music perception in the new generation of prelingually deaf adolescents who grew up with CIs. With electroencephalography (EEG), we recorded the mismatch negativity (MMN) of the auditory event-related potential to changes in musical features in adolescent CI users and in normal-hearing (NH) age mates. EEG recordings and behavioral testing were carried out before (T1) and after (T2) a 2-week music training program for the CI users and in two sessions equally separated in time for NH controls. We found significant MMNs in adolescent CI users for deviations in timbre, intensity, and rhythm, indicating residual neural prerequisites for musical feature processing. By contrast, only one of the two pitch deviants elicited an MMN in CI users. This pitch discrimination deficit was supported by behavioral measures, in which CI users scored significantly below the NH level. Overall, MMN amplitudes were significantly smaller in CI users than in NH controls, suggesting poorer music discrimination ability. Despite compliance from the CI participants, we found no effect of the music training, likely resulting from the brevity of the program. This is the first study showing significant brain responses to musical feature changes in prelingually deaf adolescent CI users and their associations with behavioral measures, implying neural predispositions for at least some aspects of music processing. Future studies should test any beneficial effects of a longer lasting music intervention in adolescent CI users.

Social cognition and neurocognitive deficits in first-episode schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND: Recent research has shown a significant impact of social cognitive domains on real world functioning and prognosis in schizophrenia. However, the correlations between specific aspects of social cognition, neurocognition, IQ and clinical symptoms remain unclear in first-episode schizophrenia. Researchers have speculated about social cognitive subgroups since patients with schizophrenia appear to be a very heterogeneous group. METHODS: Patients with a recent diagnosis of first-episode schizophrenia were tested regarding theory of mind, social perception, neurocognition, IQ, and clinical symptoms. RESULTS: Data from 36 first-episode schizophrenia patients and 36 one to one matched healthy controls were analysed. Principal component analysis in the patient group was used to examine the variance contributed by different aspects of social cognition, neurocognition, and clinical symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Complex aspects of social cognition explained 24% of the variance in the patient group. The other principal components consisted mainly of aspects of simple perception of theory of mind. Neurocognition and clinical symptoms only explained a minor proportion of the variance in the patient group. The results imply that social cognitive deficits in first-episode schizophrenia come in two distinct versions where one is a complex, cognitive demanding form linked with IQ. The other version is related to simpler forms of social cognition and independent of IQ. These two forms are comparable to the implicit and explicit mentalising discussed in the developmental literature. The two forms of social cognitive deficits are likely to require quite different social cognitive interventions.

Theory of Mind in adults with right hemisphere damage: What's the story?

Why do people with right hemisphere damage (RHD) have difficulty with pragmatics and communication? One hypothesis has been that pragmatic impairment in RHD is the result of an underlying impairment in Theory of Mind (ToM): the ability to infer the mental states of others. In previous studies evaluating ToM abilities in people with RHD, researchers have used judgment tasks based on story or still cartoon stimuli. However, ToM is likely to draw on kinetic information as well, and these tasks ignore this aspect. The aim of this study was to assess ToM abilities in people with RHD using participants' evaluations of animated films with moving geometric shapes. Participants were presented with eight films of animated triangles. Four of the films represented the triangles as intentional agents with mental states, while the other four represented the triangles as simply inanimate, though moving, objects. Films were evaluated by both button-press response and by oral descriptions. Analysis of the transcriptions revealed that participants with RHD had a reduced ability to discriminate between the film categories, and a bias toward reduced mental-state ascription in the ToM condition.

Theory of mind impairment in right hemisphere damage: A review of the evidence.

Among the hypothesized causes of communication impairments in people with damage to the right cerebral hemisphere (RHD) is an underlying impairment in Theory of Mind (ToM) (the ability to make inferences about other peoples' mental states). In this review, evidence is considered for a ToM impairment in adults with RHD by approaching the issue from two directions. First, indirect evidence for impairment of ToM is reviewed by looking at studies on the effects of RHD on the comprehension of indirect requests, that is, requests in which the speaker's wishes are not explicitly stated but must be inferred by the listener. Second, studies that directly investigate the effects of RHD on performance on tasks intended to tap ToM are reviewed. On the basis of the papers reviewed here, it is concluded that although people with RHD do show impairments on a variety of tasks that are thought to involve ToM cognition, evidence for a specific ToM impairment is still inconclusive. It is recommended that future studies take care to distinguish individual differences in participants' linguistic production and lesion location, that more care is taken to control for task difficulty, and that well-controlled studies are combined with more naturalistic, ecologically valid tasks.

Accessing the mental space-Spatial working memory processes for language and vision overlap in precuneus.

The "overlapping systems" theory of language function argues that linguistic meaning construction crucially relies on contextual information provided by "nonlinguistic" cognitive systems, such as perception and memory. This study examines whether linguistic processing of spatial relations established by reading sentences call on the same posterior parietal neural system involved in processing spatial relations set up through visual input. Subjects read simple sentences, which presented two agents in relation to each other, and were subsequently asked to evaluate spatial (e.g., "Was he turned towards her?") and equally concrete nonspatial content (e.g., "Was he older than her?"). We found that recall of the spatial content relative to the nonspatial content resulted in higher BOLD response in a dorsoposterior network of brain regions, most significantly in precuneus, strikingly overlapping a network previously shown to be involved in recall of spatial aspects of images depicting similar scenarios. This supports a neurocognitive model of language function, where sentences establish meaning by interacting with the perceptual and working memory networks of the brain.