Spoken verb learning in children with language disorder.

The current study examined spoken verb learning in elementary school children with language disorder (LD). We aimed to replicate verb learning deficits reported in younger children with LD and to examine whether verb instrumentality, a semantic factor reflecting whether an action requires an instrument (e.g., "to chop" is an instrumental verb), influenced verb learning. The possible facilitating effect of orthographic cues presented during training was also evaluated. In an exploratory analysis, we investigated whether language and reading skills mediated verb learning performance. General language skills and verb learning were assessed in Dutch children with LD and age-matched typically developing controls (n = 25 per group) aged 8 to 12 years (M = 9;9 [years;months], SD = 1;3). Using video animations, children learned 20 nonwords depicting actions comprising 10 instrumental and 10 noninstrumental verbs. Half of the items were trained with orthographic information present. Verb learning was assessed using an animation-word matching and animation naming task. Linear mixed-effects models showed a main effect of group for all verb learning measures, demonstrating that children with LD learned fewer words and at a slower rate than the control group. No effect of verb instrumentality, presence of orthographic information, or the included mediators was found. Our results emphasize the importance of continued vocabulary instruction in elementary school to strengthen verb encoding. Given that our findings are inconsistent with the overall literature showing an orthographic facilitation effect, future studies should investigate whether participants pay attention to the written word form in learning contexts with moving stimuli.

Language outcomes in children who underwent surgery for the removal of a posterior fossa tumor: A systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Children who underwent posterior fossa tumor removal may have spoken or written language impairments. The present systematic review synthesized the literature regarding the language outcomes in this population. Benefits of this work were the identification of shortcomings in the literature and a starting point toward formulating guidelines for postoperative language assessment. METHODS: A systematic literature search was conducted, identifying studies with patients who had posterior fossa surgery before 18 years of age. Included studies were narratively synthesized to understand language outcomes by language function (e.g., phonology, morphosyntax) at a group and individual level. Furthermore, the influence of several mediators (e.g., postoperative cerebellar mutism syndrome (pCMS), tumor type) was investigated. A critical evaluation of the language assessment tools was conducted. RESULTS: The narrative synthesis of 66 studies showed that a broad spectrum of language impairments has been described, characterized by a large interindividual heterogeneity. Patients younger at diagnosis, receiving treatment for a high-grade tumor and/or radiotherapy and diagnosed with pCMS seemed more prone to impairment. Several gaps in language assessment remain, such as a baseline preoperative assessment and the assessment of pragmatics and morphosyntax. Further, there were important methodological differences in existing studies which complicated our ability to accurately guide clinical practice. CONCLUSION: Children who had posterior fossa surgery seem to be at risk for postoperative language impairment. These results stress the need for language follow-up in posterior fossa tumor survivors.

Characterising the Long-Term Language Impairments of Children Following Cerebellar Tumour Surgery by Extracting Psycholinguistic Properties from Spontaneous Language.

Following cerebellar tumour surgery, children may suffer impairments of spontaneous language. Yet, the language processing deficits underlying these impairments are poorly understood. This study is the first to try to identify these deficits for four levels of language processing in cerebellar tumour survivors. The spontaneous language of twelve patients who underwent cerebellar tumour surgery (age range 3-24 years) was compared against his or her controls using individual case statistics. A distinction was made between patients who experienced postoperative cerebellar mutism syndrome (pCMS) and those who did not. Time since surgery ranged between 11 months and 12;3 years. In order to identify the impaired language processing levels at each processing level (i.e., lexical, semantic, phonological and/or morphosyntactic) nouns and verbs produced in the spontaneous language samples were rated for psycholinguistic variables (e.g., concreteness). Standard spontaneous language measures (e.g., type-token ratio) were calculated as well. First, inter-individual heterogeneity was observed in the spontaneous language outcomes in both groups. Nine out of twelve patients showed language processing deficits three of whom were diagnosed with pCMS. Results implied impairments across all levels of language processing. In the pCMS-group, the impairments observed were predominantly morphosyntactic and semantic, but the variability in nature of the spontaneous language impairments was larger in the non-pCMS-group. Patients treated with cerebellar tumour surgery may show long-term spontaneous language impairments irrespective of a previous pCMS diagnosis. Individualised and comprehensive postoperative language assessments seem necessary, given the inter-individual heterogeneity in the language outcomes.

Verb and sentence processing with TMS: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has provided relevant evidence regarding the neural correlates of language. The aim of the present study is to summarize and assess previous findings regarding linguistic levels (i.e., semantic and morpho-syntactic) and brain structures utilized during verb and sentence processing. To do that, we systematically reviewed TMS research on verb and sentence processing in healthy speakers, and meta-analyzed TMS-induced effects according to the region of stimulation and experimental manipulation. Findings from 45 articles show that approximately half of the reviewed work focuses on the embodiment of action verbs. The majority of studies (60%) target only one cortical region in relation to a specific linguistic process. Frontal areas are most frequently stimulated in connection to morphosyntactic processes and action verb semantics, and temporoparietal regions in relation to integration of sentential meaning and thematic role assignment. A meta-analysis of 72 effect sizes of the reviewed papers indicates that TMS has a small overall effect size, but effect sizes for anterior compared to posterior regions do not differ for semantic or morphosyntactic contrasts. Our findings stress the need to increase the number of targeted areas, while using the same linguistic contrasts in order to disentangle the contributions of different cortical regions to distinct linguistic processes.