Effects of Rhythmic Interventions on Cognitive Abilities in Parkinson's Disease.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study is to compare 2 different rhythmic, high-intensive interventions, that is, rhythmic speech-language therapy (rSLT) versus rhythmic balance-mobility training (rBMT), against a no-therapy (NT) condition in patients with Parkinson's disease and against healthy controls (HCs) with regard to the change in or enhancement of cognitive abilities. METHODS: The 4 groups (rSLT: N = 16; rBMT: N = 10; NT: N = 18; and HC: N = 17) were matched for age, sex, and educational level and were tested in 6 cognitive domains: working memory, executive function, visuo-construction, episodic memory, attention, and word retrieval. Assessments took place at baseline, at 4 weeks (T1), and at 6 months (T2). Rhythmic interventions were provided 3 times per week for 4 weeks in total. To analyze true intervention effects between groups and across time, statistical analyses included reliable change index. Intergroup differences were assessed with multivariate assessment of variance, while differences within groups were assessed with 95% confidence intervals of mean difference. RESULTS: The rSLT improved working memory and word retrieval (p < 0.05), possibly a beneficial transfer effect of the training method per se. In contrast, the NT group worsened in phonemic and semantic shifting (p < 0.01). Observed improvements in flexibility and in episodic memory in the HC may be linked to training effects of retesting. CONCLUSIONS: Rhythmic cues are resistant to neurodegeneration and have a strong motivating factor. As thus, these may facilitate high-intensive and demanding training. Although both trainings were superior to NT, the improvement of cognitive abilities depends on the specific training method. Further, therapy may be more effective when delivered by a therapist rather than by an impersonal computer program.

"Which mouse kissed the frog?" Effects of age of onset, length of exposure, and knowledge of case marking on the comprehension of wh-questions in German-speaking simultaneous and early sequential bilingual children.

Studies examining age of onset (AoO) effects in childhood bilingualism have provided mixed results as to whether early sequential bilingual children (eL2) differ from simultaneous bilingual children (2L1) and L2 children on the acquisition of morphosyntax. Differences between the three groups have been attributed to other factors such as length of exposure (LoE), language abilities, and the phenomenon to be acquired. The present study investigates whether four- to five-year-old German-speaking eL2 children differ from 2L1 children on the acquisition of wh-questions, and whether these differences can be explained by AoO, LoE, and/or knowledge of case marking. The 2L1 children outperformed the eL2 children in terms of accuracy; however, both bilingual groups exhibited similar error patterns. This suggests that 2L1 and eL2 bilingual children are sensitive to the same morphosyntactic cues, when comprehending wh-questions. Finally, children's performance on the different types of wh-questions was explained by a combination of knowledge of case marking, LoE, and AoO.

Comprehension of Welcher-Questions in German-Speaking Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder.

Purpose This study examined whether monolingual German-speaking preschool children with developmental language disorder (DLD) were facilitated by the presence of case-marking cues in their interpretation of German subject and object welcher ("which")-questions, as reported for their typically developing peers. We also examined whether knowledge of case-marking and/or phonological working memory modulated children's ability to revise early assigned interpretations of ambiguous questions. Method Sixty-three monolingual German-speaking children with and without DLD aged between 4;0 and 5;11 (years;months) participated in an offline picture selection task targeting the comprehension of welcher-questions in German. We manipulated question type (subject, object), case-marking transparency, and case-marking position within the question (sentence-initial/-final). Results The typically developing children outperformed the children with DLD across conditions, and all children performed better on subject than on object wh-questions. Transparent and early cues elicited higher accuracy than late-arriving cues. For the DLD children, their working memory capacity explained their inability to revise early assigned interpretations to ambiguous questions, whereas their knowledge of case did not. Conclusions The results suggest that disambiguating morphosyntactic cues can only partly facilitate comprehension of German welcher-questions in children with DLD, whose poor phonological working memory rather than their knowledge of case-marking mediates performance on these structures.