Rapid Naming Tests: Developmental Course and Relations with Neuropsychological Measures

Rapid serial naming: Developmental trajectory and relationship with the Bangor Dyslexia Test in Spanish students

This study aimed to analyse the developmental trajectory of the accuracy and speed of naming among dyslexics and developing readers from 1st to 6th grade of primary education. It examined how familiarity with the stimulus influences the performance of different naming tasks in both groups and evaluated the link between naming speed and the Bangor Dyslexia Test. With a descriptive and correlational design, eight naming tasks and the Bangor Dyslexia Test (Miles, 1982; Outón & Suárez, 2010) were administered to a sample of 198 dyslexics and 245 developing readers. The results showed that the dyslexics were slower and more inaccurate in all the naming tasks, compared with the developing readers of the same age. Greater difficulty was observed with the less familiar stimuli. It became evident that naming performance improved with age among both groups of subjects. Finally, a greater number of significant and positive correlations were found between the naming tasks and the Bangor Dyslexia Test in the dyslexic group; the strongest relationship was obtained by naming letters.

Rise Time Perception, Phonological Processing, and Reading in Brazilian Portuguese-Speaking Schoolchildren

BACKGROUND/AIMS

Studies of people with dyslexia have pointed to the ability to perceive the amplitude envelope rise time ("beat" perception) as a possible cause of phonological processing (PhP) difficulties in this population. However, there are very few studies about the relationships between such skills in the non-dyslexic school population.

METHODS

We investigated the influence of the beat perception ability on PhP and reading skills of 93 Brazilian Portuguese-speaking schoolchildren from the 3rd to the 5th year, with data on reading, phonological awareness (PhA), lexical access, phonological operational memory, and perception of amplitude envelope rise time. To verify the possible effects of age, gender, and school grade on the tasks in the study, we directly included these variables in the models.

RESULTS

Modeling structural equations showed that beat perception did not influence PhP or reading skills, but only the tasks of repetition of words and pseudowords. These tasks may be related because of the demand for phonological working memory necessary to perform the beat perception task rather than a possible connection between this and phonological abilities, as reported in the literature.

CONCLUSION

We suspect beat perception could be of relevance only for subjects with altered reading and/or a deficit in PhP. Further studies will indicate whether the rise time of the amplitude envelope is an essential acoustic clue only for those individuals whose PhA ability is not fully present.

Are RAN deficits in university students with dyslexia due to defective lexical access, impaired anchoring, or slow articulation?

The purpose of this study was to examine different hypotheses in relation to RAN deficits in dyslexia. Thirty university students with dyslexia and 32 chronological-age controls were assessed on RAN Digits and Colors as well as on two versions of RAN Letters and Objects (one with five items repeated 16 times and one with 20 items repeated four times). In addition, participants were tested on discrete letter and object naming, phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, and speed of processing, and the RAN Letters and Objects total times were partitioned into pause times and articulation times. Results showed first that the dyslexia group was slower than the control group on all RAN tasks and the differences remained significant after controlling for discrete naming time. Second, both groups were slower in the large item set condition (20 × 4) than in the small set condition (5 × 16). Third, the dyslexia group was slower than the control group in both the pause and the articulation times. Although none of the processing skills was sufficient on its own to eliminate group differences in RAN Letters components, phonological awareness, and orthographic processing were sufficient on their own to eliminate group differences in the RAN Objects pause time. Taken together, our findings suggest that the deficits in RAN are not due to impaired anchoring, but rather due to subtle impairments in lexical access (specific to alphanumeric RAN), serial processing, and articulation.

Memory and linguistic/executive functions of children with borderline intellectual functioning

Children with Borderline Intellectual Functioning (BIF) have received a minimal amount of research attention and have been studied in conjunction with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. The present study intends to broaden the knowledge of BIF, by analyzing domains such as verbal memory and visual memory, as well as tasks that rely simultaneously on memory, executive functions, and language. A cross-sectional, comparison study was carried out between a group of 40 children with BIF (mean age = 10.03; 24 male and 16 female), and a control group of 40 normal children of the same age, gender, and socioeconomic level as the BIF group. The WISC-III Full Scale IQs of the BIF group ranged from 71 to 84. The following instruments were used: Word List, Narrative Memory, Rey Complex Figure, Face Memory, Rapid Naming (both RAN and RAS tests), and Verbal Fluency. The results showed deficits in children with BIF in verbal short-term memory, rapid naming, phonemic verbal fluency, and visual short-term memory, specifically in a visual recognition task, when compared with the control group. Long-term verbal memory was impaired only in older children with BIF and long-term visual memory showed no deficit. Verbal short-term memory stands out as a limitation and visual long-term memory as a strength. Correlations between the WISC-III and neuropsychological tests scores were predominantly low. The study expands the neuropsychological characterization of children with BIF and the implications of the deficits and strengths are stressed.

Identifying Dyslexia Risk in Student-Athletes: A Preliminary Protocol for Concussion Management

Learning disability (LD) has been identified as a potential risk factor for a sport-related concussion, yet students with LD are rarely included in concussion research. Here, we draw special attention to dyslexia, a common but often underdiagnosed LD. Reading and learning problems commonly associated with dyslexia are often masked by protective factors, such as high verbal ability or general intelligence. Hence, high-achieving individuals with dyslexia may not be identified as being in a high-risk category. To ensure that students with dyslexia are included in LD concussion research and identified as LD in baseline testing, we provide athletic trainers with an overview of dyslexia and a preliminary screening protocol that is sensitive to dyslexia, even among academically high-achieving students in secondary school and college.

Development of Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) in Simultaneous Kannada-English Biliterate Children

RAN tests were administered to 600 typically developing children, 60 each from grade level one through grade ten (30 boys and 30 girls), who learn two distinct languages, English and Kannada simultaneously from the very first grade. The overall results were in accordance with similar previous studies in English and other European languages. The developmental trajectories were similar across the languages to a large extent; but the results also showed some differences across languages with respect to synchrony between the measures and the overall naming speed. Though some of the differences could be ascribed to the bilingual/biliterate culture and language use, there are enough scopes for future researches to examine these issues.

Memory functioning in children with epilepsy: frontal lobe epilepsy, childhood absence epilepsy, and benign epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes

Specific cognitive deficits have been identified in children with epilepsy irrespective of results on intelligence tests. Memory deficits are traditionally attributed to temporal lobe epilepsy, whereas the impact of frontal lobe epilepsy on memory functions has remained controversial. The aim of this study was the examination of memory abilities in other childhood common epilepsy syndromes (frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE), childhood absence epilepsy (CAE), and benign epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes (BECTS)) and the influence of epilepsy-related variables. Memory was examined in 90 children with epilepsy (each epilepsy group consisted of 30 children), aged 6–15, and compared with 30 control children. Children with FLE showed significant deficits in verbal and visual memory. In addition, type of epilepsy, earlier age at epilepsy onset, and longer active duration of epilepsy were associated with memory problems. Seizure frequency and treatment, however, did not influence memory performance. This study indicates that children with FLE show greater risk of developing memory deficits than children with CAE or BECTS, thus highlighting the importance of assessing also memory functions in frontal lobe epilepsy.

Neuropsychological abnormalities in children with the Panayiotopoulos syndrome point to parietal lobe dysfunction

Panayiotopoulos syndrome (PS) is a common epilepsy syndrome associated with rare clinical seizures and unknown localization of the epileptogenic area. Despite findings of normal development in patients with PS, recent neuropsychological studies point to subtle and diverse cognitive impairments. No well-outlined hypothesis about the localization of the brain dysfunction responsible for these impairments has been proposed. We further explored the cognitive dysfunctions in PS and made inferences on the most likely anatomical localization of brain impairment. A group of 19 patients (aged 6-12) with PS was rated according to spike activity and lateralization. The patients were submitted to a neuropsychological evaluation to assess general intelligence, memory, language, visual-perceptual abilities, attention, and executive functions. Using 35-channel scalp EEG recordings, the N170 face-evoked event-related potential (ERP) was obtained to assess the functional integrity of the ventral pathway. All patients with PS showed normal IQ but subtle and consistent neurocognitive impairments. Namely, we found abnormalities in the copy task of the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure and in the Narrative Memory Test. There was no correlation between neuropsychological impairments with spike activity and hemispheric spike lateralization. The N170 ERP was normal in all patients except for one. Our neuropsychological findings demonstrate impairments in visual-perceptual abilities and in semantic processing. These findings, paired with the absence of occipital lobe dysfunction in all neuropsychological studies of PS performed to this date, support the existence of parietal lobe dysfunction.