The modified drawing test for assessment of arm movement quality

The cerebrovascular accident often results in motor impairment of one of the upper limbs, hence, compromising the quality of life of stroke survivors. Rehabilitation aims to restore the movement abilities of the paralyzed/paretic upper limb. An important element in rehabilitation is to apply a quantified measure of the quality of movement, in order to follow the recovery and select the most appropriate therapeutic modality. We developed a method that uses data recorded during planar movements and outputs an objective measure that relates to the smoothness, velocity and precision of the movement. This method is universal, in a sense that hand position can be recorded by any available means (e.g., robot assistant, digitizing board, motion tracking systems, etc). The method follows the Drawing Test, but generates results that show the ability of the patient to make point to point movements and track the presented trajectory. The method is based on measurements of hand position during movement along a target path in form of a 2 cm wide rectangle. The patient's task is to move the hand along the target path as quickly as possible, with as few contacts (collisions) with the sides of the path. This paper addresses the aspects of automatic detection of parameters that quantify the quality of movement (speed, smoothness and precision). The use of this method is presented with 10 patients

The nonword repetition task as a procedure for assessing phonological development at the preschool age : the possibility of specific language impairment discrimination in the Serbian language

Specifični jezički poremećaj (SJP) je heterogeni razvojni jezički poremećaj koji podrazumeva značajan deficit u jezičkoj sposobnosti (sa posebnim slabostima u domenu fonologije i morfo-sintakse) koji se ne može pripisati oštećenju sluha, niskoj neverbalnoj inteligenciji, neurološkim oštećenjima, emocionalnoj i socijalnoj deprivaciji i drugim poznatim faktorima. Zadatak ponavljanja pseudoreči koji se sastoji u izlaganju i trenutnom ponavljanju izmišljenih reči (pseudoreči) i ispituje sposobnost fonološke reprodukcije je, prema nalazima istraživanja u drugim jezicima, obećavajući psiholingvistički marker za SJP iz razloga što deca sa SJP konzistentno imaju slabiji uspeh na ovom zadatku u odnosu na svoje vršnjake tipičnog razvoja (TR). Cilj istraživanja prikazanog u ovoj disertaciji je da se primenom zadatka ponavljanja pseudoreči, konstruisanih u skladu sa karakteristikama srpskog jezika, ispita sposobnost fonološke reprodukcije TR i SJP dece predškolskog i ranog školskog uzrasta koja usvajaju srpski jezik i da se utvrde razvojno diskriminativni i parametri diskriminativni za SJP koji će poslužiti za konstrukciju testa. Ovakav test bi omogućio procenu fonološkog razvoja kod dece koja usvajaju srpski jezik i, uz dodatne procene stručnjaka u kliničkoj praksi, omogućio diskriminaciju SJP i, potencijalno, drugih govorno-jezičkih teškoća kod dece...Specific language impairment (SLI) is a heterogeneous developmental language impairment consisting of a significant deficit in language ability (especially weakness in the phonological and morpho-syntactic domain) that cannot be attributed to hearing loss, low nonverbal intelligence, neurological damage, emotional and social deprivation, and other known factors. The nonword repetition task (NRT), which consists of the presentation and instantaneous repetition of nonsense words (pseudowords), and investigates the ability of phonological reproduction, is a promising psycholinguistic marker for SLI according to the research findings in other languages, because children with SLI consistently demonstrate poorer performance on this task compared to their typically developing (TD) peers. The aim of the study presented in this dissertation was to examine the ability of phonological reproduction of preschool and early school TD and SLI children who are acquiring Serbian, by using the NRT constructed in accordance with the characteristics of the Serbian language, and to determine developmentally discriminative parameters and those discriminative for SLI, which will be used for test construction. This test would enable the assessment of phonological development of children who are acquiring Serbian, and with additional assessments from experts in the clinical practice, enable the discrimination of SLI and, potentially, other speech-language impairments in children..

The nonword repetition task as a procedure for assessing phonological development at the preschool age : the possibility of specific language impairment discrimination in the Serbian language

Specifični jezički poremećaj (SJP) je heterogeni razvojni jezički poremećaj koji podrazumeva značajan deficit u jezičkoj sposobnosti (sa posebnim slabostima u domenu fonologije i morfo-sintakse) koji se ne može pripisati oštećenju sluha, niskoj neverbalnoj inteligenciji, neurološkim oštećenjima, emocionalnoj i socijalnoj deprivaciji i drugim poznatim faktorima. Zadatak ponavljanja pseudoreči koji se sastoji u izlaganju i trenutnom ponavljanju izmišljenih reči (pseudoreči) i ispituje sposobnost fonološke reprodukcije je, prema nalazima istraživanja u drugim jezicima, obećavajući psiholingvistički marker za SJP iz razloga što deca sa SJP konzistentno imaju slabiji uspeh na ovom zadatku u odnosu na svoje vršnjake tipičnog razvoja (TR). Cilj istraživanja prikazanog u ovoj disertaciji je da se primenom zadatka ponavljanja pseudoreči, konstruisanih u skladu sa karakteristikama srpskog jezika, ispita sposobnost fonološke reprodukcije TR i SJP dece predškolskog i ranog školskog uzrasta koja usvajaju srpski jezik i da se utvrde razvojno diskriminativni i parametri diskriminativni za SJP koji će poslužiti za konstrukciju testa. Ovakav test bi omogućio procenu fonološkog razvoja kod dece koja usvajaju srpski jezik i, uz dodatne procene stručnjaka u kliničkoj praksi, omogućio diskriminaciju SJP i, potencijalno, drugih govorno-jezičkih teškoća kod dece...Specific language impairment (SLI) is a heterogeneous developmental language impairment consisting of a significant deficit in language ability (especially weakness in the phonological and morpho-syntactic domain) that cannot be attributed to hearing loss, low nonverbal intelligence, neurological damage, emotional and social deprivation, and other known factors. The nonword repetition task (NRT), which consists of the presentation and instantaneous repetition of nonsense words (pseudowords), and investigates the ability of phonological reproduction, is a promising psycholinguistic marker for SLI according to the research findings in other languages, because children with SLI consistently demonstrate poorer performance on this task compared to their typically developing (TD) peers. The aim of the study presented in this dissertation was to examine the ability of phonological reproduction of preschool and early school TD and SLI children who are acquiring Serbian, by using the NRT constructed in accordance with the characteristics of the Serbian language, and to determine developmentally discriminative parameters and those discriminative for SLI, which will be used for test construction. This test would enable the assessment of phonological development of children who are acquiring Serbian, and with additional assessments from experts in the clinical practice, enable the discrimination of SLI and, potentially, other speech-language impairments in children..

Feedback-Mediated Upper Extremities Exercise: Increasing Patient Motivation in Poststroke Rehabilitation

Purpose. This proof-of-concept study investigated whether feedback-mediated exercise (FME) of the affected arm of hemiplegic patients increases patient motivation and promotes greater improvement of motor function, compared to no-feedback exercise (NFE). Method. We developed a feedback-mediated treatment that uses gaming scenarios and allows online and offline monitoring of both temporal and spatial characteristics of planar movements. Twenty poststroke hemiplegic inpatients, randomly assigned to the FME and NFE group, received therapy five days a week for three weeks. The outcome measures were evaluated from the following: (1) the modified drawing test (mDT), (2) received therapy time—RTT, and (3) intrinsic motivation inventory—IMI. Results. The FME group patients showed significantly higher improvement in the speed metric (P<0.01), and smoothness metric (P<0.01), as well as higher RTT (P<0.01). Significantly higher patient motivation is observed in the FME group (interest/enjoyment subscale (P<0.01) and perceived competence subscale (P<0.01)). Conclusion. Prolonged endurance in training and greater improvement in certain areas of motor function, as well as very high patient motivation and strong positive impressions about the treatment, suggest the positive effects of feedback-mediated treatment and its high level of acceptance by patients

How do 5-year-olds understand questions? Differences in languages across Europe

The comprehension of constituent questions is an important topic for language acquisition research and for applications in the diagnosis of language impairment. This article presents the results of a study investigating the comprehension of different types of questions by 5-year-old, typically developing children across 19 European countries, 18 different languages, and 7 language (sub-)families. The study investigated the effects of two factors on question formation: (a) whether the question contains a simple interrogative word like 'who' or a complex one like 'which princess', and (b) whether the question word was related to the sentential subject or object position of the verb. The findings show that there is considerable variation among languages, but the two factors mentioned consistently affect children's performance. The cross-linguistic variation shows that three linguistic factors facilitate children's understanding of questions: having overt case morphology, having a single lexical item for both 'who' and 'which', and the use of synthetic verbal forms