Infant communicative development assessed with the European Portuguese MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories short forms

This article describes the European Portuguese MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories short forms, the first published instruments for the assessment of language development in EP-learning infants and toddlers. Normative data from the EP population are presented, focusing on developmental trends for vocabulary learning, production of morphologically complex words and word combinations. Significant effects of gender were found for early word comprehension and production, as well as for toddlers’ word production, word complexity and word combinations, with a consistent advantage for girls. By contrast, effects of socioeconomic status were limited to early word comprehension. A cross-language comparison with short form data for other languages was performed. Differences across languages only emerged for toddlers. However, effects of gender were found independently of language differences

Traumatic brain injury in England and Wales: prospective audit of epidemiology, complications and standardised mortality.

OBJECTIVES: To provide a comprehensive assessment of the management of traumatic brain injury (TBI) relating to epidemiology, complications and standardised mortality across specialist units. DESIGN: The Trauma Audit and Research Network collects data prospectively on patients suffering trauma across England and Wales. We analysed all data collected on patients with TBI between April 2014 and June 2015. SETTING: Data were collected on patients presenting to emergency departments across 187 hospitals including 26 with specialist neurosurgical services, incorporating factors previously identified in the Ps14 multivariate logistic regression (Ps14n) model multivariate TBI outcome prediction model. The frequency and timing of secondary transfer to neurosurgical centres was assessed. RESULTS: We identified 15 820 patients with TBI presenting to neurosurgical centres directly (6258), transferred from a district hospital to a neurosurgical centre (3682) and remaining in a district general hospital (5880). The commonest mechanisms of injury were falls in the elderly and road traffic collisions in the young, which were more likely to present in coma. In severe TBI (Glasgow Coma Score (GCS) ≤8), the median time from admission to imaging with CT scan is 0.5 hours. Median time to craniotomy from admission is 2.6 hours and median time to intracranial pressure monitoring is 3 hours. The most frequently documented complication of severe TBI is bronchopneumonia in 5% of patients. Risk-adjusted W scores derived from the Ps14n model indicate that no neurosurgical unit fell outside the 3 SD limits on a funnel plot. CONCLUSIONS: We provide the first comprehensive report of the management of TBI in England and Wales, including data from all neurosurgical units. These data provide transparency and suggests equity of access to high-quality TBI management provided in England and Wales.AH is supported by the University of Cambridge, UK and Medical Research Council/Royal College of Surgeons of England Clinical Research Training Fellowship (Grant no. G0802251). P.J.H. is supported by National Institute for Health Research Professorship, Academy of Medical Sciences/Health Foundation Senior Surgical Scientist Fellowship and the National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre, Cambridge.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from the BMJ Publishing Group. via https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2016- 01219

A Behavioral and ERP Study

UID/LIN/03213/2013European Portuguese (EP) is a language with variable stress, and the main cues for stress are duration and vowel reduction. A previous behavioral study has reported a stress “deafness” effect in EP when vowel quality cues are unavailable. The present study recorded both event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioral data to examine the stress processing by native EP speakers in the absence of the vowel quality cues. Our behavioral result was consistent with previous research, showing that when vowel reduction is absent EP speakers demonstrated a stress “deafness” effect similar to that found in speakers of languages with fixed stress or without any lexical stress marking. In the ERP task, both the trochaic and iambic conditions yielded mismatch negativity (MMN) and late negativity, suggesting that EP speakers are able to discriminate the two stress patterns without vowel reduction at the pre-attentive stage. Moreover, the ERP and behavioral data revealed compatible results regarding the pattern of stress bias in EP. In the EPR task, the MMN and late negativity components were more negative and span over a larger temporal window in the iambic condition than in the trochaic condition, indicating a higher sensitivity for the iambic stress pattern. In the behavioral task, EP speakers responded more accurately and more quickly to the iambic stress. These results match recent developmental findings in the acquisition of stress, but speak against the dominant view in EP phonological literature which assumes penultimate stress to be the regular stress pattern. In addition, both the ERP and the behavioral data showed that EP speakers’ stress processing was influenced by their working memory (WM) capacity. The participants with high WM capacity outperformed the participants with limited WM capacity in the iambic condition. In sum, our results broaden the current knowledge on stress processing by EP speakers at both the pre-attentive and attentive levels.publishersversionpublishe