Fears, worries, and scary dreams in 4- to 12-year-old children: their content, developmental pattern, and origins

Investigated anxiety symptoms in normal school children 4 to 12 years of age (N = 190). The percentages of children reporting fears, worries, and scary dreams were 75.8, 67.4, and 80.5%, respectively, indicating that these anxiety symptoms are quite common among children. Inspection of the developmental pattern of these phenomena revealed that fears and scary dreams were common among 4- to 6-year-olds, became even more prominent in 7- to 9-year-olds, and then decreased in frequency in 10- to 12-year-olds. The developmental course of worry deviated from this pattern. This phenomenon was clearly more prevalent in older children (i.e., 7- to 12-year-olds) than in younger children. Furthermore, although the frequency of certain types of fears, worries, and dreams were found to change across age groups (e.g., the prevalence of fears and scary dreams pertaining to imaginary creatures decreased with age, whereas worry about test performance increased with age), the top intense fears, worries, and scary dreams remained relatively unchanged across age levels. An examination of the origins of these common anxiety phenomena showed that for fears and scary dreams, information was the most commonly reported pathway, whereas for worry, conditioning experiences were more prominent.     

Semantic Capacities of the Right Hemisphere as Seen in Two Cases of Pure Word Blindness

Two patients with pure alexia were studied with tachistoscopically presented stimuli to examine factors influencing their ability to distinguish words from nonwords and to derive semantic information at exposures too brief for explicit letter identification. Both patients had profound right hemianopia and computerized tomography (CT) evidence of splenial destruction. Both patients were successful in making word/nonword decisions for high-frequency, but not low-frequency, words. They could judge semantic class membership reliably for such common categories as animals and vegetables, but not for arbitrarily selected categories, such as office-related items. Judgments about the gender of people's names and place versus person name distinctions were made with high reliability. Results are interpreted as evidence for limited word recognition and semantic-processing capacity in the right hemisphere.     

An aphasia database on the internet: a model for computer-assisted analysis in aphasiology

A web-based software model was developed as an example for data mining in aphasiology. It is used for educating medical and engineering students. It is based upon a database of 254 aphasic patients which contains the diagnosis of the aphasia type, profiles of an aphasia test battery (Aachen Aphasia Test), and some further clinical information. In addition, the cerebral lesion profiles of 147 of these cases were standardized by transferring the coordinates of the lesions to a 3D reference brain based upon the ACPC coordinate system. Two artificial neural networks were used to perform a classification of the aphasia type. First, a coarse classification was achieved by using an assessment of spontaneous speech of the patient which produced correct results in 87% of the test cases. Data analysis tools were used to select four features of the 30 available test features to yield a more accurate diagnosis. This classifier produced correct results in 92% of the test cases. The neural network approach is similar to grouping performed in group studies, while the nearest-neighbor method shows a design more similar to case studies. It finds the neurolinguistic and the lesion data of patients whose AAT profiles are most similar to the user's input. This way lesion profiles can be compared to each other interindividually. The Aphasia Diagnoser is available on the Web address http://fuzzy.iau.dtu.dk/aphasia.nsf and thus should facilitate a discussion about the reliability and possibilities of data-mining techniques in aphasiology.     

Language development in a child with left hemispherectomy

A longitudinal study of a left hemispherectomized boy (AB) was conducted to document linguistic evolution and maturation and determine the extent to which right hemisphere processes allow development of language. Resection of the left hemisphere occurred at age 5 years 6 months, following intractable epilepsy. Tests of language comprehension (pointing, understanding of prepositions, understanding of narratives) and production (naming, repetition, lexical diversity, grammatical production) were administered at ages 6:2, 6:4, 6:6, and 6 years 9 months. Observations showed little progress, if any, in most aspects of linguistic performance. In contrast to studies with left-hemispherectomized children, AB showed only a modest expansion of the semantic lexicon and the phonological repertoire more than a year after the surgical intervention. These observations indirectly suggest (1) poor functional involvement of the right hemisphere in the development of adequate linguistic abilities, (2) the necessary integrity of the LH for adequate development of language, or (3) that variations in individual brain maturation rates may account for AB's linguistic progress.     

Asynchronous language acquisition in developmental dysphasia

A longitudinal study was conducted to document and compare evolution of children with linguistic acquisition impairment. To determine whether development of the analytic mechanisms underlying linguistic processing occured in similar fashion, two children with mixed developmental dysphasia were assessed from 4 to 5:6 years of age with psycholinguistic tests at 6-months interval. Spontaneous speech and language production (consonant repertory in initial word position, MLU, and lexical diversity) were investigated in a standardized symbolic play context. The phonologic and lexico-morphologic evolution analyses revealed a marked improvement in motor control of phonology and in the application of morphosyntaxic rules in child 1, whereas child 2 was still impaired in phonology and morphosyntax. The singular developmental changes in spontaneous speech results indicate dynamic relationships between various language production facets and variability in the kind of deficit and lexical automation presented by these children. These contrasts in the evolution of language production profiles between child 1 and child 2 also underline the importance of longitudinal studies in the analysis of the atypical linguistic processing paths used by children with developmental dysphasia.     

Ocular motility and visuo-spatial attention in children with periventricular leukomalacia

Periventricular leukomalacia (PVL) is known to cause visual, motor, and cognitive impairments varying in their severity. Most studies focused on impairment at early ages. Little is known about the PVL's later outcome. Effects of neural plasticity are for instance insufficiently known to prognose precisely their behavioral outcome. It is even hard to determine the consequence of one defect on global development over time. Because of the established neural link between eye motion and space perception, 5-to-9 year-old PVL's were tested in visual detection, postural control, and space attention tasks. In this paper, discussion will focus on behavioral asymmetry, developmental outcome, and brain injury.     

The impact of lesion laterality on neuropsychological change following posterior pallidotomy: a review of current findings

This paper reviews seven studies evaluating the impact of lesion laterality on the neuropsychological sequelae of posterior pallidotomy for treatment of Parkinson's disease. Left lesions of the internal globus pallidus (GPi) were associated with subtle deficits on measures sensitive to frontal lobe function. The findings of a randomized clinical trial including a patient control group indicated that many of these deficits were transient, resolving by 6 months following surgery. Right GPi lesions were not consistently associated with neuropsychological deficit, except in one study that included a significant proportion of demented patients. It is hypothesized that when neuropsychological decline is present following surgery, this reflects impingement of posterior GPi lesions into proximal regions such as anterior GPi or the external pallidum that participate in cognitive basal ganglia-thalamocortical circuits. The findings from neuroimaging will be important for elucidating the relationship between lesion locus and neuropsychological sequelae.