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Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has provided relevant evidence regarding the neural correlates of language. The aim of the present study is to summarize and assess previous findings regarding linguistic levels (i.e., semantic and morpho-syntactic) and brain structures utilized during verb and sentence processing. To do that, we systematically reviewed TMS research on verb and sentence processing in healthy speakers, and meta-analyzed TMS-induced effects according to the region of stimulation and experimental manipulation. Findings from 45 articles show that approximately half of the reviewed work focuses on the embodiment of action verbs. The majority of studies (60%) target only one cortical region in relation to a specific linguistic process. Frontal areas are most frequently stimulated in connection to morphosyntactic processes and action verb semantics, and temporoparietal regions in relation to integration of sentential meaning and thematic role assignment. A meta-analysis of 72 effect sizes of the reviewed papers indicates that TMS has a small overall effect size, but effect sizes for anterior compared to posterior regions do not differ for semantic or morphosyntactic contrasts. Our findings stress the need to increase the number of targeted areas, while using the same linguistic contrasts in order to disentangle the contributions of different cortical regions to distinct linguistic processes.

People with Parkinson's disease often experience communication problems. The current cross-linguistic study investigates how listeners' perceptual judgements of speech healthiness are related to the acoustic changes appearing in the speech of people with Parkinson's disease. Accordingly, we report on an online experiment targeting perceived healthiness of speech. We studied the relations between healthiness perceptual judgements and a set of acoustic characteristics of speech in a cross-sectional design. We recruited 169 participants, who performed a classification task judging speech recordings of Dutch speakers with Parkinson's disease and of Dutch control speakers as ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’. The groups of listeners differed in their training and expertise in speech language therapy as well as in their native languages. Such group separation allowed us to investigate the acoustic correlates of speech healthiness without influence of the content of the recordings.We used a Random Forest method to predict listeners' responses. Our findings demonstrate that, independently of expertise and language background, when classifying speech as healthy or unhealthy listeners are more sensitive to speech rate, presence of phonation deficiency reflected by maximum phonation time measurement, and centralization of the vowels. The results indicate that both specifics of the expertise and language background may lead to listeners relying more on the features from either prosody or phonation domains. Our findings demonstrate that more global perceptual judgements of different listeners classifying speech of people with Parkinson's disease may be predicted with sufficient reliability from conventional acoustic features. This suggests universality of acoustic change in speech of people with Parkinson's disease. Therefore, we concluded that certain aspects of phonation and prosody serve as prominent markers of speech healthiness for listeners independent of their first language or expertise. Our findings have outcomes for the clinical practice and real-life implications for subjective perception of speech of people with Parkinson's disease, while information about particular acoustic changes that trigger listeners to classify speech as ‘unhealthy’ can provide specific therapeutic targets in addition to the existing dysarthria treatment in people with Parkinson's disease.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurological disorder characterized by several motor and non-motor manifestations. PD frequently leads to hypokinetic dysarthria, which affects speech production and often has a detrimental impact on everyday communication. Among the typical manifestations of hypokinetic dysarthria, speech and language therapists (SLTs) identify prosody as the most affected cluster of speech characteristics. However, less is known about how untrained listeners perceive PD speech and how affected prosody influences their assessments of speech. This study explores the perception of sentence type intonation and healthiness of PD speech by listeners with different levels of familiarity with speech disorders in Dutch. We investigated assessments and classification accuracy differences between Dutch-speaking SLTs (n = 18) and Dutch/non-Dutch speaking untrained listeners (n = 27 and n = 124, respectively). We collected speech data from 30 Dutch speakers diagnosed with PD and 30 Dutch healthy controls. The stimuli set consisted of short phrases from spontaneous and read speech and of phrases produced with different sentence type intonation. Listeners participated in an online experiment targeting classification of sentence type intonation and perceived healthiness of speech. Results indicate that both familiarity with speech disorders and with speakers’ language are significant and have different effects depending on the task type, as different listener groups demonstrate different classification accuracy. There is evidence that untrained Dutch listeners classify PD speech as unhealthy more accurately than both trained Dutch and untrained non-Dutch listeners, while trained Dutch listeners outperform the other two groups in sentence type classification.

Purpose: Music-based interventions are used in the treatment of childhood speech sound disorders (SSDs). Hypotheses on working mechanisms are being developed, focussing on shared neural processes. However, evidence of the effect of treatment with musical elements in SSDs in children is lacking. This study reviews the literature regarding the use of music-based interventions in the treatment of childhood SSDs. Method: A systematic search in six databases was conducted, yielding 199 articles, eight of which met the inclusion criteria. Included articles were reviewed on study characteristics, patient characteristics, interventions, outcomes and methodological quality. Result: This review included four case studies, three single-subject design studies and one cohort study. Seven studies reported positive outcomes on speech production, but outcome measures in the four studies with experimental design were not all aimed at the level of speech (motor) processes. Methodological quality was sufficient in one study. Conclusion: Seven out of eight studies in this review report positive outcomes of music-based interventions in the treatment of SSDs. However, these outcomes are not sufficiently supported by evidence due to insufficient methodological quality. Suggestions for improving methodological quality in future research are presented.

Effects of concreteness and grammatical class on lexical-semantic processing are well-documented, but the role of sensory-perceptual and sensory-motor features of concepts in underlying mechanisms producing these effects is relatively unknown. We hypothesized that processing dissimilarities in accuracy and response time performance in nouns versus verbs, concrete versus abstract words, and their interaction can be explained by differences in semantic weight—the combined amount of sensory-perceptual and sensory-motor information to conceptual representations—across those grammatical and semantic categories. We assessed performance on concrete and abstract subcategories of nouns and verbs with a semantic similarity judgment task. Results showed that when main effects of concreteness and grammatical class were analyzed in more detail, the grammatical-class effect, in which nouns are processed more accurately and quicker than verbs, was only present for concrete words, not for their abstract counterparts. Moreover, the concreteness effect, measured at different levels of abstract words, was present for both nouns and verbs, but it was less pronounced for verbs. The results do not support the grammatical-class hypothesis, in which nouns and verbs are separately organized, and instead provide evidence in favor of a unitary semantic space, in which lexical-semantic processing is influenced by the beneficial effect of sensory-perceptual and sensory-motor information of concepts.

Purpose Corpus analyses of spontaneous language fragments of varying length provide useful insights in the language change caused by brain damage, such as caused by some forms of dementia. Sample size is an important experimental parameter to consider when designing spontaneous language analyses studies. Sample length influences the confidence levels of analyses. Machine learning approaches often favor to use as much language as available, whereas language evaluation in a clinical setting is often based on truncated samples to minimize annotation labor and to limit any discomfort for participants. This article investigates, using Bayesian estimation of machine learned models, what the ideal text length should be to minimize model uncertainty. Method We use the Stanford parser to extract linguistic variables and train a statistic model to distinguish samples by speakers with no brain damage from samples by speakers with probable Alzheimer's disease. We compare the results to previously published models that used CLAN for linguistic analysis. Results The uncertainty around six individual variables and its relation to sample length are reported. The same model with linguistic variables that is used in all three experiments can predict group membership better than a model without them. One variable (concept density) is more informative when measured using the Stanford tools than when measured using CLAN. Conclusion For our corpus of German speech, the optimal sample length is found to be around 700 words long. Longer samples do not provide more information.

Background Animal fluency is a widely used task to assess people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other neurological disorders. The mechanisms that drive performance in this task are argued to rely on language and executive functions. However, there is little information regarding what specific aspects of these cognitive processes drive performance on this task. Objective To understand which aspects of language (i.e., semantics, phonological output lexicon, phonological assembly) and executive function (i.e., mental set shifting; information updating and monitoring; inhibition of possible responses) are involved in the performance of animal fluency in people with AD. Methods Animal fluency data from 58 people with probable AD from the DementiaBank Pittsburgh Corpus were analyzed. Number of clusters and switches were measured and nine word properties (e.g., frequency, familiarity) for each of the correct words (i.e., each word counting toward the total score, disregarding non-animals and repetitions) were determined. Random forests were used to understand which variables predicted the total number of correct words, and conditional inference trees were used to search for interactions between the variables. Finally, Wilcoxon tests were implemented to cross-validate the results, by comparing the performance of participants with scores below the norm in animal fluency against participants with scores within the norm based on a large normative sample. Results Switches and age of acquisition emerged as the most important variables to predict total number of correct words in animal fluency in people with AD. Cross-validating the results, people with AD whose animal fluency scores fell below the norm produced fewer switches and words with lower age of acquisition than people with AD with scores in the normal range. Conclusion The results indicate that people with AD rely on executive functioning (information updating and monitoring) and language (phonological output lexicon, not necessarily semantics) to produce words on animal fluency.

Objective:To determine the effect of three psycholinguistic variables—lexical frequency, age of acquisition (AoA), and neighborhood density (ND)—on lexical-semantic processing in individuals with non-fluent (nfvPPA), logopenic (lvPPA), and semantic primary progressive aphasia (svPPA). Identifying the scope and independence of these features can provide valuable information about the organization of words in our mind and brain.Method:We administered a lexical decision task—with words carefully selected to permit distinguishing lexical frequency, AoA, and orthographic ND effects—to 41 individuals with PPA (13 nfvPPA, 14 lvPPA, 14 svPPA) and 25 controls.Results:Of the psycholinguistic variables studied, lexical frequency had the largest influence on lexical-semantic processing, but AoA and ND also played an independent role. The results reflect a brain-language relationship with different proportional effects of frequency, AoA, and ND in the PPA variants, in a pattern that is consistent with the organization of the mental lexicon. Individuals with nfvPPA and lvPPA experienced an ND effect consistent with the role of inferior frontal and temporoparietal regions in lexical analysis and word form processing. By contrast, individuals with svPPA experienced an AoA effect consistent with the role of the anterior temporal lobe in semantic processing.Conclusions:The findings are in line with a hierarchical mental lexicon structure with a conceptual (semantic) and a lexeme (word-form) level, such that a selective deficit at one of these levels of the mental lexicon manifests differently in lexical-semantic processing performance, consistent with the affected language-specific brain region in each PPA variant.

Abstract. Disorders of language and/or communicative abilities in neurodegenerative diseases are a common phenomenon. Over the past few decades, there has been a growing interest in language performance connected to these diseases. To date, studies in the field of language impairments in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) have focused mainly on particular aspects of language processing in the isolated disease or on comparing certain language tasks in two neurodegenerative diseases. To enable a better understanding and comparison of the underlying linguistic deficits in all three disorders, this paper focuses on phonological, semantic, and grammatical processing in each of the disorders. A review of the literature on language processing deficits reveals that phonological, semantic, and grammatical processing is impaired in the early stages of AD, PD, and FTLD, and that the underlying deficits are sometimes linguistic in nature. Language disorders, however, may also reflect cognitive deficits, such as short-term verbal memory impairments, attention deficits, and reduced switching capacities, all of which have an impact on language processing.

Binnen wetenschappelijk onderzoek en logopedische diagnostiek en therapie met be-trekking tot het begrijpen en oproepen van werkwoorden wordt er voornamelijk gebruikgemaakt van statisch weergegeven acties. Uit diverse studies blijkt echter dat bij perso-nen met afasie het begrip en de productie van acties significant beter is indien de ac-ties dynamisch weergegeven worden in de vorm van video’s in plaats van statisch in devorm van foto’s. Er zijn echter ook studies die dit tegenspreken. In de huidige studiewerden drie experimenten uitgevoerd waarin onderzocht werd wat de invloed is vaneen statische en dynamische weergave van acties op het begrijpen en benoemen van ac-ties. Daarnaast werd er onderscheid gemaakt in drie semantische categorieën, namelijkARM-gerelateerde, BEEN-gerelateerde en GEZICHT-gerelateerde acties. Ook werd on-derzocht in hoeverre het onderliggende afasietype van invloed is op het begrijpen vanacties op basis van de tweedeling tussen een vloeiend afasietype en een niet-vloeiendafasietype. Uit de resultaten blijkt dat personen met afasie significant beter presteren opzowel het benoemen als begrijpen van acties op woord- en zinsniveau wanneer deze ac-ties dynamisch worden weergegeven. Op taalbegripsniveau is het onderliggende afasie-type hierop niet van invloed. Daarnaast werd aangetoond dat een dynamische weergavevan ARM- en BEEN-gerelateerde acties het begrip van deze acties verbetert vergelekenmet een statische weergave. Voor de productie van acties geldt dit alleen voor ARM-gerelateerde acties. De gevonden resultaten sluiten gedeeltelijk aan bij recente theo-rieën op het gebied van de mentale opslag van werkwoorden. Gezien het voordeel vaneen dynamische weergave van acties voor het benoemen en begrijpen van acties voorpersonen met afasie verdient het aanbeveling om hier rekening mee te houden binnende logopedische diagnostiek en therapie, In naming and comprehension studies on verb processing mostly pictures or photographs depicting actions are used, although the meaning of verbs regularly involves movement. Several studies have shown that in verb comprehension and retrieval persons with aphasia (PWA) profit from a dynamic display of actions (video clips) in comparison to a static depiction (pictures). However, other studies provide contradictory outcomes. In the current study three experiments were conducted examining the influence of a static or dynamic display of actions in verb comprehension and action naming. In addition, a distinction was made in three semantic verb categories, namely arm-related, leg-related and face-related actions. Furthermore, the role of the underlying type of aphasia wasconsidered for comprehension. The results show that people with aphasia perform significantly better on both naming and understanding actions in isolation and in sentences after a dynamic than after a static display. The underlying type of aphasia had no influence for the verb comprehension. In addition, it was found that a dynamic display of specifically arm- and leg-related actions improves the understanding of these actions compared to a static depiction. For the production of these actions this only holds for the arm-related actions. These results are partially in line with recent theories about themental storage of verbs. Given the advantage of a dynamic display of actions for naming and understanding actions for PMA, it is recommended to take this into account in aphasia diagnosis and treatment.

Background: Several studies using musical elements in the treatment of neurological language and speech disorders have reported improvement of speech production. One such programme, Speech-Music Therapy for Aphasia (SMTA), integrates speech therapy and music therapy (MT) to treat the individual with Apraxia of Speech (AoS) and aphasia. We have observed encouraging results in clinical practice, but there is still no empirical evidence of the effect of SMTA.Aims: The current study investigated the effectiveness of SMTA on verbal communication in daily life.Methods & Procedures: Five participants with AoS accompanied by aphasia were included in an efficacy study using a case series design with multiple measurements. All participants received 24 SMTA sessions including two 30-min sessions per week. Pretreatment and posttreatment (immediately and 3 months after treatment stopped), verbal communication (intelligibility and comprehensibility) were tested with the Amsterdam-Nijmegen Everyday Language Test. The Aachen Aphasia Test (AAT) and the Diagnostic Instrument for Apraxia of Speech (DIAS) were also administered. The participants were tested four times before the start of the treatment (baseline) with a related test for progress on articulation (Modified Diadochokinesis Test (MDT)) and once with an unrelated control test (Psycholinguistic Assessment in Language Processing of Aphasia 12; repetition of number series). During the treatment, both tests were administered weekly.Outcomes & Results: Intelligibility of verbal communication for all participating individuals, as well as comprehensibility in four out of five participants, improved after 24 SMTA treatment sessions. All measures of MDT and repetition of AAT showed significant improvement for all participants. Four participants also improved on the test for articulation of phonemes and the diadochokinesis test of the DIAS. Furthermore, two participants improved on the articulation of words (DIAS). The improvement remained stable after treatment ended (follow-up). For three out of the five participants, no improvement was found on the control tests. Two participants also showed improvement on almost all outcome measures, but also improved on the control tests. SMTA not only affected articulation but also positively influenced the severity of the aphasia in four out of five participants.Conclusions: SMTA seems an effective treatment programme for at least three of the five individuals that were treated in the current study. This treatment led not only to better articulation, but more importantly, also to improvement in communication in daily life.

Background: Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is a rare speech disorder leading to a perceived presence of a new accent in a speaker’s speech. Until now, around 100 cases of FAS have been reported. It is striking that in most cases the perception of the accent is in one consistent direction, namely from languages like English or Dutch to accents of Romance, Germanic, Eastern European or tonal languages.Aims: In this article, we will try to come up with an overarching explanation for the accent changes seen in FAS, relating these changes to force of articulation.Main Contribution: We assume that the foreign accent in FAS is interpreted on the basis of the stereotypical segmental and prosodic characteristics that relate to the phonetics and phonology of specific languages. We hypothesise that the direction in perception of a FAS accent will go from a language characterised by relatively more lenition processes, into languages with relatively more fortition characteristics in their phonetic realisations and phonological system and not the other way around. Accents are expected to change from stress-timed to syllable-timed languages, from weight-sensitive stress systems to weight-insensitive systems, from non-aspirated to aspirated systems, and within these language groups from languages characterised by, for example, relatively more reduction and assimilation processes to languages with relatively less lenition. We have tested our hypothesis with the already described FAS cases. We restricted ourselves to the cases of neurogenic FAS described in English and to which enough details were provided in order to be able to judge the change of accent.Conclusions: From the 58 cases that fitted with these criteria, almost 90% showed a change of accent in the expected direction or did not contradict our hypothesis. Only six accent changes did not directly support it. The reported phonetic descriptions of the cases, if available, nevertheless suggest that they do not seem to completely violate our hypothesis.

This pilot study investigates the added acoustic and perceptual effect of cognitive impairment on vowel articulation precision in individuals with Parkinson’s Disease (PD). We compared PD patients with and without Mild Cognitive Impairments (MCI) to elderly healthy controls on various acoustic measurements of the first and second formants of the vowels /i, u, a:, Open image in new window , a/, extracted from spontaneous speech recordings. In addition, 15 naive listeners performed intelligibility ratings on segments of the spontaneous speech. Results show a centralization of vowel formant frequencies, an increased formant frequency variability and reduced intelligibility in individuals with PD compared to controls. Acoustic and perceptual effects of cognitive impairments on vowel articulation precision were only found for the male speakers.

Background: Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is a rare, acquired neurogenic disorder characterised by altered speech that sounds foreign, for example, English with a French accent. Several prosodic and acoustic changes have been mentioned in the literature, but none has indicated an underlying mechanism clarifying the accent in speech.Aims: The present case study aims to capture the acoustic changes in the speech of a Dutch FAS speaker under one heading: increased force of articulation.Methods & Procedures: Some of the often described characteristics of FAS concerning speech rate, stress patterns, vowel reduction, voice onset time (VOT) and assimilation were analysed in the speech of a Dutch male (AA) who speaks with a foreign accent after a stroke. Fifty-two students of Linguistics and Speech Therapy were asked to evaluate the accent of AA and came up with a variety of perceived accents, like Arabic, Turkish, German, Spanish and French.Outcomes & Results: We argue that all investigated characteristics reveal an increase in force of articulation. The reported variation in perceived accents can be explained by a different focus on the variety of phonetic aspects of FAS related to the differences between the phonological systems of the perceived languages and Dutch.Conclusions: Increased force of articulation may lead to the perception of different foreign accents in speakers with FAS. The specific accent depends on the focus of the listener on one of the phonetic aspects of force of articulation.

In the current ERP study, an active oddball task was carried out, testing pure tones and auditory, visual and audiovisual syllables. For pure tones, an MMN, an N2b, and a P3 were found, confirming traditional findings. Auditory syllables evoked an N2 and a P3. We found that the amplitude of the P3 depended on the distance between standard and deviant. A smaller distance required more attention, which was reflected in a larger amplitude. An analysis of audiovisual material, after correction for visual activity, showed that McGurk type stimuli evoked brain responses that differed from both the standard and the congruent deviants. Finally, we found that congruent audiovisual stimuli elicited an N2 with a shorter latency and a P3 with a smaller amplitude than auditory stimuli. The current ERP study, thus, shows that for audiovisual processing the whole is more than the sum of its parts. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Background: The number of reliable and valid instruments to measure the effects of therapy in apraxia of speech (AoS) is limited. Aims: To evaluate the newly developed Modified Diadochokinesis Test (MDT), which is a task to assess the effects of rate and rhythm therapies for AoS in a multiple baseline across behaviours design. Methods: The consistency, accuracy and fluency of speech of 24 adults with AoS and 12 unaffected speakers matched for age, gender and educational level were assessed using the MDT. The reliability and validity of the instrument were considered and outcomes compared with those obtained with existing tests. Results: The results revealed that MDT had a strong internal consistency. Scores were influenced by syllable structure complexity, while distinctive features of articulation had no measurable effect. The testretest and intra- and inter-rater reliabilities were shown to be adequate, and the discriminant validity was good. For convergent validity different outcomes were found: apart from one correlation, the scores on tests assessing functional communication and AoS correlated significantly with the MDT outcome measures. The spontaneous speech phonology measure of the Aachen Aphasia Test (AAT) correlated significantly with the MDT outcome measures, but no correlations were found for the repetition subtest and the spontaneous speech articulation/prosody measure of the AAT. Conclusions & Implications: The study shows that the MDT has adequate psychometric properties, implying that it can be used to measure changes in speech motor control during treatment for apraxia of speech. The results demonstrate the validity and utility of the instrument as a supplement to speech tasks in assessing speech improvement aimed at the level of planning and programming of speech.

Background: During speech perception not only auditory but also visual information (seen speech) is processed. This was shown by, for example, McGurk and MacDonald (1976). In their study participants watched videos showing a speaker articulating the syllable /ka/, while the sound of /pa/ was dubbed onto the video. The most commonly reported perception was neither of the two syllables, but a fusion of both (/ta/). This effect of audiovisual integration has been called the "McGurk effect". Klitsch (2008) showed that the McGurk effect was also found for participants with aphasia and its strength was comparable to an age-matched control group. However her task was an offline measure and therefore provided limited information about the processing itself.Aims: In this study reaction time data will be analysed in addition to answer types. By this we aim to find out whether there are qualitative differences between healthy and aphasic processing, shown by different patterns in the reaction times.Methods & Procedures: Three aphasic participants and a group of fourteen non-brain-damaged control participants took part in a nonword identification task in which they were presented with a speaker pronouncing a syllable. Afterwards they had to choose the matching syllable from three written options. This task was carried out in four conditions: "auditory only", "visual only" (articulatory movements), " audiovisual", and " McGurk" (incongruent auditory and audiovisual information). Along with the answer types, the reaction times were also recorded for all participants.Outcomes & Results: The aphasic participants made more errors and were slower than the non-brain-damaged control participants across conditions. Within the McGurk condition we found different patterns for the non-brain-damaged and the aphasic participants: reaction times were increased for the control group whenever a McGurk-type answer was chosen (compared with answers representing the auditory or visual part of the stimulus), while there were no influences of the chosen answer type on the reaction times for the aphasic participants.Conclusions: Processing of audiovisual information was not only slower in three aphasic participants but also differed qualitatively from the non-brain-damaged control group. For the control participants reaction times differed depending on what answer type was chosen in the McGurk condition. This was not the case for either of the aphasic participants. We argue that the slow-down in undisturbed processing is caused by conscious access to the unimodal information, which might be lacking for the aphasic participants.

Background: The BAT (Paradis, 1987) is an assessment tool for Aphasia, an acquired language disorder caused by focal brain lesion which affects comprehension, production, spoken and written lan-guage.Despite extensive works in the field of aphasia, there has to date been no work undertaken on aphasic manifestation on the Zambian population in the southern region of Africa. Aim: Not a mere translation but adaptation of the BAT into Eng-lish-Bemba. Method: Ten control subjects and ten individuals with speech problems 3 months post stroke, matched on age, gender and education will be assessed on the different tasks of the adapted version of the BAT English-Bemba. Results: Control subjects are expected to score ceiling as opposed to the individuals with speech problems. Low scores on the different tasks will direct the screening of aphasia and draw attention to the different impairments. Conclusion: This tool will serve as a valid, reliable and adequate assessment tool which is not only time and cost effective, but sensitive to Zambia's unique culture and linguistic population. Findings will also not only aid in future diagnosis or research but can also be used to motivate and devise particular treatment and rehabilitation approaches thus improving the quality of life by 'delivering 21st century stroke care'.

Last year Milestones in the history of aphasia appeared in the series Brain Damage, Behaviour and Cognition, written by Jurgen Tesak, who regrettably died soon after finishing this book, and Chris ...

Many studies reveal effects of verb type on verb retrieval, mainly in agrammatic aphasic speakers. In the current study, two factors that might play a role in action naming in anomic aphasic speakers were considered: the conceptual factor instrumentality and the lexical factor name relation to a noun. Instrumental verbs were shown to be better preserved than non-instrumental verbs in a group of anomic aphasic speakers but not in a group of Broca's aphasic speakers. Name relation to a noun improved the performance of the anomic aphasic speakers as well. Again, no effect was found in the group of Broca's aphasic speakers. Verbs with a name relation to a noun were better retrieved in action naming than verbs without a name relation. These findings are discussed in terms of the spreading activation theory of Dell. (Dell, G. S. (1986). A spreading activation theory of retrieval in sentence production. Psychological Review 93, 283-321.) (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Background: Different studies have examined the effect of verb type on comprehension, generally in non-fluent aphasic speakers. The current study includes the data of fluent aphasic speakers as well and considers the effect of conceptual and phonological factors on verb comprehension.Aims: The role of the factors instrumentality and name-relation to a noun were studied. Both factors take the relation between nouns and verbs into account. Instrumentality concerns the conceptual relation between verbs and nouns, whereas name-relation expresses the phonological relation between these two.Methods & Procedures: A total of 13 non-fluent aphasic speakers and 11 fluent aphasic speakers performed a word-to-picture matching task. This task consists of 60 items: 20 target verbs are non-instrumental, 40 verbs are instrumental. instrumental verbs are defined as verbs referring to actions for which an instrument is required in order to perform the action. Within the group of instrumental verbs, 20 are name-related to the corresponding instrument, whereas for the other 20 verbs no such relation exists. Results on the test were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively.Outcomes & Results: Both factors were of influence on the verb comprehension scores, but in different ways in the two subject groups. Instrumentality played a role for the non-fluent aphasic speakers: they were significantly better at comprehending non-name-related instrumental verbs as compared to the other types of verbs. Name-relation to a noun had a negative effect on the scores of the fluent aphasic speakers: they had a significantly lower score on name-related instrumental verbs, than on non-name-related instrumental verbs.Conclusions: The factors instrumentality and name-relation to a noun influenced verb comprehension, but not in the same way in both types of aphasic speakers. It is discussed that this is due to different underlying disorders that lead to verb comprehension problems.

In this article two case studies of fluent aphasic speakers are presented. Both patients performed significantly worse on an action-naming task than on an object-naming task, whereas comprehension of verbs was spared. The items of the action-naming test were controlled not only for the well-known factors that may influence word retrieval (e.g. word-frequency and imageability), but also for other variables that might be of relevance-that is, instrumentality, name relation to a noun and transitivity. Although both patients retrieved nouns better than verbs, word class as such did not seem to be the discriminating factor. In one patient name relation to a noun was particularly helpful in verb retrieval (verbs related in name to nouns were retrieved as easily as nouns in general), whereas in the other patient transitivity demonstrated an effect: he retrieved transitive verbs significantly better than intransitive verbs. It will be argued that the often-made distinction between verbs and nouns may be too rough, and may create artefacts. More careful matching on linguistic and extralinguistic criteria is necessary to learn more about the cognitive representation of verbs and nouns, and to obtain a better understanding of the effect of brain damage on word retrieval.

Background: Acquired brain injury resulting from a stroke can result in impairments in, among other things, communication. Music therapy has been used in rehabilitation to stimulate brain functions involved in speech. The use of elements of music is well known and more often used in the treatment of aphasia and apraxia of speech. Aims: The aim of the study is to synthesise studies on the effect of music parameters in the treatment of neurological language and speech disorders. In addition, possible mechanisms that explain recovery are investigated. Methods & Procedures: Search terms were formulated based on the research question. A systematic search in databases was performed using these search terms. Then inclusion criteria were formulated and articles meeting the criteria were reviewed on patient characteristics, interventions, and methodological quality. Outcomes & Results: A total of 1250 articles have been selected from the databases, of which 15 were included in this study. The Melodic Intonation Therapy was the most studied programme. Melody and rhythm were the music interventions that have been applied the most. Measurable recovery has been reported in all those reviewed studies using music in the treatment of neurological language and speech disorders. In three studies research was also conducted into the mechanisms of explanation of the measured recovery. However, the methodological quality of the investigated studies was rated as "low", using the ASHA level of evidence indicators for judging research. Conclusions: Although treatment outcomes were reported as positive in all of the 15 reviewed studies, caution should be used relative to conclusions about the effectiveness of treatments that incorporate components of music with neurologically impaired individuals. Methodological quality was rated as low and interpretations of mechanisms of recovery were contradictory. Suggestions for standardising and improving methodological quality drawn from the analysis are presented.

The number of reliable and valid instruments to measure the effects of therapy in apraxia of speech (AoS) is limited.To evaluate the newly developed Modified Diadochokinesis Test (MDT), which is a task to assess the effects of rate and rhythm therapies for AoS in a multiple baseline across behaviours design.The consistency, accuracy and fluency of speech of 24 adults with AoS and 12 unaffected speakers matched for age, gender and educational level were assessed using the MDT. The reliability and validity of the instrument were considered and outcomes compared with those obtained with existing tests.The results revealed that MDT had a strong internal consistency. Scores were influenced by syllable structure complexity, while distinctive features of articulation had no measurable effect. The test-retest and intra- and inter-rater reliabilities were shown to be adequate, and the discriminant validity was good. For convergent validity different outcomes were found: apart from one correlation, the scores on tests assessing functional communication and AoS correlated significantly with the MDT outcome measures. The spontaneous speech phonology measure of the Aachen Aphasia Test (AAT) correlated significantly with the MDT outcome measures, but no correlations were found for the repetition subtest and the spontaneous speech articulation/prosody measure of the AAT.The study shows that the MDT has adequate psychometric properties, implying that it can be used to measure changes in speech motor control during treatment for apraxia of speech. The results demonstrate the validity and utility of the instrument as a supplement to speech tasks in assessing speech improvement aimed at the level of planning and programming of speech.