The effect of stuttering on communication: A preliminary investigation

This paper describes a study in which Systemic Functional Linguistics was applied to describe how people who stutter use language. The aim of the study was to determine and describe any differences in language use between a group of 10 adults who stutter and 10 matched normally‐fluent speakers. In addition to formal linguistic analyses, analyses drawn from Systemic Functional Linguistics were used to further investigate the expression of both syntactic and semantic complexity. The findings from this study replicated previous findings of Packman et al. in which they found that the language used by people who stutter was significantly less complex than the control group. Another major finding was that adults who stuttered used the linguistic resource of modality significantly less than the normally‐fluent matched peers. The implications these strategies have on communication and social participation will be discussed.     

应用语文探索和字词分析软件探讨两岸4例孤独症患儿母亲团体干预的研究

目的 分析孤独谱系障碍(ASD)患儿母亲参与半结构团体干预的心理历程变化过程,为团体干预改善ASD患儿母亲不良情绪状态提供研究基础。方法 研究采用量化取向语文探索与字词分析软件(LIWC)2007中文简体版,对上海市和台湾台中市4例ASD患儿母亲参与半结构支持性团体干预(12次,每次90 min)的前段(第1～4次)、中段(第5～8次)、后段(第9～12次)、结束后12个月共计4个时长段的团体干预咨询录音文稿进行字词分析。结果 4位参与团体干预的ASD患儿母亲从团体干预前段到后段负性情绪词汇不断减少;团体干预中段积极关注自我,工作、个人成就、家庭词汇增多;团体干预后段休闲等提高生活质量词汇上升;干预后母亲心理词汇、关爱词汇较干预前增加,差异有统计学意义(t=3.758,3.794,P均<0.05);干预后患儿孤独症儿童行为评定量表(ABC)评分较干预前降低,差异有统计学意义(t=-3.100,P<0.05)。结论 支持性团体干预能够帮助增加ASD患儿母子之间良性调试,减少患儿问题行为。同时,ASD患儿母亲会建构新的自我认同,降低不确定感,提升心理健康。     

Healthcare for migrants,participatory health research and implementation science—better health policy and practice through inclusion. The RESTORE project

Background: This is a time of unprecedented mobility across the globe. Healthcare systems need to adapt to ensure that primary care is culturally and linguistically appropriate for migrants. Evidence-based guidelines and training interventions for cultural competence and the use of professional interpreters are available across European healthcare settings. However, in real-world practice migrants and their healthcare providers ‘get by’ with a range of informal and inadequate strategies. RESTORE is an EU FP7 funded project, which is designed to address this translational gap.

Objectives: The objective of RESTORE is to investigate and support the implementation of guidelines and training initiatives to support communication in cross-cultural consultations in selected European primary care settings.

Design: RESTORE is a qualitative, participatory health project running from 2011–2015. It uses a novel combination of normalization process theory and participatory learning and action research to follow and shape the implementation journeys of relevant guidelines and training initiatives. Research teams in Ireland, England, the Netherlands, Austria and Greece are conducting similar parallel qualitative case study fieldwork, with a complementary health policy analysis led by Scotland. In each setting, key stakeholders, including migrants, are involved in participatory data generation and analysis.

Expected results: RESTORE will provide knowledge about the levers and barriers to the implementation of guidelines and training initiatives in European healthcare settings and about successful, transferrable strategies to overcome identified barriers. RESTORE will elucidate the role of policy in shaping these implementation journeys; generate recommendations for European policy driving the development of culturally and linguistically appropriate healthcare systems.     

Adaptation to aphasia: grammar,prosody and interaction

This paper investigates recurrent use of the phrase very good by a speaker with non-fluent agrammatic aphasia. Informal observation of the speaker's interaction reveals that she appears to be an effective conversational partner despite very severe word retrieval difficulties that result in extensive reliance on variants of the phrase very good. The question that this paper addresses using an essentially conversation analytic framework is: What is the speaker achieving through these variants of very good and what are the linguistic and interactional resources that she draws on to achieve these communicative effects? Tokens of very good in the corpus were first analyzed in a bottom-up fashion, attending to sequential position, structure and participant orientation. This revealed distinct uses that were subsequently subjected to detailed acoustic analysis in order to investigate specific prosodic characteristics within and across the interactional variants. We identified specific clusters of prosodic cues that were exploited by the speaker to differentiate interactional uses of very good. The analysis thus shows how, in the adaptation to aphasia, the speaker exploits the rich interface between prosody, grammar and interaction both to manage the interactional demands of conversation and to communicate propositional content.     

Production of consonants by prelinguistically deaf children with cochlear implants

Consonant production following the sensory restoration of audition was investigated in 22 prelinguistically deaf French children who received cochlear implants. Spontaneous speech productions were recorded at 6, 12, and 18 months post‐surgery and consonant inventories were derived from both glossable and non‐glossable phones using two acquisition criteria. The results showed that children initiated appropriate production of consonants after six months of implant use. Stops and labials were the most frequently produced speech sounds, whereas glides and palatals were still infrequent after 18 months. Speech accuracy also improved throughout the study. Consonant visibility appeared to influence the order of acquisition in the first months following the implantation and, as experience with auditory information increased, patterns of development tended to resemble those seen in children with normal hearing. Finally, a signed mode of communication and oral rehabilitation programs prior to implantation were better outcome predictors than age at implantation.     

Newly trained lexical categories produce lateralized categorical perception of color

Linguistic categories have been shown to influence perceptual discrimination, to do so preferentially in the right visual field, to fail to do so when competing demands are made on verbal memory, and to vary with the color-term boundaries of different languages. However, because there are strong commonalities across languages in the placement of color-term boundaries, the question remains open whether observed categorical perception for color can be entirely a result of learned categories or may rely to some degree on innate ones. We show here that lateralized color categorical perception can be entirely the result of learned categories. In a visual search task, reaction times to targets were faster in the right than the left visual field when the target and distractor colors, initially sharing the same linguistic term (e.g., “blue”), became between-category colors after training (i.e., when two different shades of blue had each acquired a new name). A control group, whose conditions exactly matched those of the experimental group except that no new categories were introduced, did not show this effect, establishing that the effect was not dependent on increased familiarity with either the color stimuli or the task. The present results show beyond question that lateralized categorical perception of color can reflect strictly learned color categories, even artificially learned categories that violate both universal tendencies in color naming and the categorization pattern of the language of the subject.     

Heller’s病案例报告

患儿，男，6岁，以“进行性语言能力退步1年”就诊，患儿4岁前语言发育基本同正常同龄儿，4岁后无明显原因出现主动语言减少，语法结构与代词使用基本正常，喜独自徘徊，对周围环境兴趣减弱，多动，阵发性刻板重复的双手指伸直紧张，在眼前扭动，伴自语，目光对视较好，运动功能正常。无抽搐史，否认曾患脑部受损疾病，否认孕期、分娩期异常。多家医院诊断“孤独症”，既往正常，家族史阴性。     

医学研究性论文中的模糊限制语

模糊限制语是一种语言使用策略,是医学研究论文篇章结构中的一个重要特征,正确使用和掌握模糊限制语可提高论文的撰写和编辑质量.文章以10篇选自国际知名医学期刊研究性论文为语料,对模糊限制语在其中不同部分出现的频率,表现形式和功能作用进行统计分析,以期对医学论文的撰写和编辑有所启示.     

运用语言艺术处理医疗纠纷问题的探讨

医学在本质上具有两重性,它既是一门科学,又是一门人学,医学需要人文精神的滋养.目前,因医务人员语言不当而引发的无过失医疗纠纷是医疗纠纷的高发原因.在处理医疗纠纷过程中,院方工作人员对患者的人文关怀是影响服务满意度的关键因素.许多医疗纠纷初并不以起向司法机关或卫生行政部门提出控告为条件,患方和院方从改善院患关系出发,主观上都愿意通过调解、和解来解决医疗纠纷,而不是诉讼、仲裁.良好的语言形象和适当的语言不但可避免发生非医疗过失纠纷,对快速、公正、低成本地解决医疗过失纠纷也具有十分重要的作用.     

Use Of A Patient Assistant To Facilitate Medical Visits For Latino Patients With Low Health Literacy

In the face of limited resources, evidence-based prioritization is needed to maximize the reach of health services for the under-served. A medical referral project that referred low income uninsured individuals to discounted appointments with office-based doctors found that some Latino patients had difficulty in taking advantage of these appointments. These individuals appeared to face barriers beyond the cultural and linguistic barriers faced by most patients in the project. One additional bilingual staff person, a Patient Assistant, was hired to facilitate doctor visits by these patients. The Patient Assistant performed the duties of a navigator, trouble shooter, and interpreter–and assisted with communications. The project staff derived a screening question to encourage patients to identify themselves as those who would need the help of the Patient Assistant. These patients were subsequently questioned in a waiting room survey designed to characterize them. The characteristics of these patients were compared with a comparison group of project patients. The target group and the comparison group differed in their levels of education. Sixty percent of the target group had less than 4 years of schooling compared to 13% of the comparison group. The target group was comprised entirely of immigrants from South and Central America. This report underscores the conclusions of the recent report of the Institute of Medicine on the problem of health literacy – patients ability to understand and act in their own interest – and highlights the needs of Latin American immigrants who are burdened by cultural and linguistic barriers, low health literacy, and minimal education.