Brief Report: Do Service Dog Providers Placing Dogs with Children with Developmental Disabilities Use Outcome Measures and, If So, What Are they?

The aim of this study was to identify the outcomes expected and assessed by those providing service dogs to children with developmental disabilities. Seventeen registered service dog providers were invited to complete a mixed methods online survey. Five providers, who prepared dogs to work with a wide range of conditions and behaviours, mainly Asperger’s syndrome, autism and communication disorders, completed the survey. All five participants reported that they expected to see positive changes as a consequence of the service dog placement, in both the recipient child and their family, including improvements in attention span and language skills, as well as increased familial cohesion. Survey responses indicated that not all desired outcomes were routinely assessed. The range of assessments used were interviews, intake conversations, pre-placement questionnaires, child social dairies filled in by parents, follow up surveys after placement, and child observation by parents. No specifically named valid and reliable clinical or research measures were referred to, showing an emphasis on assessments from parents and service dog providers. It is not clear whether pre-intervention assessments are repeated systematically at follow-up, which could show robust intervention effects. There is scope for professionals in developmental disability to work with service dog providers to improve the evidence base in this field.     

I don't know what I know: Evidence of preserved semantic knowledge but impaired metalinguistic knowledge in adults with probable Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

This paper will address the current practice of speech therapists setting homework for aphasic patients.     

Impairment‐ and activity/participation‐directed interventions in progressive language impairment: Clinical and theoretical issues

Abstract

The most salient and discussed features of agrammatism are the omission and substitution of grammatical morphemes, whether bound or free, in speech production. Cross-linguistic studies have shown that language-specific features determine the pattern of omissions and substitutions found; morphological markers are almost never omitted if the resulting form is a non-word; substitutions are mis-selections from existing paradigms. In the present paper we investigate the ways in which agrammatism is manifested in Algerian Arabic, a Semitic language where simple (Ø-prefixed and Ø-suffixed) words are described as consisting of three morphemes: the discontinuous consonantal root, the discontinuous vocalic base and a CV template or skeleton (McCarthy 1975). Our findings are comparable to those previously reported, in that the three agrammatic subjects who participated in this study do omit and substitute free-standing and bound grammatical markers, and never produce non-words. More specifically, their performance is characterized by omissions of linear bound morphemes in prefixed and suffixed words, as well as substitutions of morphologically complex forms by simpler and more frequent ones. An interpretation of the subjects' performance in the light of current linguistic and psycholinguistic theories on the lexicon is proposed.     

The semantic deficit in dementia: Connectionist approaches to what goes wrong in picture naming

Abstract

This paper addresses two main issues. First, what is the focus (or foci) of the naming deficit in patients with probable Alzheimer's disease? Secondly, how is semantic memory degraded by dementia? This paper will attempt to answer these questions by emphasizing connectionist modelling of semantic and neuropsychological processes. It will be argued that the loss of semantic microfeatures leads to the observed pattern of performance on naming and semantic memory tasks in dementia. These microfeatures may not represent linguistically simple lexical concepts or attributes, but are components of semantic representations that are relatively abstract. It is hypothesized that word meanings are equivalent to semantic attractors across these microfeatures. It is a central theme of this paper that connectionist modelling reveals how apparently disparate phenomena may in fact be related.     

Naming problems in dementia: Semantic or lexical?

Abstract

The naming behaviour was explored of patients moderately deteriorated with probable Alzheimer's disease (pAD) by analysing responses made on a picture naming and two word-picture matching tasks for the same items. Naming responses were classified into target and non-target and the relationship between non-target responses and their targets were explored. It was found that semantic relatedness influenced these non-target responses but frequency and imageability did not. The pAD participants performed significantly better on the two word-picture matching tasks than the naming task, while there was no difference on these within- and between-category tasks. These findings are explored with reference to a two-stage model of lexical access, which has separate storage of semantic, lexical and phonological information. The participants' difficulties appear to lie largely in retrieving the labels for items they comprehend.     

A comparison of immunohistochemical staining for oestrogen receptor, progesterone receptor and HER-2 in breast core biopsies and subsequent excisions

AIMS: To compare immunohistochemical staining for oestrogen receptor, progesterone receptor and HER-2 between core biopsy and matched subsequent excisional specimens. METHODS: One hundred consecutive core biopsy cases and subsequent excisional specimens were retrieved and immunohistochemical staining performed. Proportion and intensity of staining for hormone receptors and HercepTest score were recorded for each case in a blinded fashion by the authors. RESULTS: Overall hormone receptor status was concordant between cores and excisions in 96.9% of cases. ER status was concordant between the core and excision in 95.8% of cases. The intensity of staining for ER was similar in both core and excision specimens. PR status was concordant in cores and excisions in 90.3% of cases. There was weaker PR staining in the excisional specimens when compared with the cores. HER-2 status was concordant in cores and excisions in 86.6% of cases. CONCLUSIONS: Hormone receptor staining produced similar results on core and excisional specimens, although a small number of additional hormone receptor positive cases could be detected by performing staining on a previously received core in the case of a negative result on the excisional specimen. HER-2 staining is less reproducible between cores and excisions, but the clinical significance of this observation remains to be tested.     

Comparative analgesic efficacy of pregabalin administered according to either a prevention protocol or an intervention protocol in rats with cisplatin‐induced peripheral neuropathy

Chemotherapy‐induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) is a type of peripheral neuropathic pain that may be dose‐limiting in patients administered potentially curative cancer chemotherapy dosing regimens. In cancer survivors, persistent CIPN adversely affects patient quality of life and so adjuvant drugs (anticonvulsants eg pregabalin or antidepressants eg amitriptyline) are recommended for the relief of CIPN. However, most studies in rodent models of CIPN involve administration of single bolus doses of adjuvant drugs to assess pain‐relieving efficacy. Hence this study was designed to assess the efficacy of pregabalin administered to CIPN‐rats according to either a prevention or an intervention protocol. Groups of male Sprague‐Dawley rats received four single intraperitoneal bolus doses of cisplatin at 3 mg/kg at once‐weekly intervals to induce CIPN. For the prevention protocol, oral pregabalin (or vehicle) was administered to CIPN‐rats once‐daily for 21 consecutive days from day 0 to day 20 inclusive. For the intervention protocol, oral pregabalin was administered once‐daily for 21 consecutive days from day 28 to day 48, inclusive. Mechanical allodynia and mechanical hyperalgesia in the bilateral hindpaws were assessed just prior to each dose of cisplatin and at least once weekly until study completion (day 27, prevention protocol; or day 48, intervention protocol). Mechanical allodynia and mechanical hyperalgesia were also determined at the time of peak effect at about 2 hours post pregabalin/vehicle administration, once weekly until study completion. For the prevention protocol in CIPN‐rats, pregabalin alleviated mechanical hyperalgesia but not mechanical allodynia. For the intervention protocol, pregabalin alleviated both mechanical allodynia and mechanical hyperalgesia in the hindpaws.