Neuro Study Guide
1.Articulation disorder and speech/language impairment including neuropsychological and psychosocial correlates.
Articulation Disorder
-Refers to problems making speech sounds and phonological processing skills
-Seen mostly in young children (preschool)
-Diagnosed if children do not outgrow common articulation errors (“wabbit” instead of “rabbit;” “nana” instead of “banana”)
-May be more common in developmental disorders (e.g.,autism), genetic syndromes (e.g., Down syndrome), hearing loss, illness, neurological disorders (e.g., cerebral palsy)
-Can impact intelligibility, conversational and social skills
Speech/Language Impairment
-Deficits in expressive and/or receptive language
-Deficits in vocabulary, memory, naming, syntax (grammar), semantics (word meaning), speech perception
-Impaired temporal sequence of nonverbal auditory stimuli, poor discrimination of sounds
-Speech articulation issues may also be present
Neuropsychological Correlates
-Impaired temporal processing of auditory info
-Superior temporal lobes – decoding acoustic signals of speech
-Left frontal lobes- semantic operations
-Less control over involuntary movements
-Working memory and short-term memory deficits
Psychosocial Correlates
-Higher rate of emotional and behavioral disorders
-Communication and verbal intelligence related to social adjustment
-Difficulty expressing ones wants/needs may lead to expression in a physical manner or turning feelings inward
2.DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder
à Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts, as manifested by the following
-Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity, ranging, for example, from abnormal social approach and failure of normal back-and-forth conversation
-Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction, ranging, for example, from poorly integrated verbal and nonverbal communication;
-Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships, ranging, for example, from difficulties adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts;
à Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities, as manifested by at least two of the following
-Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements, use of objects, or speech (e.g., simple motor stereotypies, lining up toys or flipping objects, echolalia, idiosyncratic phrases).
-Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualized patterns or verbal nonverbal behavior
-Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus
-Hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input or unusual interests in sensory aspects of the environment (e.g., apparent indifference to pain/temperature)
3.Executive function deficits found in ADHD and ASD
EF Deficits for ADHD
-Affects attention, impulse control, activity level and learning
EF Deficits for ASD
–
4.LD definition, etiology, risk factors, neuropsychological correlates
LD Definition
-Problems in any one of the seven areas of learning including listening comprehension, expressive language, basic reading skills (word identification, phonological coding), reading comprehension, written language, mathematics calculation, or mathematics reasoning.
Etiology
-Learning problems can arise from many sources including genetic, neuropsychological, cognitive, psycho-social, and environmental
-Many children may experience difficulty in more than one area
-Children with LD more susceptible to internalizing disorders such as anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and withdrawal
-Difficulties with adjustment may persist through adulthood
-Children with reading difficulty also experience math difficulty
Risk Factors
-Prenatal/Postnatal factors influencing LD include:
-Premature birth
-Low birth weight
-Lack of environmental stimulation in infancy
-Frequent ear infections
-Environmental factors
Neuropsychological correlates
-Planum temporal – phonological processing
-Occipital temporal system – rapid recognition of words, orthographic route to reading and spelling
-Frontal regions – reading
-Hypoactivation in left parietal region and hyperactivation in the left inferior regions and caudate and thalamus, reduced gray matter volume – dyslexia
5.Reading disabilities including sub areas of concern and interventions
Reading decoding—the ability to transform orthographic patterns of alphabetic letters into phonological patterns of a corresponding spoken word
Word recognition—the ability to identify words when reading, either through word decoding or sight word identification, without using strategies to decode
Reading fluency—the ability to recognize and read words accurately, smoothly, and quickly, usually in context
Reading comprehension—the ability to understand the meaning of written text
Interventions/Programs:
-RTI (small group instruction, 1:1 instruction specialized reading programs)
-Wilson
-Read 180
-Reading Recovery
-Orton-Gillingham
-Lindamood-Bell
6.Written language disorder including sub areas of concern and interventions
Writing process—the ability to plan (i.e., “pre-writing”), organize, draft, reflect on, revise, and edit written text
Written product—the end product of the writing process; it can be examined at the word level (e.g., word choice and spelling), sentence level (e.g., grammar and complexity), and text level (e.g., discourse structure, use of cohesive devices and coherence
Spelling, also known as encoding, requires the ability to segment words into phonemes and map those phonemes onto graphemes (letters or letter combinations) in an acceptable sequence in written form.
Interventions include:
-Direct teaching of the ability to plan, revise, and edit a writing sample
-Setting goals, developing outlines, preparing a draft
-Teach self-regulation self-monitoring, self-reward
-Using web-based programs to support writing skills
-Small group/1:1 instruction
7.Math disability including sub areas of concern and interventions
3 subtypes of math disabilities
- Procedural: developmental delays that improve with age. Make careless errors
- Semantic: often have a reading disability and have problems with memory and retrieval of math facts (left hemispheric dysfunction)
- Visuospatial: problems with spatial representations, aligning columns etc. (right hemisphere dysfunction)
Interventions include use of visual cues, manipulatives (counting rods), teaching self-monitoring strategies, charts (to facilitate memorization)
8.Nonverbal learning disability including features and related syndromes
Features of Nonverbal Learning Disability:
-Tactile-perceptual deficits
-Visual-spatial and organizational deficits
-Problems adapting to novel and complex situations
-Difficulty with problem solving and concept formation
-Distorted sense of time
-Difficulty with visual working memory
-Well-developed rote verbal memory
-Highly verbose
-Problems with math calculations – strength in reading and spelling
-Problems with attention and executive functioning
-Problems with social judgement
Turner Syndrome:
-Loss of X chromosome
-Occurs in females
-Significant problems processing social information, visuospatial information, and severe math disabilities
-Nonverbal IQ approx 15 points lower
-Smaller volumes in occipital and parietal lobes
-Amygdala – abnormal response to fear and facial expression (similar to ASD)
Velocardiofacial Syndrome:
-Deletion of chromosome 22
-Neurological, cognitive, behavioral deficits
-Deficits in visual-spatial skills, social processing, math reasoning
-Differences in white matter in the parietal regions
Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum:
-Corpus callosum forms incompletely or not at all
-Cognitive ability ranges from ID to average
-Difficulty with novel problem solving and social understanding
-Trouble understanding figurative language
9.Traumatic brain injury (TBI) including types of injuries, etiology and risk factors, and neuropsychological profile
TBI
-Open injury: involves an open wound and caused by an object penetrating the skull and entering the brain
-Closed injury: head has struck another surface or is a result of child abuse or shaken baby syndrome
Etiology and Risk Factors
-Causes decline in nonverbal intelligence, visual-motor impairment, attentional and memory deficits, decreases in oral fluency, comprehension, verbal association, reading achievement, and increases in psychiatric disorders
Neuropsychological profile
-Nonverbal IQ<Verbal IQ
-Difficulties in language, reading, arithmetic, calculation, writing, spelling
-Motor speed and information processing impaired
-Memory deficits – verbal memory, working memory (visual-spatial memory not affected)
-Attentional and EF difficulties
-Disinhibition, impulsivity
10.Define and describe dyslexia and subtypes (lecture 11)
The term refers to an inability to acquire functional reading skills despite the presence of normal intelligence and exposure to adequate educational opportunities.
Phonological Dyslexia
-Difficulty using phonological route in reading, so visual route to lexicon used.
-Little reliance on letter to letter sound conversion.
-Over- reliance on visual cues to determine meaning from print.
–Neuropsychological significance: Left superior temporal gyrus
–Prevalence: Represents approximately 2/3rds of all dyslexics.
–
Surface Dyslexia
-Also referred to as visual form dyslexia as characterized by an inability to visualize words in a fashion where the process of reading becomes automatic.
-Over-rely on sound/symbol relationships as the process of reading never becomes automatic.
–Neuropsychological significance: Occipital/parietal junctures of angular gyrus and corpus callosum deficiencies. Role of insular cortex
–Prevalence:Approximately 14 percent of all dyslexics.
Mixed Dyslexia
-Severely impaired readers with characteristics of both phonological deficits as well as visual/spatial deficits.
-These readers have no usable key to the reading and spelling code
–Neuropsychological significance: Shifting difficulty via the corpus callosum.
–Structural Explanation: genu of the corpus callosum is much smaller and larger splenium.
Deep Dyslexia
-Rare form of reading comprehension disorder characterized by impairments reading words with abstract meanings, but reading more concrete, easily imagined words are intact
-Semantic errors are the hallmark of this disorder
-This is a double deficit type of reading disability as the child has poor sound/symbol relationships coupled with deficit in relying solely on visual contour of letters
–Neuropsychological significance: difficulty activating left hemisphere (right hemisphere reading); damage to supramarginal gyrus or angular gyrus; subcortical damage such as to the thalamus