Individual Differences in Political Ideology and Disgust Sensitivity Affect Real-Time Spoken Language Comprehension

Individuals' moral views have been shown to affect their event-related potentials (ERP) response to spoken statements, and people's political ideology has been shown to guide their sentence completion behavior. Using pupillometry, we asked whether political ideology and disgust sensitivity affect online spoken language comprehension. 60 native speakers of English listened to spoken utterances while their pupil size was tracked. Some of those utterances contained grammatical errors, semantic anomalies, or socio-cultural violations, statements incongruent with existing gender stereotypes and perceived speaker identity, such as “I sometimes buy my bras at Hudson's Bay,” spoken by a male speaker. An individual's disgust sensitivity is associated with the Behavioral Immune System, and may be correlated with socio-political attitudes, for example regarding out-group stigmatization. We found that more disgust-sensitive individuals showed greater pupil dilation with semantic anomalies and socio-cultural violations. However, political views differently affected the processing of the two types of violations: whereas more conservative listeners showed a greater pupil response to socio-cultural violations, more progressive listeners engaged more with semantic anomalies, but this effect appeared much later in the pupil record.

Comparing In-Person and Telepractice Service Delivery for Spoken Language Production and Comprehension Using the National Outcomes Measurement System

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) developed the National Outcomes Measurement System for aggregating standardized patient outcomes. Outcomes are standardized using Functional Communication Measures (FCM), scales designed to describe communicative function across specific areas of clinical need. This investigation compared in-person and telepractice service delivery for children in elementary school settings who received treatment targeting the FCM categories of either “spoken language production” or “spoken language comprehension.” De-identified cases were secured from ASHA’s NOMS database and the database of a private e-learning provider that implemented the NOMS format. There were minimal significant differences in the median change scores between the traditional and telepractice interventions. These results support comparable treatment outcomes between in-person service delivery and telepractice for treatment of children exhibiting impaired spoken language production or spoken language comprehension in an elementary school setting

Efficacy of spoken word comprehension therapy in patients with chronic aphasia: a cross-over randomised controlled trial with structural imaging

ObjectiveThe efficacy of spoken language comprehension therapies for persons with aphasia remains equivocal. We investigated the efficacy of a self-led therapy app, ‘Listen-In’, and examined the relation between brain structure and therapy response.MethodsA cross-over randomised repeated measures trial with five testing time points (12-week intervals), conducted at the university or participants' homes, captured baseline (T1), therapy (T2-T4) and maintenance (T5) effects. Participants with chronic poststroke aphasia and spoken language comprehension impairments completed consecutive Listen-In and standard care blocks (both 12 weeks with order randomised). Repeated measures analyses of variance compared change in spoken language comprehension on two co-primary outcomes over therapy versus standard care. Three structural MRI scans (T2-T4) for each participant (subgroup, n=25) were analysed using cross-sectional and longitudinal voxel-based morphometry.ResultsThirty-five participants completed, on average, 85 hours (IQR=70–100) of Listen-In (therapy first, n=18). The first study-specific co-primary outcome (Auditory Comprehension Test (ACT)) showed large and significant improvements for trained spoken words over therapy versus standard care (11%, Cohen’s d=1.12). Gains were largely maintained at 12 and 24 weeks. There were no therapy effects on the second standardised co-primary outcome (Comprehensive Aphasia Test: Spoken Words and Sentences). Change on ACT trained words was associated with volume of pretherapy right hemisphere white matter and post-therapy grey matter tissue density changes in bilateral temporal lobes.ConclusionsIndividuals with chronic aphasia can improve their spoken word comprehension many years after stroke. Results contribute to hemispheric debates implicating the right hemisphere in therapy-driven language recovery. Listen-In will soon be available on GooglePlay.Trial registration numberNCT02540889.