8 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
The investigators' overall objective is to characterize the long-term outcomes of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) in adulthood and to identify specific cognitive mechanisms mediating these outcomes. To address their objectives, the investigators utilize a large, pre-existing dataset and participant pool from one of the most comprehensive examinations of DLD to date: the Iowa Longitudinal Study. The investigators will re-recruit subjects with DLD and with typical language from this historic cohort, who are now adults (30-35 years old). In Aim 1, the investigators will use measures from kindergarten through 10th grade and collect new outcome measures in adulthood to characterize the long-term outcomes of DLD. The investigators predict that adults with DLD will diverge from adults with TL in language skills that are more complex and higher-level language skills that are important for communication in the workplace. Further, the investigators predict a fanning effect: some children with DLD will "catch up" to their TL peers in adulthood, some will show evidence of a decline, and others will show stable trajectories. In Aim 2, the investigators measure real-time competition across written and spoken language using eye-tracking. According to speed of processing accounts adults with DLD may be slower than their TL peers to activate competitors and targets. According to working memory accounts adults with DLD will show sustained competitor activation. Further, the investigators predict that measures related to the dynamics of competition (speed of activation and timing of competitor suppression) will account for variation in language outcomes in adults.
Approximately 7% of the population experiences developmental language disorder (DLD), a language disorder with unclear causes. DLD affects communication beyond adolescence and poses challenges for education and career advancement due to difficulties in learning and memory. Recent research suggests that adults with DLD struggle with overnight memory consolidation, indicating a need for effective learning and memory support. This project aims to determine the optimal training schedule for perceptual memory retention in adults with and without DLD. The study involves recruiting 240 adults (120 with DLD, 120 without) for speech-perceptual training with different training schedules. The researchers predict that the manipulation of training schedules will interact with circadian preference and overnight consolidation, leading to the discovery of the best practice schedule for speech sound retention. Additionally, 300 more adults (150 with DLD, 150 without) will be recruited to investigate how optimal training schedules interact with reflexive and reflective learning strategies. The time course of learning and retention will be tracked during reflexive and reflective categorization training in six different training schedules.
The purpose of the study is to examine the impact of group participation on adults with aphasia. Participants will complete a standard pre-and post-assessment of language abilities (speech, comprehension, reading, and/or writing). Then participants will attend 90-minute weekly reading group sessions during an academic semester.
This broad aim of this clinical study is to assess the hypothesis that morphological and phonological deficits are linked by a broader deficit in sequential pattern learning. This hypothesis applies to learning in general, but is especially critical as an avenue for developing earlier assessments and more powerful interventions for children with developmental language disorder (DLD; AKA specific language impairment). Other populations, such as at-risk toddlers, may also benefit from this new approach.
The primary objective of this study is to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of ecopipam in reducing stuttering symptoms. It is hypothesized that ecopipam effectively reduces stuttering symptoms as measured on the SSI-IV total score, the CGI, SSS and OASES.
Background: - Studies have shown that animals such as monkeys and dogs have excellent sight and touch memory but perform poorly on sound memory tasks. Human brains have certain areas that are important for speaking and understanding language. These areas may be involved in sound and spoken word memory. Researchers want to study these areas of the brain to find out if the memory for sounds requires brain structures that are usually associated with language learning and are unique to humans. Objectives: - To use magnetic resonance imaging to study areas of the brain involved in sound memory. Eligibility: - Healthy right-handed volunteers between 18 and 50 years of age. They must be native English speakers and have completed high school. Design: * The study requires a screening visit and 1 or 2 study visits to the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. * At the screening visit, volunteers will have a medical history taken. They will also have physical and neurological exams, and complete a questionnaire. Women of childbearing age will give a urine sample. Participants who have not had a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan in the past year will have one at this visit. * At the second visit, participants will have tests of sound memory. They will listen to a set of nonsense words spoken through earphones and memorize the words. Then they will listen to the words again to judge if the words were part of the earlier list. Participants will have a 1 hour break, then do the sound memory test again. During the second test they will have repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), which stimulates different regions of the brain. * If the group results from the testing sessions are positive, there will be a third visit. At this visit, participants will have a sound perception test. They will listen to words spoken through earphones and judge whether the words in the pair are the same or different. Participants will have rTMS during these tests as well.
This study tests a memory-based account of atypical speech perception in adults with language-based learning disability (also known as developmental language impairment \[LI\]). One perspective regarding the its etiology considers impoverished speech sound representations to be central to the linguistic symptoms observed in LI. This project examines a potential abnormality in the process of building speech sound representations in LI. Previous work by the PI has found that sleep is important for learning speech sounds. Furthermore, different measures of speech perception (identification and discrimination), reveal distinct patterns of learning that are consistent with that of declarative and procedural memory consolidation. A division of labor by declarative and procedural memory systems in the building of speech representations may imply that problems with phonology may stem from selective weaknesses in declarative or procedural memory in predictive ways. The first project Aim is to identify the memory substrates of novel phonetic category formation. In Experiment 1, the investigators will obtain behavioral measures of declarative, procedural, and speech sound learning before and after post-training sleep in 40 typical adults and 20 adults with LI. Among typical adults, a double dissociation is predicted in which speech identification will be predicted by individual differences in declarative memory, and speech discrimination will be predicted by individual differences in procedural memory. Moreover, adults with LI are predicted to demonstrate consolidation deficits across memory types. The second project Aim is to identify the neural substrates of phonetic category formation. In Experiment 2, the investigators will obtain functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) recordings of 20 TD and 20 LI adults performing post-training identification and discrimination tasks on a trained speech contrast before and after sleep. In typical adults, a Time by Speech-task interaction is predicted. Speech identification will recruit episodic (hippocampal) information on Day 1 relative to classic regions for phonological processing on Day 2. Speech discrimination will result in a change in magnitude of activation from Days 1 and 2 in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), reflecting an overnight decrease in effort. LI (n=20) is predicted to demonstrate reduced overnight change in neural activation relative to TD in both tasks.
The present study aims to adapt and evaluate the feasibility of the BeatIt-2 behavioral activation intervention for people with intellectual disabilities and low mood to be implemented with minimally verbal autistic individuals.