Otak dan Kemampuan Berbahasa Penutur Bilingual/Dwibahasa: Keadaan Normal, Kondisi Terganggu, dan Rehabilitasi

Setahun sudah penulisan buku ketiga dijalani. Akhir pekan demi akhir pekan dihabiskan dengan membaca, menyusun outline, menulis, dan merevisi. Alhamdulillah sudah 85% selesai. Mudah-mudahan buku ini, setelah dilempar ke pasaran, dapat menjadi sumber informasi mengenai masalah bahasa pada penutur bilingual pasca stroke. Sesuatu yang sangat relevan dan diperlukan di Indonesia, tapi belum banyak diperhatikan dan dieksplorasi. Mudah-mudahan akhir tahun ini sudah bisa tersedia di toko buku-toko buku di Indonesia. Ayo semangat!

Dicari anak umur 8-15 tahun yang kesulitan (belajar) membaca

Saya ingin mengangkat realita pendidikan anak-anak Indonesia dengan kesulitan membaca ke dalam sebuah buku. Jika ada yang mempunyai akses kepada atau kenal dengan anak-anak berusia 8-15 tahun yang prestasi membacanya jauh di bawah teman-teman seusianya yang bersedia diwawancara oleh saya, mohon bantuannya untuk memberitahukan kepada saya. Akan sangat baik jika anak yang bersangkutan tinggal di daerah Jabodetabek karena saya tinggal di daerah Depok. Walaupun demikian, anak-anak yang tidak tinggal di Jabodetabek dapat saye pertimbangkan. Untuk detil lebih lanjut dan pertanyaan-pertanyaan, silakan mengmentari blog ini atau kirim e-mail ke alamat wintha_salyo@yahoo.com. Terima kasih banyak.

Perlunya penelitian longitudinal untuk memahami disleksia pada anak-anak; jangan berpikir instan terus

Ini adalah abstrak yang lain yang presentasinya saya dengarkan pada konferensi penutupan Dutch Dyslexia Program (Amsterdam, 8 Desember 2011). Semoga abstrak ini menggugah kita untuk menyadari pentingnya penelitian secara longitudinal untuk memahami inti masalah dari disleksia pada anak-anak. Penelitian memang tidak pernah instan tapi ilmu yang diberikannya akan dapat memperbaiki kehidupan kita semua.

Prof. dr. Paavo H.T. Leppanen, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland

(huruf-huruf dengan umlaut tidak dapat saya munculkan di sini karena keterbatasan font di multiply)

Aberrant auditory and speech processing linked with familial dyslexia-- a longitudinal follow-up of brain responses

The role of various risk factors for dyslexia, developmental reading disorder, has been debated for several decades. Phonological processing problems are widely acknowledged as a major deficit for dyslexia. However, relatively little is known of underlying neurocognitive risk factors and their interaction with later reading problems and related cognitive skills. Here we review brain response (event-related potential, ERP) findings from the Jyvaskyla Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia (JLD). We have been especially interested in whether dyslexic children with familial risk background would show atypical auditory/speech processing already at infancy and whether these deficits persist in development and how the brain responses measured before reading age would be related to later pre-reading cognitive skills and literacy outcome. One half of the children came from families with at least one dyslexic parent (the at-risk group), while the other half belonged to the control group without any familial background of dyslexia. The early ERPs were correlated to pre-school age phonological processing and letter-naming skills as well as phoneme duration perception, reading and writing skills at 2nd grade at 9 years. The correlations were, in general, more consistent among at-risk children. Developmental changes were observed in these associations. Those at-risk children who became poor readers also differed from typical readers in the infant ERP measures at the group level. ERPs measured at the pre-school age and 3rd grade also differed between dyslexic and typical readers. Further, speech perception at behavioral level differed between dyslexic and typical readers at school-age, but not in all dyslexic readers. The findings suggest persisting developmental differences in the organization of the neural networks sub-serving auditory/speech perception with cascading effects on later reading related skills in children with familial background for dyslexia. However, atypical auditory/speech processing is not likely a sufficient reason by itself for dyslexia but rather one endophenotype/risk factor. Challenges remain, therefore, for the individual identification of high risk children. 

Diperlukan kerja sama antara linguis dan ahli biologi/genetik

Ini adalah salah satu abstrak dari presentasi yang saya dengarkan pada konferensi dalam rangka penutupan Dutch Dyslexia Program. Acara ini diselenggarakan di Amsterdam pada tanggal 8 Desember 2011. Semoga abstrak di bawah ini menginspirasi kita semua untuk bekerja secara lintas disiplin untuk dapat memahami masalah-masalah bahasa pada anak-anak Indonesia secara lebih baik dan membantu mereka yang mengalaminya. Kalau bukan kita yang peduli, siapa lagi?

Dr. Simon Fisher, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics

Neurogenetic pathways underlying a severe speech and language disorder

People who carry rare heterozygous mutations disrupting the FOXP2 gene have problems mastering the complex sequences of mouth movements needed for speech, along with deficits in many aspects of expressive and receptive language. The gene encodes a highly conserved transcription factor that helps to regulate development/function of neuronal subpopulations in a wide range of vertebrates, although evidence suggests that its roles may have been modified during human evolution. I will describe how FOXP2 can provide a unique window into key neurogenetic pathways via an array of complimentary approaches. For example, using functional genomic screening of human neurons grown in the laboratory, we identified CNTNAP2 (a member of the neuroxin superfamily) as a downstream target directly regulated by FOXP2. Intriguingly, CNTNAP2 is itself associated with common language impairments, and has also been implicated in language delays of autistic children. High-throughput screening has enabled us to isolate additional FOXP2 targets, including genetic networks involved in neurite outgrowth and synaptic plasticity. Moving to animal models of FOXP2 dysfunction, we have shown that point mutations implicated in human speech deficits yield impaired motor-skill learning in mutant mice. Electrophysiological recording suggests that this may be mediated by altered plasticity of Foxp2-expressing circuitry. This work demonstrates how we can begin to bridge gaps between genes, brains and speech and language.

Verbs and time reference in Standard Indonesian agrammatic speech

Yippeeee. My first article is officially in Aphasiology, Volume 25 (12), 1562-1578. Out this month.

Winner of Program Hibah Kompetisi Berbasis Institusi (PHK-I) 2011

Alhamdulillah, thank God, my first article was chosen as one of the winners of the Grant for Institutional Based Competition 2011 at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Indonesia. The article is titled Verbs and Time Reference in Standard Indonesian Agrammatic Speech, written together with my PhD promotor and supervisor Prof. dr. Roelien Bastiaanse of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. The abstract is available in another blog post on this website. I hereby thank all parties involved in the process of data collection, writing, and reviewing. May God bless you all forever.

Abstract of Anjarningsih and Bastiaanse (2011) in APHASIOLOGY, 2011, iFirst, 1–17

Abstract

Background: It has been shown for a number of languages that verb retrieval and verb inflection are impaired in agrammatic speech. Several studies showed that, while some agrammatic speakers are relatively good in verb retrieval but poor in verb inflection, others show the inverse pattern (Dutch: Bastiaanse & Jonkers, 1998; Italian: Rossi & Bastiaanse, 2008, among others). However, not all languages use verb inflection to express sentence internal and external relationships, such as agreement, tense, and aspect; some use free-standing grammatical morphemes instead. Standard Indonesian (SI) is such a language.

Aims: The aim of the current study is to find out whether the production of free-standing grammatical morphemes—which specify time frame and are thus comparable to tense and aspect inflection in other languages—is impaired in SI agrammatic spontaneous speech, and whether there is a similar inverse relationship between verb retrieval and the use of these morphemes, as suggested by findings on verb inflection in other languages.

Methods & Procedures: A total of 21 adult speakers of SI (6 with Broca's aphasia with mild to moderate agrammatic speech and 15 without history of neurological problems) participated in the study. From the speech of each participant 300 words were extracted, and the occurrence of verbal predicates, aspectual adverbs, and lexical adverbs of time was counted. Type-token ratios (TTR) were used to express the diversity of lexical verbs produced, and the proportion of aspectual and temporal lexical adverbs per verbal predicate was calculated for all participants.

Outcomes & Results: An inverse relationship was observed between the verb variability and the proportion of aspectual adverbs. The agrammatic participants who used a low proportion of aspectual adverbs did not compensate with over-production of lexical adverbs.

Conclusions: Based on the results of the current study we propose that the inverse relationship between lexical diversity of the verbs and the use of aspectual adverbs reflects the same underlying deficit as the inverse relationship between lexical diversity of verbs and verb inflection observed in Dutch and Italian. Apparently it is difficult for agrammatic speakers to simultaneously retrieve verbs (names of the events) and specify the time frame in which the events take place. This has some important clinical implications.