PURPOSE: We examined the properties of mean length of utterance (MLU) in Czech, a morphologically complex Slavic language. We compared the scores of MLU calculated in different units and based on different sample lengths and assessed its validity against another transcript and test-based measures. METHOD: One hundred nine children were recorded during free-play at 2;6 and 3;11 (years;months). We compared MLU in syllables, morphemes, and words (MLUw) in transcripts of different lengths (50, 75, 100, and all available utterances). For evaluating the validity of MLU, we also calculated Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn) and number of different words (NDW) and used results of receptive vocabulary and grammar comprehension tests. RESULTS: The different MLU measures based on different sample lengths correlated closely with MLU in transcripts of all utterances (all rs > .87). We found mostly strong correlations between MLU, IPSyn, and NDW at both time points and weak or moderate correlations between MLU and grammar and vocabulary. Regression models showed the significant unique effect of MLUw at 2;6 for MLUw (β = .29) and grammar (β = .33) at 3;11 and vocabulary (β = .27) at 3;7. CONCLUSION: MLUw based on all utterances was confirmed as a valid measure of early language skills in Czech, as it is stable in time and shows concurrent and predictive relations with other transcript-based and test-based measures. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25215203.

• MeSH
• dětská řeč * MeSH
• dítě MeSH
• jazyk (prostředek komunikace) * MeSH
• jazykové testy MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• lingvistika MeSH
• předškolní dítě MeSH
• slovní zásoba MeSH
• Check Tag
• dítě MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• předškolní dítě MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH
• Geografické názvy
• Česká republika MeSH

OBJECTIVE: The Boston Naming Test (BNT) is the most widely used test to assess visual confrontation naming in both research and clinical settings. Recently, an abbreviated Czech version of the BNT was described. The purpose of this study is to assess the validity of this new test at the item level with advanced psychometric methods to assess its equivalence with the original test. The rationale was to help busy clinicians in the differential diagnosis of language disorders. METHOD: We administered the BNT-30 (odd item form of BNT-60) (N = 535; 75.61 ± 9.11; 60-96 years) and shortened the BNT-15 (N = 754; 71.94 ± 7.88; 60-96 years) to a large sample of healthy older adults. RESULTS: Significant but low associations between BNT performance and age, education, and sex were found. We found strong evidence for the unidimensionality of both BNT-15/BNT-30 versions in healthy adults (p's < .001). CONCLUSION: In-depth psychometric analysis of the BNT-15 and BNT-30 Czech versions show that test stimuli function in a similar fashion as the original BNT. Normative values adjusting for the influence of age, education, and sex are provided for use in clinical settings and future cross-cultural comparisons.

• Klíčová slova
• Boston naming test, construct validity, item difficulty/easiness, item response theory, normative data, picture naming, visual confrontation naming,
• MeSH
• jazyk (prostředek komunikace) * MeSH
• jazykové testy MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• neuropsychologické testy MeSH
• psychometrie MeSH
• senioři MeSH
• Check Tag
• lidé MeSH
• senioři MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH
• Geografické názvy
• Česká republika MeSH

BACKGROUND: Children with early language delays are at increased risk of persistent language impairment. Early identification and intervention are desirable. Parent-report inventories are useful screening tools, but the screening context places limits at their length. Validity of parent-report screening tools in languages other than English has been rarely reported in detail. AIMS: The aim was to establish the concurrent validity of an existing 40-item parent-report vocabulary screening tool in Czech, using a picture-based examiner-administered comprehension and production task as a concurrent measure of vocabulary. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Parents of 200 children aged 1;3 to 3;6 were given the screening inventory, in which they were asked if their child says or comprehends each of 40 words. At the same time, children were administered a picture-based comprehension and production task. Concurrent validity of the inventory was examined using correlations, partial correlations, and regression analyses controlling for age. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: The partial Spearman correlation (controlling for age) between production scores from parent-report and production scores from the examiner-administered task was 0.53; for comprehension, the correlation between parent report and test scores was 0.36. These values are similar to those reported for short and full versions of MacArthur-Bates CDI for 2-year-olds. CONCLUSION & IMPLICATIONS: A 40-item tool shows clear concurrent relations with an examiner-administered picture comprehension and production task. The study demonstrates that short parent-report tools may be useful in early identification of language impairments, and they may be a good option particularly in languages that have limited repertoire of assessment instruments.

• Klíčová slova
• Parent report, Validity of screening, Vocabulary screening,
• MeSH
• dětská řeč * MeSH
• jazykové testy MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• předškolní dítě MeSH
• reprodukovatelnost výsledků MeSH
• slovní zásoba * MeSH
• vývojové poruchy řeči * MeSH
• Check Tag
• lidé MeSH
• předškolní dítě MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH
• validační studie MeSH
• Geografické názvy
• Česká republika MeSH

Purpose This study examined two markers of language impairment (LI) in a single experiment, testing sentence imitation and grammatical morphology production using an imitation task with masked morphemes. One goal was to test predictions of the morphological richness account of LI in Czech. We also tested the independent contributions of language and memory skills to sentence imitation performance. Method Seventeen children with LI (5;1-7;6 [years;months]) and 17 vocabulary-matched typically developing (TD) children (3;8-4;11) were administered a sentence imitation task where each sentence had one noun or verb ending replaced by a coughing sound. In addition, a receptive vocabulary and the digit span (backward and forward) tasks were administered. Results Children with LI were significantly less accurate than TD children in sentence imitation task. Both vocabulary and digit span had unique effects on sentence imitation scores. Children with LI were less successful in imitating the target words, especially verbs. However, if they succeeded, their completions of the masked morphemes were no less accurate than in TD children. The accuracy of completions was affected by the morpheme frequency and homophony, but these effects were similar in TD and affected children. Conclusions Sentence imitation is a measure of language skills and verbal memory. Results on morpheme completions are consistent with processing models of LI, but some predictions of the morphological richness model were not confirmed. The results suggest that children with LI might have a deficit in organizing morphosyntactic relations in sentences, rather than in morphological processing proper.

• MeSH
• dítě MeSH
• jazyk (prostředek komunikace) MeSH
• jazykové testy MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• napodobovací chování * MeSH
• slovní zásoba MeSH
• vývojové poruchy řeči * MeSH
• Check Tag
• dítě MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH
• Geografické názvy
• Česká republika MeSH

The Children's Test of Nonword Repetition (CNRep) is one of the most popular tests of nonword repetition. The test is composed of nonwords of different length, and normative data suggest that children experience more difficulties in repeating long nonwords. An analysis of the distribution of phonological clusters in the test shows that noninitial clusters are unequally distributed in the test: They only appear in long nonwords (four and five syllables). For this reason, we hypothesized that the difficulties children encounter with long nonwords may be influenced by the phonological complexity of the clusters and not just by the challenge for working memory associated with length. To test the hypothesis, we compared repetition performance in long nonwords with and without a noninitial cluster in 18 children with language impairment and 18 typically developing children. The analysis shows that long nonwords with noninitial clusters are repeated less accurately by both groups. In addition, there was an interaction between cluster and age: The effect of cluster is absent in younger children and gradually increases with age. These findings suggest that phonological complexity may be having an impact on the length effect normally observed in the CNRep, and this impact may be particularly evident in older children.

• Klíčová slova
• nonwords, phonological complexity, working memory,
• MeSH
• akustická stimulace MeSH
• dítě MeSH
• jazykové testy * MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladiství MeSH
• prediktivní hodnota testů * MeSH
• studie případů a kontrol MeSH
• vývojové poruchy řeči diagnóza   patofyziologie   MeSH
• Check Tag
• dítě MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladiství MeSH
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• ženské pohlaví MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH

Children with preschool language difficulties are at high risk of literacy problems; however, the nature of the relationship between delayed language development and dyslexia is not understood. Three hundred eight Slovak and Czech children were recruited into three groups: family risk of dyslexia, speech/language difficulties and controls, and were assessed three times from kindergarten until Grade 1. There was a twofold increase in probability of reading problems in each risk group. Precursors of 'dyslexia' included difficulties in oral language and code-related skills (phoneme awareness, letter-knowledge and rapid automatized naming); poor performance in phonological memory and vocabulary was observed in both affected and unaffected high-risk peers. A two-group latent variable path model shows that early language skills predict code-related skills, which in turn predict literacy skills. Findings suggest that dyslexia in Slavic languages has its origins in early language deficits, and children who succumb to reading problems show impaired code-related skills before the onset of formal reading instruction. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

• Klíčová slova
• endophenotypes, language impairment, phonological deficit, precursors of literacy skills, risk of dyslexia, slavic languages,
• MeSH
• čtení * MeSH
• dítě MeSH
• dyslexie psychologie   MeSH
• fonetika MeSH
• gramotnost psychologie   MeSH
• jazyk (prostředek komunikace) MeSH
• jazykové testy MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• nadání MeSH
• poruchy řeči MeSH
• předškolní dítě MeSH
• rizikové faktory MeSH
• slovní zásoba MeSH
• vývojové poruchy řeči psychologie   MeSH
• Check Tag
• dítě MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• předškolní dítě MeSH
• ženské pohlaví MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• Geografické názvy
• Česká republika MeSH
• Slovenská republika MeSH

PURPOSE: The authors examined sentence imitation as a potential clinical marker of specific language impairment (SLI) in Czech and its use to identify grammatical markers of SLI. METHOD: Children with SLI and the age- and language-matched control groups (total N = 57) were presented with a sentence imitation task, a receptive vocabulary task, and digit span and nonword repetition tasks. Sentence imitations were scored for accuracy and error types. A separate count of inaccuracies for individual part-of-speech categories was performed. RESULTS: Children with SLI had substantially more inaccurate imitations than the control groups. The differences in the memory measures could not account for the differences between children with SLI and the control groups in imitation accuracy, even though they accounted for the differences between the language-matched and age-matched control groups. The proportion of grammatical errors was larger in children with SLI than in the control groups. The categories that were most affected in imitations of children with SLI were verbs and clitics. CONCLUSION: Sentence imitation is a sensitive marker of SLI. Verbs and clitics are the most vulnerable categories in Czech SLI. The pattern of errors suggests that impaired syntactic representations are the most likely source of difficulties in children with SLI.

• MeSH
• dítě MeSH
• fonetika MeSH
• jazyk (prostředek komunikace) MeSH
• jazykové poruchy diagnóza   patofyziologie   MeSH
• jazykové testy MeSH
• klinická logopedie metody   MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• lingvistika * MeSH
• paměť fyziologie   MeSH
• předškolní dítě MeSH
• řeč fyziologie   MeSH
• sémantika MeSH
• slovní zásoba MeSH
• statistické modely * MeSH
• Check Tag
• dítě MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• předškolní dítě MeSH
• ženské pohlaví MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH
• Geografické názvy
• Česká republika MeSH

Hypokinetic dysarthria in Parkinson's disease (PD) can be characterized by monotony of pitch and loudness, reduced stress, variable rate, imprecise consonants, and a breathy and harsh voice. Using acoustic analysis, we studied the effects of high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) applied over the primary orofacial sensorimotor area (SM1) and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) on motor aspects of voiced speech in PD. Twelve non-depressed and non-demented men with PD (mean age 64.58 ± 8.04 years, mean PD duration 10.75 ± 7.48 years) and 21 healthy age-matched men (a control group, mean age 64 ± 8.55 years) participated in the speech study. The PD patients underwent two sessions of 10 Hz rTMS over the dominant hemisphere with 2,250 stimuli/day in a random order: (1) over the SM1; (2) over the left DLPFC in the "on" motor state. Speech examination comprised the perceptual rating of global speech performance and an acoustic analysis based upon a standardized speech task. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare acoustic speech variables between controls and PD patients. The Wilcoxon test was used to compare data prior to and after each stimulation in the PD group. rTMS applied over the left SM1 was associated with a significant increase in harmonic-to-noise ratio and net speech rate in the sentence tasks. With respect to the vowel task results, increased median values and range of Teager-Kaiser energy operator, increased vowel space area, and significant jitter decrease were observed after the left SM1 stimulation. rTMS over the left DLPFC did not induce any significant effects. The positive results of acoustic analysis were not reflected in a subjective rating of speech performance quality as assessed by a speech therapist. Our pilot results indicate that one session of rTMS applied over the SM1 may lead to measurable improvement in voice quality and intensity and an increase in speech rate and tongue movements. Nevertheless, these changes were not accompanied by changes in a perceptual evaluation of speech performance by a speech therapist. Future placebo-controlled studies in larger patient cohorts should verify if rTMS would be clinically useful for treating hypokinetic dysarthria in PD.

• MeSH
• dysartrie komplikace   patofyziologie   terapie   MeSH
• jazykové testy MeSH
• lidé středního věku MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• motorické korové centrum patofyziologie   MeSH
• Parkinsonova nemoc komplikace   patofyziologie   terapie   MeSH
• prefrontální mozková kůra patofyziologie   MeSH
• řeč fyziologie   MeSH
• senioři MeSH
• transkraniální magnetická stimulace metody   MeSH
• výsledek terapie MeSH
• Check Tag
• lidé středního věku MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• senioři MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: To assess the criterion and construct validity and inter-rater reliability of the Czech version of the Mississippi Aphasia Screening Test (MASTcz). RESEARCH DESIGN: Prospective evaluation of consecutive inpatients admitted to the stroke unit of a university hospital within 60 days of onset of a unilateral left hemispheric ischaemic or haemorrhagic stroke with documented aphasia (LHA + ; n = 149). As control groups, unilateral right hemisphere stroke patients without aphasia (RHA-; n = 45) and healthy volunteers recruited from the community to comprise a non-patient control group (CG; n = 243) were examined. METHODS: Data collection included administration of MASTcz (in 52 LHA + patients, repeated by two blinded observers within 24 hours), Edinburgh inventory, Minimental State Examination score and chart review. The presence of aphasia was documented with a standard clinical logopaedic examination and also with the Western Aphasia Battery (WAB) in 45 LHA+ patients. RESULTS: MASTcz displayed high criterion validity (with sensitivity and specificity above 90%) in discrimination between stroke aphasia patients and both control subjects and RHA- stroke patients, high construct validity (close correlation with WAB score; r = 0.933), and acceptable interrater reliability. CONCLUSION: Analyses suggest the usefulness of MASTcz as a reliable and valid screening tool for the detection of aphasia and tracking of its progress.

• MeSH
• afázie diagnóza   rehabilitace   MeSH
• časové faktory MeSH
• cévní mozková příhoda komplikace   MeSH
• dospělí MeSH
• jazykové testy normy   MeSH
• lidé středního věku MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladý dospělý MeSH
• obnova funkce fyziologie   MeSH
• odchylka pozorovatele MeSH
• prospektivní studie MeSH
• řečová terapie MeSH
• rehabilitace po cévní mozkové příhodě MeSH
• ROC křivka MeSH
• senioři nad 80 let MeSH
• senioři MeSH
• senzitivita a specificita MeSH
• studie případů a kontrol MeSH
• stupeň závažnosti nemoci MeSH
• Check Tag
• dospělí MeSH
• lidé středního věku MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mladý dospělý MeSH
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• senioři nad 80 let MeSH
• senioři MeSH
• ženské pohlaví MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• hodnotící studie MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH
• validační studie MeSH

The aim of this study was to categorize speech problems in autistic children in a manner allowing recognition of associated risk factors. We were specifically interested in the role of epilepsy and epileptiform activity in EEG in autistic patients since these dynamic processes can influence each other. We combined subtypes of autism with degrees of their functionality and we selected three speech endpoints: i) delayed development of speech, ii) complete mutism and iii) regression of speech. We retrospectively examined 205 autistic children (boys 145/70.7%, mean age 10 years). Median IQ was 55 (15;104) and median Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) ranged within 38 (32;48). Univariate and multivariate logistic regression helped to define clinical and diagnostic factors that were significantly associated with speech endpoints. Epileptic seizures, epileptiform EEG abnormalities, non-right-handedness, hypotonia and severe decreased IQ score were found to be the most important mutually independent factors contributing to the increased risk of speech-related problems in patients with ASD.

• MeSH
• autistická porucha epidemiologie   patofyziologie   MeSH
• dítě MeSH
• elektroencefalografie MeSH
• epilepsie epidemiologie   patofyziologie   MeSH
• funkční lateralita * MeSH
• jazykové poruchy diagnóza   epidemiologie   MeSH
• jazykové testy MeSH
• kognitivní poruchy diagnóza   epidemiologie   MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• neuropsychologické testy MeSH
• retrospektivní studie MeSH
• stupeň závažnosti nemoci MeSH
• svalová hypotonie epidemiologie   MeSH
• Check Tag
• dítě MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• mužské pohlaví MeSH
• ženské pohlaví MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH