J. Briscoe - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by J. Briscoe

Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 1998

The performance of 26 children (3;0–4;0 years) who were born before 32 weeks gestation was compar... more The performance of 26 children (3;0–4;0 years) who were born before 32 weeks gestation was compared with the performance of 26 full-term children on a range of short-term memory and language measures. The measures tested vocabulary, expressive language, phonological short-term memory, and general nonverbal ability. Preterm children scored more poorly across the full range of measures. The mildly depressed performance of the preterm group on the short-term memory and language measures was attributable to the large deficits on these tests shown by a subgroup of approximately one third of preterm children identified as being "at risk" for persisting language difficulties using the Bus Story Test (Bishop & Edmundson, 1987). The findings indicate that preterm birth and associated hazards may constitute a significant risk factor for specific language impairment in a sizable minority of children.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2012

We report a study of eight members of a single family (aged 8–72 years), who all show a specific ... more We report a study of eight members of a single family (aged 8–72 years), who all show a specific deficit in linking semantic knowledge to language. All affected members of the family had high levels of overall intelligence; however, they had profound difficulties in prose and sentence recall, listening comprehension and naming. The behavioural deficit was remarkably consistent across affected family members. Structural neuroimaging data revealed grey matter abnormalities in the left infero-temporal cortex and fusiform gyri: brain areas that have been associated with integrative semantics. This family demonstrates, to our knowledge, the first example of a heritable, highly specific abnormality affecting the interface between language and cognition in humans and has important implications for our understanding of the genetic basis of cognition.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010

It is well established that children with autism often show outstanding visual search skills. To ... more It is well established that children with autism often show outstanding visual search skills. To date, however, no study has tested whether these skills, usually assessed on a table-top or computer, translate to more true-to-life settings. One prominent account of autism, Baron-Cohen's “systemizing” theory, gives us good reason to suspect that they should. In this study, we tested whether autistic children's exceptional skills at small-scale search extend to a large-scale environment and, in so doing, tested key claims of the systemizing account. Twenty school-age children with autism and 20 age- and ability-matched typical children took part in a large-scale search task in the “foraging room”: a purpose-built laboratory, with numerous possible search locations embedded into the floor. Children were instructed to search an array of 16 (green) locations to find the hidden (red) target as quickly as possible. The distribution of target locations was manipulated so that they ap...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011

International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 2009

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often experience difficulties in the recall and ... more Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often experience difficulties in the recall and repetition of verbal information. Archibald and Gathercole (2006) suggested that children with SLI are vulnerable across two separate components of a tripartite model of working memory (Baddeley and Hitch 1974). However, the hierarchical relationship between the 'slave' systems (temporary storage) and the central executive components places a particular challenge for interpreting working memory profiles within a tripartite model. This study aimed to examine whether a 'double-jeopardy' assumption is compatible with a hierarchical relationship between the phonological loop and central executive components of the working memory model in children with SLI. If a strong double-jeopardy assumption is valid for children with SLI, it was predicted that raw scores of working memory tests thought to tap phonological loop and central executive components of tripartite working memory would be lower than the scores of children matched for chronological age and those of children matched for language level, according to independent sources of constraint. In contrast, a hierarchical relationship would imply that a weakness in a slave component of working memory (the phonological loop) would also constrain performance on tests tapping a super-ordinate component (central executive). This locus of constraint would predict that scores of children with SLI on working memory tests that tap the central executive would be weaker relative to the scores of chronological age-matched controls only. Seven subtests of the Working Memory Test Battery for Children (Digit recall, Word recall, Non-word recall, Word matching, Listening recall, Backwards digit recall and Block recall; Pickering and Gathercole 2001) were administered to 14 children with SLI recruited via language resource bases and specialist schools, as well as two control groups matched on chronological age and vocabulary level, respectively. Mean group differences were ascertained by directly comparing raw scores on memory tests linked to different components of the tripartite model using a series of multivariate analyses. The majority of working memory scores of the SLI group were depressed relative to chronological age-matched controls, with the exception of spatial recall (block tapping) and word (order) matching tasks. Marked deficits in serial recall of words and digits were evident, with the SLI group scoring more poorly than the language-ability matched control group on these measures. Impairments of the SLI group on phonological loop tasks were robust, even when covariance with executive working memory scores was accounted for. There was no robust effect of group on complex working memory (central executive) tasks, despite a slight association between listening recall and phonological loop measures. A predominant feature of the working memory profile of SLI was a marked deficit on phonological loop tasks. Although scores on complex working memory tasks were also depressed, there was little evidence for a strong interpretation of double-jeopardy within working memory profiles for these children, rather these findings were consistent with an interpretation of a constraint on phonological loop for children with SLI that operated at all levels of a hierarchical tripartite model of working memory (Baddeley and Hitch 1974). These findings imply that low scores on complex working memory tasks alone do not unequivocally imply an independent deficit in central executive (domain-general) resources of working memory and should therefore be treated cautiously in a clinical context.

Applied Psycholinguistics, 2002

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have distinctive impairments in the comprehensio... more Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have distinctive impairments in the comprehension of sentences that involve long-distance syntactic relationships. This has been interpreted as evidence for impairment in an innate grammatical module. An alternative theory attributes such difficulties to lower level problems with speech perception or deficits in phonological working memory. These theoretical accounts were contrasted using comprehension data from three subgroups: 20 children with SLI, 19 children with mild–moderate hearing loss, and normally developing children matched on age and/or language level. There were close similarities between the hearing-impaired and SLI groups on a measure of phoneme perception. Children with SLI did poorly on tests assessing knowledge of Binding principles and in assigning thematic roles in passive sentences whereas hearing-impaired children performed close to control levels, indicating that poor speech perception cannot account for this pa...

Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications

Human memory is malleable by both social and motivational factors and holds information relevant ... more Human memory is malleable by both social and motivational factors and holds information relevant to workplace decisions. Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) describes a phenomenon where retrieval practice impairs subsequent memory for related (unpracticed) information. We report two RIF experiments. Chinese participants received a mild self-threat manipulation (Experiment 2) or not (Experiment 1) before an ethnicity-RIF task that involved practicing negative traits of either in-group (Chinese) or an out-group (Japanese) target. After a subsequent memory test, participants selected their preferred applicant for employment. RIF scores correspond to forgetting of unpracticed positive traits of one target (Rp−) relative to the recall of practiced negative traits of the other target (Rp+). Enhanced forgetting of positive traits was found in both experiments for both targets. Across experiments, a significant target by threat interaction showed that target ethnicity modified RIF (an ethnic...

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2001

Phonological skills, language ability, and literacy scores were compared for four groups : 19 chi... more Phonological skills, language ability, and literacy scores were compared for four groups : 19 children with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss (SNH), 20 children with specific language impairment (SLI), 20 controls matched on chronological age to the SNH group (CA), and 15 controls matched on receptive vocabulary level to a subset of the SLI group (CB). In common with the SLI group, mean scores of children with mild-to-moderate hearing loss were significantly poorer on tests of phonological short-term memory, phonological discrimination, and phonological awareness than CA controls. No differences between group means were observed in SNH and CA control groups on vocabulary, digit and sentence recall, sentence comprehension, and literacy scores. However, there was considerable individual variation within the SNH group. Nearly 50 % of the SNH group showed phonological impairment associated with poorer expressive and receptive vocabulary and higher hearing thresholds than remaining children without phonological impairment. Nonword repetition deficits were observed in SNH subgroups with and without phonological impairment and were of a similar magnitude to those observed in children with SLI. Indeed, poorer repetition in children with SLI could only be differentiated from children with SNH on phonologically complex nonwords. Overall, findings suggested major problems in nonword repetition and phonological impairment occurred without clinically significant deficits in wider language and literacy abilities in children with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss. Implications for theories of SLI are discussed.