Elena Plante

Interests

Teaching

SLHS 552 School-age language disorders. This course is designed for masters degree students preparing for a career as a speech-language pathology. SLHS 512 Evaluation processes. This course covers principles of diagnostic evaluation across the field of speech-language pathology.SLHS 695a This seminar is designed to prepare doctoral students to write competitive grants with an emphasis on the NIH F-series awards. Students in the sciences are welcome to enroll.

Research

My research centers around learning deficits in children and adults identified as having a developmental language disorder. Current work focuses on building better ways to assess language disorders across the lifespan, how learning by these individuals may be different than for typical individuals, and how treatment methods for language disorders can be improved. We conduct research on all topics during the academic year and run a summer camp-style program for preschool children during the summer.

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Books

• Plante, E. M., Plante, E. M., Beeson, P. M., & Beeson, P. M. (2013). Communication and Communication Disorders: A Clinical Introduction 4th edition.

Journals/Publications

• Choi-Tucci, A., White, M., & Plante, E. (2024). Determining the Diagnostic Accuracy of the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills for College Students. American journal of speech-language pathology, 33(2), 1051-1058.
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  This study sought to determine whether the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills (TILLS; Nelson et al., 2016) can accurately identify language disorders in college-aged adults.
• Sweeney, L., Plante, E., Mettler, H. M., Hall, J., & Vance, R. (2024). Less Versus More: The Effect of Recast Length in Treatment of Grammatical Errors. Language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 55(1), 152-165.
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  Although conversational recast treatment is generally efficacious, there are many ways in which the individual components of the treatment can be delivered. Some of these are known to enhance treatment, others appear to interfere with learning, and still others appear to have no impact at all. This study tests the potential effect of clinicians' recast length on child learning during a recast treatment.
• Arnold, H. L., Plante, E., & Vance, R. (2022). Translating Enhanced Conversational Recast to a Telepractice Setting. Language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 53(2), 275-289.
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  This investigation adapted a well-studied language treatment method, Enhanced Conversational Recast, paired with auditory bombardment to a teletherapy format.
• Nelson, N. W., & Plante, E. (2022). Evaluating the Equivalence of Telepractice and Traditional Administration of the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills. Language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 53(2), 376-390.
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  This study evaluated the equivalence of the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills (TILLS) when administrated via telepractice (Tele-TILLS) and face-to-face methods.
• Nelson, N. W., Plante, E., Anderson, M., & Applegate, E. B. (2022). The Dimensionality of Language and Literacy in the School-Age Years. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 1-19.
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  This was an investigation of the dimensionality of oral and written language to test the hypothesis that a two-factor model with sound/word and sentence/discourse language levels would best fit language and literacy data for a population-based sample in the school-age years.
• Tucci, A., Plante, E., Heilmann, J. J., & Miller, J. F. (2022). Dynamic Norming for Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 65(1), 320-333.
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  This exploratory study sought to establish the psychometric stability of a dynamic norming system using the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) databases. Dynamic norming is the process by which clinicians select a subset of the normative database sample matched to their individual client's demographic characteristics.
• Gerken, L., Plante, E., & Goffman, L. (2021). Not All Procedural Learning Tasks Are Difficult for Adults With Developmental Language Disorder. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 64(3), 922-934.
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  Purpose The experiment reported here compared two hypotheses for the poor statistical and artificial grammar learning often seen in children and adults with developmental language disorder (DLD; also known as specific language impairment). The states that implicit learning of rule-based input is impaired, whereas the states that poor performance is only seen when learners must implicitly compute sequential dependencies. The current experiment tested learning of an artificial grammar that could be learned via feature activation, as observed in an associatively organized lexicon, without computing sequential dependencies and should therefore be learnable on the sequential pattern learning deficit hypothesis, but not on the procedural learning deficit hypothesis. Method Adults with DLD and adults with typical language development (TD) listened to consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel familiarization words from one of two artificial phonological grammars: Family Resemblance (two out of three features) and a control (exclusive OR, in which both consonants are voiced OR both consonants are voiceless) grammar in which no learning was predicted for either group. At test, all participants rated 32 test words as to whether or not they conformed to the pattern in the familiarization words. Results Adults with DLD and adults with TD showed equal and robust learning of the Family Resemblance grammar, accepting significantly more conforming than nonconforming test items. Both groups who were familiarized with the Family Resemblance grammar also outperformed those who were familiarized with the OR grammar, which, as predicted, was learned by neither group. Conclusion Although adults and children with DLD often underperform, compared to their peers with TD, on statistical and artificial grammar learning tasks, poor performance appears to be tied to the implicit computation of sequential dependencies, as predicted by the sequential pattern learning deficit hypothesis.
• Nicholas, K., Plante, E., Gómez, R., & Vance, R. (2021). The Role of Spontaneous Repetitions During Treatment of Morphosyntactic Forms for Children With Developmental Language Disorder. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 64(10), 3995-4003.
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  Purpose Children with developmental language disorder sometimes spontaneously repeat clinician models of morphemes targeted for treatment. We examine how spontaneous repeating of clinician models in the form of recasts associates with improved child production of those emerging morphemes. Method Forty-seven preschool children with developmental language disorder participated in Enhanced Conversational Recast therapy and were monitored for spontaneous repetitions of morphemes modeled by the clinician through conversational recasting. We calculated proportion of correct and incorrect productions elicited during treatment and for generalization probes as well as treatment effect sizes. We then used odds ratios to determine the probability that a spontaneous repetition may precede treatment gains and calculated correlations of correct repetitions with correct in-treatment productions of targets and treatment effect sizes. Results Spontaneous repetitions were highly likely to happen just prior to meaningful treatment progress. Children with higher frequencies of correct spontaneous repetitions of morpheme targets also showed higher frequencies of correct productions of these forms during the course of treatment. Furthermore, children with an earlier onset of repetitions and higher frequencies of correct repetitions showed overall larger effect sizes at the end of treatment. Conclusions Children's use of correct forms in their repetitions may serve as a self-scaffold for mastering productions of the correct form via structural priming mechanisms. Tracking spontaneously repeated targets may be a useful milestone for identifying response to treatment.
• Hall, J., & Plante, E. (2020). Data-Informed Guideposts for Decision Making in Enhanced Conversational Recast Treatment. American journal of speech-language pathology, 29(4), 2068-2081.
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  Background To maximize treatment efficiency, it would be useful to determine how long to continue a treatment approach before concluding that it is not effective for a particular client, whether and when generalization of treatment is likely to occur, and at what point to end treatment once a child is approaching mastery. Method We analyzed aggregate data from 117 preschoolers with developmental language disorder from a decade of treatment studies on Enhanced Conversational Recast therapy to determine whether the timing of treatment response impacts its overall effectiveness and whether certain levels of accuracy during treatment enable 100% accurate generalization after treatment ends. Results We found that children who take longer than 10 days to answer one item correctly during treatment are unlikely to ever respond to the treatment approach. Generalization accuracy closely followed treatment accuracy, suggesting the two are tightly linked for this treatment method. We did not find evidence that attaining a certain level of accuracy below 100% during treatment enabled children to generalize with 100% accuracy after treatment ended. Conclusions Clinicians using Enhanced Conversational Recast treatment can use these markers to help make evidence-based decisions in their practice regarding how long to continue treatment. Importantly, these data suggest that stopping treatment before a child has attained 100% accuracy (for at least three sessions) does not ensure that a child will ever reach 100% accuracy on their own.
• Kapa, L. L., Meyers-Denman, C., Plante, E., & Doubleday, K. (2020). Predictors of Treatment Response for Preschool Children With Developmental Language Disorder. American journal of speech-language pathology, 29(4), 2082-2096.
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  Purpose Enhanced Conversational Recast treatment is an effective intervention for remediating expressive grammatical deficits in preschool-age children with developmental language disorder, but not all children respond equally well. In this study, we sought to identify which child-level variables predict response to treatment of morphological deficits. Method Predictor variables of interest, including pre-intervention test scores and target morpheme production, age, and mother's level of education (proxy for socio-economic status) were included in analyses. The sample included 105 children ( = 5;1 [years;months]) with developmental language disorder who participated in 5 weeks of daily Enhanced Conversational Recast treatment. Classification and regression tree analysis was used to identify covariates that predicted children's generalization of their trained grammatical morpheme, as measured by treatment effect size . Results Our analysis indicates that the Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test-Preschool 2 (SPELT-P 2) scores and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition scores significantly predicted the degree of benefit a child derived from Enhanced Conversational Recast treatment. Specifically, a SPELT-P 2 score above 75 (but still in the impaired range, < 87) combined with a high Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition score (> 100) yielded the largest treatment effect size, whereas a SPELT-P 2 score below 75 predicted the smallest treatment effect size. Other variables included in the model did not significantly predict treatment outcomes. Conclusions Understanding individual differences in response to treatment will allow service providers to make evidence-based decisions regarding how likely a child is to benefit from Enhanced Conversational Recast treatment and the expected magnitude of the response based on the child's background characteristics.
• Miller, J., Heilmann, J., Tucci, A., & Plante, E. M. (2020). Assessing Functional Language in School-Aged Children Using Language Sample Analysis. Perspectives, 5, 622-636.
• Nitido, H., & Plante, E. (2020). Diagnosis of Developmental Language Disorder in Research Studies. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 63(8), 2777-2788.
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  Purpose The aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which researchers in the field of developmental language disorder are utilizing validated methods to diagnose their research participants. Method We examined 90 research articles published from 2015 to 2019 that included English-speaking participants from the United States who were identified as having a developmental language disorder or specific language impairment. From these articles, we identified the tests and measures used to identify participants and classify them as healthy or impaired. We then consulted the test manuals and the literature to find information on sensitivity and specificity of the test and the evidence-based cut score that maximized identification accuracy. Results Of the 90 articles examined, 38 (42%) were found to reflect validated diagnostic methods, and 51 (58%) did not. Conclusion Our results illustrate that validated methods are used less than half of the time even by those who should have a high level of expertise and despite calls for increasing scientific rigor in research practices.
• Plante, E. (2020). A neural perspective on implicit learning: A reply to Kamhi (2019). Journal of communication disorders, 83, 105948.
• Eidsvåg, S. S., Plante, E., Oglivie, T., Privette, C., & Mailend, M. L. (2019). Individual Versus Small Group Treatment of Morphological Errors for Children With Developmental Language Disorder. Language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 50(2), 237-252.
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  Purpose This study examines the effects of enhanced conversational recast for treating morphological errors in preschoolers with developmental language disorder. The study assesses the effectiveness of this treatment in an individual or group ( n = 2) setting and the possible benefits of exposing a child to his or her partner's treatment target in addition to his or her own. Method Twenty children were assigned to either an individual ( n = 10) or group ( n = 10, 2 per group) condition. Each child received treatment for 1 morpheme (the target morpheme) for approximately 5 weeks. Children in the group condition had a different target from their treatment partner. Pretreatment and end treatment probes were used to compare correct usage of the target morpheme and a control morpheme. For children in the group condition, the correct usage of their treatment partner's target morpheme was also examined. Results Significant treatment effects occurred for both treatment conditions only for morphemes treated directly (target morpheme). There was no statistically significant difference between the treatment conditions at the end of treatment or at follow-up. Children receiving group treatment did not demonstrate significant gains in producing their partner's target despite hearing the target modeled during treatment. Conclusions This study provides the evidence base for enhanced conversational recast treatment in a small group setting, a treatment used frequently in school settings. Results indicate the importance of either attention to the recast or expressive practice (or both) to produce gains with this treatment. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.7859975.
• Plante, E., Mettler, H. M., Tucci, A., & Vance, R. (2019). Maximizing Treatment Efficiency in Developmental Language Disorder: Positive Effects in Half the Time. American journal of speech-language pathology, 28(3), 1233-1247.
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  Purpose When a behavioral treatment is generally efficacious, the central research questions shift to optimized dose delivery. In this study, we determine whether a validated treatment method can be made more effective or efficient by increasing the dose density employed. Method Twenty children were treated with Enhanced Conversational Recast methods to treat morphological errors. Half received 24 doses per session within a half hour (approximately 1 dose/1.25 min), and the other received the same number of doses within 15 min (approximately 1 dose/38 s). Generalization of morpheme use was probed throughout treatment and at a 6-week follow-up. Spontaneous use of treated morphemes was also tracked. Results Although the treatment was effective overall, there were no significant differences between treatment conditions on any of the outcome measures. Follow-up performance correlated significantly with performance at the end of the treatment period. Conclusion Minimal between-groups differences suggest that performance does not suffer when dose rates are compressed into half the time during treatment, making the high-density dose delivery method a more efficient delivery method. This could make time available within a treatment session to address other goals or allow for more classroom instructional time for the child. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.8968559.
• Tucci, A., Plante, E., Vance, R., & Oglivie, T. (2019). Data-driven item selection for the Shirts and Shoes Test. Journal of communication disorders, 78, 46-56.
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  The first stage of test development is the generation of a pool of potential items to be used in the assessment. Ideally, these items are then tested in the field on members of the population for which the assessment is intended. This initial analysis assures that tests build in validity at the level of the individual items.
• Aguilar, J. M., Plante, E., & Sandoval, M. (2018). Exemplar Variability Facilitates Retention of Word Learning by Children With Specific Language Impairment. Language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 49(1), 72-84.
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  Variability in the input plays an important role in language learning. The current study examined the role of object variability for new word learning by preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLI).
• Plante, E., & Gómez, R. L. (2018). Learning Without Trying: The Clinical Relevance of Statistical Learning. Language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 49(3S), 710-722.
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  Statistical learning research seeks to identify the means by which learners, with little perceived effort, acquire the complexities of language. In the past 50 years, numerous studies have uncovered powerful learning mechanisms that allow for learning within minutes of exposure to novel language input.
• Plante, E., Tucci, A., Nicholas, K., Arizmendi, G. D., & Vance, R. (2018). Effective Use of Auditory Bombardment as a Therapy Adjunct for Children With Developmental Language Disorders. Language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 49(2), 320-333.
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  Modeling of grammatical forms has been used in conjunction with conversational recast treatment in various forms. This study tests the relative effect of providing bombardment prior to or after recast treatment.
• Dailey, N. S., Plante, E., & Vance, R. (2013). Talker discrimination in preschool children with and without specific language impairment. Journal of communication disorders, 46(4), 330-7.
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  Variability inherently present between multiple talkers can prove beneficial in the context of learning. However, the performance during learning paradigms by children with specific language impairment (SLI) remains below typically developing peers, even when multiple talkers are used. Preschool children with typically developing language (n = 17) and SLI (n = 17) participated in a talker discrimination task. Five different pairings of talkers (same male, different males, same female, different females, male + female) were used to present 50 spoken words. Children with SLI were significantly poorer in discriminating same and different male speakers compared to their typical peers. The present findings demonstrate that preschool children with SLI can experience difficulty distinguishing between talkers. Poor sensitivity to variation in talkers may contribute to poor learning in SLI for contexts where multiple talker input should benefit the learner.
• Kapa, L. L., Plante, E., & Doubleday, K. (2017). Applying an Integrative Framework of Executive Function to Preschoolers With Specific Language Impairment. JOURNAL OF SPEECH LANGUAGE AND HEARING RESEARCH, 60(8), 2170-2184.
• Plante, E., Patterson, D., Sandoval, M., Vance, C. J., & Asbjornsen, A. E. (2017). An fMRI study of implicit language learning in developmental language impairment. NEUROIMAGE-CLINICAL, 14, 277-285.
• Sandoval, M., Patterson, D., Dai, H., Vance, C. J., & Plante, E. (2017). Neural Correlates of Morphology Acquisition through a Statistical Learning Paradigm. FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY, 8.
• Sandoval, M., Patterson, D., Dai, H., Vance, C. J., & Plante, E. (2017). Neural Correlates of Morphology Acquisition through a Statistical Learning Paradigm. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 1234.
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  The neural basis of statistical learning as it occurs over time was explored with stimuli drawn from a natural language (Russian nouns). The input reflected the "rules" for marking categories of gendered nouns, without making participants explicitly aware of the nature of what they were to learn. Participants were scanned while listening to a series of gender-marked nouns during four sequential scans, and were tested for their learning immediately after each scan. Although participants were not told the nature of the learning task, they exhibited learning after their initial exposure to the stimuli. Independent component analysis of the brain data revealed five task-related sub-networks. Unlike prior statistical learning studies of word segmentation, this morphological learning task robustly activated the inferior frontal gyrus during the learning period. This region was represented in multiple independent components, suggesting it functions as a network hub for this type of learning. Moreover, the results suggest that subnetworks activated by statistical learning are driven by the nature of the input, rather than reflecting a general statistical learning system.
• Encinas, D., & Plante, E. (2016). Feasibility of a Recasting and Auditory Bombardment Treatment With Young Cochlear Implant Users. Language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 47(2), 157-70.
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  There is little to guide clinicians in terms of evidence-based interventions for children with cochlear implants who demonstrate morpheme errors. This feasibility study tested the utility of a treatment targeting grammatical morpheme errors.
• Mailend, M. L., Plante, E., Anderson, M. A., Applegate, E. B., & Nelson, N. W. (2016). Reliability of the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills (TILLS). International journal of language & communication disorders, 51(4), 447-59.
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  As new standardized tests become commercially available, it is critical that clinicians have access to the information about a test's psychometric properties, including aspects of reliability.
• Meyers-Denman, C. N., & Plante, E. (2016). Dose Schedule and Enhanced Conversational Recast Treatment for Children With Specific Language Impairment. Language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 47(4), 334-346.
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  Dosage has been identified as an important element of treatment that may affect treatment efficacy. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of dose schedule for treatment of grammatical morphology deficits in children with specific language impairment (SLI).
• Plante, E. M., & Meyers-Denman, C. (2016). Dose schedule and conversational recast treatment for children with specific language impairment. Language, Speech, & Hearing Services in School, 47, 334-346.
• Eidsvåg, S. S., Austad, M., Plante, E., & Asbjørnsen, A. E. (2015). Input Variability Facilitates Unguided Subcategory Learning in Adults. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 58(3), 826-39.
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  This experiment investigated whether input variability would affect initial learning of noun gender subcategories in an unfamiliar, natural language (Russian), as it is known to assist learning of other grammatical forms.
• Kapa, L. L., & Plante, E. (2015). Executive Function in SLI: Recent Advances and Future Directions. Current developmental disorders reports, 2(3), 245-252.
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  This paper provides a review of recent research on executive function abilities in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Across several studies, children with SLI are reported to perform worse than typically developing peers on measures of sustained attention, working memory, inhibition, and attention shifting. However, few studies have considered multiple executive function components simultaneously and even fewer have examined the underlying relationship between executive function deficits and impaired language acquisition. We argue that in order to fully understand the nature of executive function deficits in SLI, the field must move past simply identifying weaknesses to instead test models of executive function development and explore the nature of the relationship between executive function and language. Future research directions are recommended in order to achieve these goals.
• Kapa, L., & Plante, E. M. (2015). Executive function in SLI: Recent advances and future directions. Current Developmental Disorders Reports, 2, 245-252.
• Patterson, D., Hicks, T., Dufilie, A., Grinstein, G., & Plante, E. (2015). Dynamic Data Visualization with Weave and Brain Choropleths. PloS one, 10(9), e0139453.
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  This article introduces the neuroimaging community to the dynamic visualization workbench, Weave (https://www.oicweave.org/), and a set of enhancements to allow the visualization of brain maps. The enhancements comprise a set of brain choropleths and the ability to display these as stacked slices, accessible with a slider. For the first time, this allows the neuroimaging community to take advantage of the advanced tools already available for exploring geographic data. Our brain choropleths are modeled after widely used geographic maps but this mashup of brain choropleths with extant visualization software fills an important neuroinformatic niche. To date, most neuroinformatic tools have provided online databases and atlases of the brain, but not good ways to display the related data (e.g., behavioral, genetic, medical, etc). The extension of the choropleth to brain maps allows us to leverage general-purpose visualization tools for concurrent exploration of brain images and related data. Related data can be represented as a variety of tables, charts and graphs that are dynamically linked to each other and to the brain choropleths. We demonstrate that the simplified region-based analyses that underlay choropleths can provide insights into neuroimaging data comparable to those achieved by using more conventional methods. In addition, the interactive interface facilitates additional insights by allowing the user to filter, compare, and drill down into the visual representations of the data. This enhanced data visualization capability is useful during the initial phases of data analysis and the resulting visualizations provide a compelling way to publish data as an online supplement to journal articles.
• Plante, E., Almryde, K., Patterson, D. K., Vance, C. J., & Asbjørnsen, A. E. (2015). Language lateralization shifts with learning by adults. Laterality, 20(3), 306-25.
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  For the majority of the population, language is a left-hemisphere lateralized function. During childhood, a pattern of increasing left lateralization for language has been described in brain imaging studies, suggesting that this trait develops. This development could reflect change due to brain maturation or change due to skill acquisition, given that children acquire and refine language skills as they mature. We test the possibility that skill acquisition, independent of age-associated maturation can result in shifts in language lateralization in classic language cortex. We imaged adults exposed to an unfamiliar language during three successive fMRI scans. Participants were then asked to identify specific words embedded in Norwegian sentences. Exposure to these sentences, relative to complex tones, resulted in consistent activation in the left and right superior temporal gyrus. Activation in this region became increasingly left-lateralized with repeated exposure to the unfamiliar language. These results demonstrate that shifts in lateralization can be produced in the short term within a learning context, independent of maturation.
• Plante, E., Patterson, D., Gómez, R., Almryde, K. R., White, M. G., & Asbjørnsen, A. E. (2015). The nature of the language input affects brain activation during learning from a natural language. Journal of neurolinguistics, 36, 17-34.
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  Artificial language studies have demonstrated that learners are able to segment individual word-like units from running speech using the transitional probability information. However, this skill has rarely been examined in the context of natural languages, where stimulus parameters can be quite different. In this study, two groups of English-speaking learners were exposed to Norwegian sentences over the course of three fMRI scans. One group was provided with input in which transitional probabilities predicted the presence of target words in the sentences. This group quickly learned to identify the target words and fMRI data revealed an extensive and highly dynamic learning network. These results were markedly different from activation seen for a second group of participants. This group was provided with highly similar input that was modified so that word learning based on syllable co-occurrences was not possible. These participants showed a much more restricted network. The results demonstrate that the nature of the input strongly influenced the nature of the network that learners employ to learn the properties of words in a natural language.
• Schmithorst, V. J., Vannest, J., Lee, G., Hernandez-Garcia, L., Plante, E., Rajagopal, A., & Holland, S. K. (2015). Evidence that neurovascular coupling underlying the BOLD effect increases with age during childhood. Human brain mapping, 36(1), 1-15.
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  Functional MRI using blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) imaging has provided unprecedented insights into the maturation of the human brain. Task-based fMRI studies have shown BOLD signal increases with age during development (ages 5-18) for many cognitive domains such as language and executive function, while functional connectivity (resting-state) fMRI studies investigating regionally synchronous BOLD fluctuations have revealed a developing functional organization of the brain from a local into a more distributed architecture. However, interpretation of these results is confounded by the fact that the BOLD signal is directly related to blood oxygenation driven by changes in blood flow and only indirectly related to neuronal activity, and may thus be affected by changing neuronal-vascular coupling. BOLD signal and cerebral blood flow (CBF) were measured simultaneously in a cohort of 113 typically developing awake participants ages 3-18 performing a narrative comprehension task. Using a novel voxelwise wild bootstrap analysis technique, an increased ratio of BOLD signal to relative CBF signal change with age (indicative of increased neuronal-vascular coupling) was seen in the middle temporal gyri and the left inferior frontal gyrus. Additionally, evidence of decreased relative oxygen metabolism (indicative of decreased neuronal activity) with age was found in the same regions. These findings raise concern that results of developmental BOLD studies cannot be unambiguously attributed to neuronal activity. Astrocytes and astrocytic processes may significantly affect the maturing functional architecture of the brain, consistent with recent research demonstrating a key role for astrocytes in mediating increased CBF following neuronal activity and for astrocyte processes in modulating synaptic connectivity.
• Aguilar, J. M., & Plante, E. (2014). Learning of grammar-like visual sequences by adults with and without language-learning disabilities. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 57(4), 1394-404.
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  Two studies examined learning of grammar-like visual sequences to determine whether a general deficit in statistical learning characterizes this population. Furthermore, we tested the hypothesis that difficulty in sustaining attention during the learning task might account for differences in statistical learning.
• Forbes, A., Villegas, J., Almryde, K. R., & Plante, E. (2014). A stereoscopic system for viewing the temporal evolution of brain activity clusters in response to linguistic stimuli. Proceedings of SPIE, 9011, 90110I.
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  In this paper, we present a novel application, 3D+Time Brain View, for the stereoscopic visualization of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data gathered from participants exposed to unfamiliar spoken languages. An analysis technique based on Independent Component Analysis (ICA) is used to identify statistically significant clusters of brain activity and their changes over time during different testing sessions. That is, our system illustrates the temporal evolution of participants' brain activity as they are introduced to a foreign language through displaying these clusters as they change over time. The raw fMRI data is presented as a stereoscopic pair in an immersive environment utilizing passive stereo rendering. The clusters are presented using a ray casting technique for volume rendering. Our system incorporates the temporal information and the results of the ICA into the stereoscopic 3D rendering, making it easier for domain experts to explore and analyze the data.
• Holland, S. K., Altaye, M., Robertson, S., Byars, A. W., Plante, E., & Szaflarski, J. P. (2014). Data on the safety of repeated MRI in healthy children. NeuroImage: Clinical, 4, 526-530.
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  Abstract: Purpose To address the question of the safety of MRI for research in normal, healthy children. We examined MRI, neurocognitive and biometric data collected in a group of healthy, normally developing children who have participated in a 10 year longitudinal fMRI study. Materials and methods Thirty-one healthy children ranging in age from 5 to 7 years were enrolled between 2000 and 2002 and were tested yearly as part of a longitudinal study of normal language development. Twenty-eight of these children have completed multiple neuroimaging, neurocognitive and biometric exams. These children ranged in age from 5 to 18 years during the course of the study and were exposed to up to 10 annual MRI scans. Linear regression of the IQ (WISC-III) (Wechsler, 1991), executive function (BRIEF) (Gioia et al., 2002), and language (OWLS) (Carrow-Woolfolk, 1995) measures was performed against the number of years of exposure to MRI in the study. Body mass index (BMI) (Ogden et al., 2006) was also examined as a function of years and compared with normative values. Results The WISC-III Full Scale (FSIQ) in our longitudinal cohort was higher than the average at baseline. There was no significant change over time in mean FSIQ p = 0.80, OWLS p = 0.16, or BRIEF p = 0.67. Similarly, over 10 years there were no significant changes in the Coding subtest of WISC III and height and body mass index did not deviate from norms (50th percentile). Conclusions Examination of neurocognitive and biometric data from a decade-long, longitudinal fMRI study of normal language development in this small, longitudinal sample of healthy children in the age range of 5 to 18 years, who received up to 10 MRI scans, provides scientific evidence to support the belief that MRI poses minimal risk for use in research with healthy children. © 2014 The Authors.
• Horowitz-Kraus, T., Wang, Y., Plante, E., & Holland, S. K. (2014). Involvement of the right hemisphere in reading comprehension: a DTI study. Brain research, 1582, 34-44.
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  The Simple View of reading emphasizes the critical role of two factors in normal reading skills: word recognition and reading comprehension. The current study aims to identify the anatomical support for aspects of reading performance that fall within these two components. Fractional anisotropy (FA) values were obtained from diffusion tensor images in twenty-one typical adolescents and young adults using the tract based spatial statistics (TBSS) method. We focused on the arcuate fasciculus (AF) and inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) as fiber tracts that connect regions already implicated in the distributed cortical network for reading. Our results demonstrate dissociation between word-level and narrative-level reading skills: the FA values for both left and right ILF were correlated with measures of word reading, while only the left ILF correlated with reading comprehension scores. FA in the AF, however, correlated only with reading comprehension scores, bilaterally. Correlations with the right AF were particularly robust, emphasizing the contribution of the right hemisphere, especially the frontal lobe, to reading comprehension performance on the particular passage comprehension test used in this study. The anatomical dissociation between these reading skills is supported by the Simple View theory and may shed light on why these two skills dissociate in those with reading disorders.
• Hotz, G., Plante, E., Helm-Estabrooks, N., & Nelson, N. (2014). The importance of orientation in evaluating recovery in pediatric traumatic brain injury.. International Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, S5 004, 1-5.
• Patterson, D. K., Van Petten, C., Beeson, P. M., Rapcsak, S. Z., & Plante, E. (2014). Bidirectional iterative parcellation of diffusion weighted imaging data: separating cortical regions connected by the arcuate fasciculus and extreme capsule. NeuroImage, 102 Pt 2, 704-16.
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  This paper introduces a Bidirectional Iterative Parcellation (BIP) procedure designed to identify the location and size of connected cortical regions (parcellations) at both ends of a white matter tract in diffusion weighted images. The procedure applies the FSL option "probabilistic tracking with classification targets" in a bidirectional and iterative manner. To assess the utility of BIP, we applied the procedure to the problem of parcellating a limited set of well-established gray matter seed regions associated with the dorsal (arcuate fasciculus/superior longitudinal fasciculus) and ventral (extreme capsule fiber system) white matter tracts in the language networks of 97 participants. These left hemisphere seed regions and the two white matter tracts, along with their right hemisphere homologues, provided an excellent test case for BIP because the resulting parcellations overlap and their connectivity via the arcuate fasciculi and extreme capsule fiber systems are well studied. The procedure yielded both confirmatory and novel findings. Specifically, BIP confirmed that each tract connects within the seed regions in unique, but expected ways. Novel findings included increasingly left-lateralized parcellations associated with the arcuate fasciculus/superior longitudinal fasciculus as a function of age and education. These results demonstrate that BIP is an easily implemented technique that successfully confirmed cortical connectivity patterns predicted in the literature, and has the potential to provide new insights regarding the architecture of the brain.
• Plante, E. M., Patterson, D., Gomez, R. L., Almryde, K., White, M. G., & Arve, A. E. (2015). The nature of the language input affects brain activation during learning from a natural language. Journal of Neurolinguistics.
• Plante, E., Ogilvie, T., Vance, R., Aguilar, J. M., Dailey, N. S., Meyers, C., Lieser, A. M., & Burton, R. (2014). Variability in the language input to children enhances learning in a treatment context. American journal of speech-language pathology / American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 23(4), 530-45.
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  Artificial language learning studies have demonstrated that learners exposed to many different nonword combinations representing a grammatical form demonstrate rapid learning of that form without explicit instruction. However, learners presented with few exemplars, even when they are repeated frequently, fail to learn the underlying grammar. This study translated this experimental finding in a therapeutic context.
• Plante, E., Patterson, D., Dailey, N. S., Kyle, R. A., & Fridriksson, J. (2014). Dynamic changes in network activations characterize early learning of a natural language. Neuropsychologia, 62, 77-86.
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  Those who are initially exposed to an unfamiliar language have difficulty separating running speech into individual words, but over time will recognize both words and the grammatical structure of the language. Behavioral studies have used artificial languages to demonstrate that humans are sensitive to distributional information in language input, and can use this information to discover the structure of that language. This is done without direct instruction and learning occurs over the course of minutes rather than days or months. Moreover, learners may attend to different aspects of the language input as their own learning progresses. Here, we examine processing associated with the early stages of exposure to a natural language, using fMRI. Listeners were exposed to an unfamiliar language (Icelandic) while undergoing four consecutive fMRI scans. The Icelandic stimuli were constrained in ways known to produce rapid learning of aspects of language structure. After approximately 4 min of exposure to the Icelandic stimuli, participants began to differentiate between correct and incorrect sentences at above chance levels, with significant improvement between the first and last scan. An independent component analysis of the imaging data revealed four task-related components, two of which were associated with behavioral performance early in the experiment, and two with performance later in the experiment. This outcome suggests dynamic changes occur in the recruitment of neural resources even within the initial period of exposure to an unfamiliar natural language.
• Schmithorst, V. J., Plante, E., & Holland, S. (2014). Unilateral deafness in children affects development of multi-modal modulation and default mode networks. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8(MAR).
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  Abstract: Monaural auditory input due to congenital or acquired unilateral hearing loss (UHL) may have neurobiological effects on the developing brain. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated the effect of UHL on the development of functional brain networks used for cross-modal processing. Children ages 7-12 with moderate or greater unilateral hearing loss of sensorineural origin (UHL-SN; N = 21) and normal-hearing controls (N = 23) performed an fMRI-compatible adaptation of the Token Test involving listening to a sentence such as "touched" the small green circle and the large blue square and simultaneously viewing an arrow touching colored shapes on a video. Children with right or severe-to-profound UHL-SN displayed smaller activation in a region encompassing the right inferior temporal, middle temporal, and middle occipital gyrus (BA 19/37/39), evidencing differences due to monaural hearing in cross-modal modulation of the visual processing pathway. Children with UHL-SN displayed increased activation in the left posterior superior temporal gyrus, likely the result either of more effortful low-level processing of auditory stimuli or differences in cross-modal modulation of the auditory processing pathway. Additionally, children with UHL-SN displayed reduced deactivation of anterior and posterior regions of the default mode network. Results suggest that monaural hearing affects the development of brain networks related to cross-modal sensory processing and the regulation of the default network during processing of spoken language. © 2014 Schmithorst, Plante and Holland.
• Schmithorst, V. J., Plante, E., & Holland, S. (2014). Unilateral deafness in children affects development of multi-modal modulation and default mode networks. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 8, 164.
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  Monaural auditory input due to congenital or acquired unilateral hearing loss (UHL) may have neurobiological effects on the developing brain. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated the effect of UHL on the development of functional brain networks used for cross-modal processing. Children ages 7-12 with moderate or greater unilateral hearing loss of sensorineural origin (UHL-SN; N = 21) and normal-hearing controls (N = 23) performed an fMRI-compatible adaptation of the Token Test involving listening to a sentence such as "touched the small green circle and the large blue square" and simultaneously viewing an arrow touching colored shapes on a video. Children with right or severe-to-profound UHL-SN displayed smaller activation in a region encompassing the right inferior temporal, middle temporal, and middle occipital gyrus (BA 19/37/39), evidencing differences due to monaural hearing in cross-modal modulation of the visual processing pathway. Children with UHL-SN displayed increased activation in the left posterior superior temporal gyrus, likely the result either of more effortful low-level processing of auditory stimuli or differences in cross-modal modulation of the auditory processing pathway. Additionally, children with UHL-SN displayed reduced deactivation of anterior and posterior regions of the default mode network. Results suggest that monaural hearing affects the development of brain networks related to cross-modal sensory processing and the regulation of the default network during processing of spoken language.
• Dailey, N. S., Plante, E., & Vance, R. (2013). Talker discrimination in preschool children with and without specific language impairment. Journal of Communication Disorders, 46(4), 330-337.
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  PMID: 23885767;Abstract: Variability inherently present between multiple talkers can prove beneficial in the context of learning. However, the performance during learning paradigms by children with specific language impairment (SLI) remains below typically developing peers, even when multiple talkers are used. Preschool children with typically developing language ( n= 17) and SLI ( n= 17) participated in a talker discrimination task. Five different pairings of talkers (same male, different males, same female, different females, male. +. female) were used to present 50 spoken words. Children with SLI were significantly poorer in discriminating same and different male speakers compared to their typical peers. The present findings demonstrate that preschool children with SLI can experience difficulty distinguishing between talkers. Poor sensitivity to variation in talkers may contribute to poor learning in SLI for contexts where multiple talker input should benefit the learner. Learning outcomes: The reader will recognize that the presence of multiple talkers (voices) can assist or detract from performance on cognitive tasks. Children with specific language impairment are less proficient than their peers in distinguishing the same from different talkers. © 2013.
• Plante, E., Plante, E. M., Creusere, M., & Alt, M. (2004). Recognition of vocal and facial cues to affect in language-impaired and normally-developing preschoolers. Journal of communication disorders, 37(1).
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  The current study was designed to investigate whether reported difficulties in language-impaired children's ability to identify vocal and facial cues to emotion could be explained at least partially by nonparalinguistic factors. Children with specific language impairment (SLI) and control participants received an affect discrimination task, which consisted of the following cue situations: (1) facial expression and unfiltered speech; (2) lowpass-filtered speech only; (3) facial expression only; and (4) facial expression and filtered speech. The results of the study indicated that impaired and nonimpaired group performance differed only for the items including facial expression and nonfiltered speech. Developmental and investigative implications of this finding are addressed.
• Plante, E., Plante, E. M., Grunow, H., Spaulding, T. J., & Gómez, R. L. (2006). The effects of variation on learning word order rules by adults with and without language-based learning disabilities. Journal of communication disorders, 39(2).
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  Non-adjacent dependencies characterize numerous features of English syntax, including certain verb tense structures and subject-verb agreement. This study utilized an artificial language paradigm to examine the contribution of item variability to the learning of these types of dependencies. Adult subjects with and without language-based learning disabilities listened to strings of three non-words for which the first and third elements had a dependent relationship. In the low variability condition, 12 non-words occurred in the middle position, and in the high variability condition, 24 non-words occurred in this position. Non-disabled adults were able to learn the non-adjacent contingencies and generalize the underlying structure to new strings, but only when variability was high. Adults with language-based learning disabilities did not perform above chance levels under either variability condition. Thus, this group showed poor sensitivity to statistical information in speech input that both infants and non-disabled adults are known to track.
• Plante, E., Vance, R., Moody, A., & Gerken, L. (2013). What influences children's conceptualizations of language input?. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 56(5), 1613-1624.
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  PMID: 23785193;Abstract: Purpose: Children learning language conceptualize the nature of input they receive in ways that allow them to understand and construct utterances they have never heard before. This study was designed to illuminate the types of information children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) focus on to develop their conceptualizations and whether they can rapidly shift their initial conceptualizations if provided with additional input. Method: In 2 studies, preschool children with and without SLI were exposed to an artificial language, the characteristics of which allowed for various types of conceptualizations about its fundamental properties. After being familiarized with the language, children were asked to judge test strings that conformed to the input in 1 of 4 different ways. Results: All children preferred test items that reflected a narrow conceptualization of the input (i.e., items most like those heard during familiarization). Children showed a strong preference for phonology as a defining property of the artificial language. Restructuring the input to the child could induce them to track word order information as well. Conclusion: Children tend toward narrow conceptualizations of language input, but the nature of their conceptualizations can be influenced by the nature of the input they receive. © American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Plante, E., von Koss Torkildsen, J., Dailey, N. S., Aguilar, J. M., Gómez, R., & Plante, E. M. (2013). Exemplar variability facilitates rapid learning of an otherwise unlearnable grammar by individuals with language-based learning disability. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 56(2).
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  Even without explicit instruction, learners are able to extract information about the form of a language simply by attending to input that reflects the underlying grammar. In this study, the authors explored the role of variability in this learning by asking whether varying the number of unique exemplars heard by the learner affects learning of an artificial syntactic form.
• von, J., Dailey, N. S., Aguilar, J. M., Gómez, R., & Plante, E. (2013). Exemplar variability facilitates rapid learning of an otherwise unlearnable grammar by individuals with language-based learning disability. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 56(2), 618-629.
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  PMID: 22988285;PMCID: PMC3973537;Abstract: Purpose: Even without explicit instruction, learners are able to extract information about the form of a language simply by attending to input that reflects the underlying grammar. In this study, the authors explored the role of variability in this learning by asking whether varying the number of unique exemplars heard by the learner affects learning of an artificial syntactic form. Method: Learners with normal language (n = 16) and language-based learning disability (LLD; n = 16) were exposed to strings of nonwords that represented an underlying grammar. Half of the learners heard 3 exemplars 16 times each (low variability group), and the other half of the learners heard 24 exemplars twice each (high variability group). Learners were then tested for recognition of items heard and generalization of the grammar with new nonword strings. Results: Only those learners with LLD who were in the high variability group were able to demonstrate generalization of the underlying grammar. For learners with normal language, both those in the high and the low variability groups showed generalization of the grammar, but relative effect sizes suggested a larger learning effect in the high variability group. Conclusion: The results demonstrate that the structure of the learning context can determine the ability to generalize from specific training items to novel cases. © American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Christensen, T. A., Almryde, K. R., Fidler, L. J., Lockwood, J. L., Antonucci, S. M., & Plante, E. (2012). Modulating the focus of attention for spoken words at encoding affects frontoparietal activation for incidental verbal memory. International Journal of Biomedical Imaging, 2012.
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  PMID: 22144982;PMCID: PMC3227508;Abstract: Attention is crucial for encoding information into memory, and current dual-process models seek to explain the roles of attention in both recollection memory and incidental-perceptual memory processes. The present study combined an incidental memory paradigm with event-related functional MRI to examine the effect of attention at encoding on the subsequent neural activation associated with unintended perceptual memory for spoken words. At encoding, we systematically varied attention levels as listeners heard a list of single English nouns. We then presented these words again in the context of a recognition task and assessed the effect of modulating attention at encoding on the BOLD responses to words that were either attended strongly, weakly, or not heard previously. MRI revealed activity in right-lateralized inferior parietal and prefrontal regions, and positive BOLD signals varied with the relative level of attention present at encoding. Temporal analysis of hemodynamic responses further showed that the time course of BOLD activity was modulated differentially by unintentionally encoded words compared to novel items. Our findings largely support current models of memory consolidation and retrieval, but they also provide fresh evidence for hemispheric differences and functional subdivisions in right frontoparietal attention networks that help shape auditory episodic recall. Copyright © 2012 Thomas A. Christensen et al.
• Plante, E. M., Plante, E., Christensen, T. A., Almryde, K. R., Fidler, L. J., Lockwood, J. L., & Antonucci, S. M. (2012). Modulating the focus of attention for spoken words at encoding affects frontoparietal activation for incidental verbal memory. International journal of biomedical imaging, 2012.
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  Attention is crucial for encoding information into memory, and current dual-process models seek to explain the roles of attention in both recollection memory and incidental-perceptual memory processes. The present study combined an incidental memory paradigm with event-related functional MRI to examine the effect of attention at encoding on the subsequent neural activation associated with unintended perceptual memory for spoken words. At encoding, we systematically varied attention levels as listeners heard a list of single English nouns. We then presented these words again in the context of a recognition task and assessed the effect of modulating attention at encoding on the BOLD responses to words that were either attended strongly, weakly, or not heard previously. MRI revealed activity in right-lateralized inferior parietal and prefrontal regions, and positive BOLD signals varied with the relative level of attention present at encoding. Temporal analysis of hemodynamic responses further showed that the time course of BOLD activity was modulated differentially by unintentionally encoded words compared to novel items. Our findings largely support current models of memory consolidation and retrieval, but they also provide fresh evidence for hemispheric differences and functional subdivisions in right frontoparietal attention networks that help shape auditory episodic recall.
• Suddarth, R., Plante, E., & Vance, R. (2012). Written narrative characteristics in adults with language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 55(2), 409-420.
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  PMID: 22215038;Abstract: Purpose: Adults with language-based disabilities are known to have deficits in oral language; however, less is known about their written language skills. Two studies were designed to characterize the writing of adults with language-based disabilities. Method: In Study 1, 60 adults, 30 with language impairment and 30 with typical language, completed written narratives. Forty-one written language measures were analyzed. In Study 2, the measures that had the most potential for reliably indexing deficits were analyzed in an additional 77 adults. Results: Three measures that showed significant between-group differences and had robust effect sizes in Study 1, total number of verbs, 1-part verbs, and errors, were applied to the samples in Study 2. A group difference for percentage of errors was replicated in the second sample. A discriminant analysis identified 75% of the adults with language impairment and 30% of the adults with typical language as having an impairment based on the percent of written errors. Conclusions: The writing task revealed consistent group differences in written errors and is clinically applicable in describing a client's writing. However, the number ofwritten errors was not robust enough to identify whether an adult had a language impairment or not. © American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Szaflarski, J. P., Altaye, M., Rajagopal, A., Eaton, K., Meng, X., Plante, E., & Holland, S. K. (2012). A 10-year longitudinal fMRI study of narrative comprehension in children and adolescents. NeuroImage, 63(3), 1188-1195.
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  PMID: 22951258;PMCID: PMC3476849;Abstract: Comprehension of spoken narratives requires coordination of multiple language skills. As such, for normal children narrative skills develop well into the school years and, during this period, are particularly vulnerable in the face of brain injury or developmental disorder. For these reasons, we sought to determine the developmental trajectory of narrative processing using longitudinal fMRI scanning. 30 healthy children between the ages of 5 and 18 enrolled at ages 5, 6, or 7, were examined annually for up to 10. years. At each fMRI session, children were presented with a set of five, 30. s-long, stories containing 9, 10, or 11 sentences designed to be understood by a 5. year old child. fMRI data analysis was conducted based on a hierarchical linear model (HLM) that was modified to investigate developmental changes while accounting for missing data and controlling for factors such as age, linguistic performance and IQ. Performance testing conducted after each scan indicated well above the chance (p < 0.002) comprehension performance. There was a linear increase with increasing age in bilateral superior temporal cortical activation (BAs 21 and 22) linked to narrative processing. Conversely, age-related decreases in cortical activation were observed in bilateral occipital regions, cingulate and cuneus, possibly reflecting changes in the default mode networks. The dynamic changes observed in this longitudinal fMRI study support the increasing role of bilateral BAs 21 and 22 in narrative comprehension, involving non-domain-specific integration in order to achieve final story interpretation. The presence of a continued linear development of this area throughout childhood and teenage years with no apparent plateau, indicates that full maturation of narrative processing skills has not yet occurred and that it may be delayed to early adulthood. © 2012 Elsevier Inc.
• Szaflarski, J. P., Rajagopal, A., Altaye, M., Byars, A. W., Jacola, L., Schmithorst, V. J., Schapiro, M. B., Plante, E., & Holland, S. K. (2012). Left-handedness and language lateralization in children. Brain Research, 1433, 85-97.
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  PMID: 22177775;PMCID: PMC3249496;Abstract: This fMRI study investigated the development of language lateralization in left- and righthanded children between 5 and 18 years of age. Twenty-seven left-handed children (17 boys, 10 girls) and 54 age- and gender-matched right-handed children were included. We used functional MRI at 3 T and a verb generation task to measure hemispheric language dominance based on either frontal or temporo-parietal regions of interest (ROIs) defined for the entire group and applied on an individual basis. Based on the frontal ROI, in the left-handed group, 23 participants (85%) demonstrated left-hemispheric language lateralization, 3 (11%) demonstrated symmetric activation, and 1 (4%) demonstrated right-hemispheric lateralization. In contrast, 50 (93%) of the right-handed children showed left-hemispheric lateralization and 3 (6%) demonstrated a symmetric activation pattern, while one (2%) demonstrated a right-hemispheric lateralization. The corresponding values for the temporo-parietal ROI for the left-handed children were 18 (67%) left-dominant, 6 (22%) symmetric, 3 (11%) right-dominant and for the right-handed children 49 (91%), 4 (7%), 1 (2%), respectively. Left-hemispheric language lateralization increased with age in both groups but somewhat different lateralization trajectories were observed in girls when compared to boys. The incidence of atypical language lateralization in left-handed children in this study was similar to that reported in adults. We also found similar rates of increase in left-hemispheric language lateralization with age between groups (i.e., independent of handedness) indicating the presence of similar mechanisms for language lateralization in left- and right-handed children. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
• Fidler, L. J., Plante, E., & Vance, R. (2011). Identification of adults with developmental language impairments. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(1), 2-13.
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  PMID: 20739630;Abstract: Purpose: To assess the utility of a wide range of language measures (phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics) for the identification of adults with developmental language impairment. Method: Measures were administered to 3 groups of adults, each representing a population expected to demonstrate high levels of language impairment, and to matched control groups. Results: Three measures were the strongest contributors to identification of language impairment in the 3 groups of adults. These measures,combined, maximized identification of members of the clinical groups as having impaired language (sensitivity) and members of the control groups as having typical language (specificity). Conclusion: This suggests that a relatively brief battery could have utility for identifying developmental language impairment during the adult years. © American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Helland, T., Plante, E., & Hugdahl, K. (2011). Predicting dyslexia at age 11 from a risk index questionnaire at age 5. Dyslexia, 17(3), 207-226.
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  PMID: 21793119;Abstract: This study focused on predicting dyslexia in children ahead of formal literacy training. Because dyslexia is a constitutional impairment, risk factors should be seen in preschool. It was hypothesized that data gathered at age 5 using questions targeting the dyslexia endophenotype should be reliable and valid predictors of dyslexia at age 11. A questionnaire was given to caretakers of 120 5-year-old children, and a risk index score was calculated based on questions regarding health, laterality, motor skills, language, special needs education and heredity. An at-risk group (n = 25) and matched controls (n = 24) were followed until age 11, when a similar questionnaire and literacy tests were administered to the children who participated in the follow-up study (22 at risk and 20 control). Half of the at-risk children and two of the control children at age 5 were identified as having dyslexia at age 11 (8 girls and 5 boys). It is concluded that it is possible to identify children at the age of 5 who will have dyslexia at the age of 11 through a questionnaire approach. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
• Karunanayaka, P., Schmithorst, V. J., Vannest, J., Szaflarski, J. P., Plante, E., & Holland, S. K. (2011). A linear structural equation model for covert verb generation based on independent component analysis of fMRI data from children and adolescents. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience.
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  PMID: 21660108;PMCID: PMC3106180;Abstract: Human language is a complex and protean cognitive ability. Young children, following well defined developmental patterns learn language rapidly and effortlessly producing full sentences by the age of 3 years. However, the language circuitry continues to undergo significant neuroplastic changes extending well into teenage years. Evidence suggests that the developing brain adheres to two rudimentary principles of functional organization: functional integration and functional specialization. At a neurobiological level, this distinction can be identified with progressive specialization or focalization reflecting consolidation and synaptic reinforcement of a network (Lenneberg, 1967; Muller et al., 1998; Berl et al., 2006). In this paper, we used group independent component analysis and linear structural equation modeling (McIntosh and Gonzalez-Lima, 1994; Karunanayaka et al., 2007) to tease out the developmental trajectories of the language circuitry based on fMRI data from 336 children ages 5-18 years performing a blocked, covert verb generation task. The results are analyzed and presented in the framework of theoretical models for neurocognitive brain development. This study highlights the advantages of combining both modular and connectionist approaches to cognitive functions; from a methodological perspective, it demonstrates the feasibility of combining data-driven and hypothesis driven techniques to investigate the developmental shifts in the semantic network. © 2011 Karunanayaka, Schmithorst, Vannest, Szaflarski, Plante and Holland.
• Markevych, V., Asbjørnsen, A. E., Lind, O., Plante, E., & Cone, B. (2011). Dichotic listening and otoacoustic emissions: Shared variance between cochlear function and dichotic listening performance in adults with normal hearing. Brain and Cognition, 76(2), 332-339.
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  PMID: 21474228;Abstract: The present study investigated a possible connection between speech processing and cochlear function. Twenty-two subjects with age range from 18 to 39, balanced for gender with normal hearing and without any known neurological condition, were tested with the dichotic listening (DL) test, in which listeners were asked to identify CV-syllables in a nonforced, and also attention-right, and attention-left condition. Transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAEs) were recorded for both ears, with and without the presentation of contralateral broadband noise. The main finding was a strong negative correlation between language laterality as measured with the dichotic listening task and of the TEOAE responses. The findings support a hypothesis of shared variance between central and peripheral auditory lateralities, and contribute to the attentional theory of auditory lateralization. The results have implications for the understanding of the cortico-fugal efferent control of cochlear activity. © 2011 Elsevier Inc.
• Plante, E., Bahl, M., Vance, R., & Gerken, L. (2011). Beyond phonotactic frequency: Presentation frequency effects word productions in specific language impairment. Journal of Communication Disorders, 44(1), 91-102.
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  PMID: 20727533;PMCID: PMC3010444;Abstract: Phonotactic frequency effects on word production are thought to reflect accumulated experience with a language. Here we demonstrate that frequency effects can also be obtained through short-term manipulations of the input to children. We presented children with nonwords in an experiment that systematically manipulated English phonotactic frequency and the frequency of presentation within the experiment. Both of these manipulations affected the accuracy and time-to-response for nonword production both for typically developing and children with specific language impairment. Children with SLI were less accurate in their productions overall, but still exhibited an effect of the short-term frequency manipulation. Children with SLI differed significantly from their typical peers in terms of time-to-response only when both English and Experimental frequency were low. The results indicate that simple manipulations of the input can affect children's representation of word forms, and this can facilitate word production without the need for long term exposure or articulatory practice. Learning outcomes: The reader will learn that sound frequency affects the production of new words. This includes not only the frequency with which sound sequences are represented in the speaker's native language, but the frequency with which they are heard within a single session. © 2010 Elsevier Inc.
• Plante, E., Christensen, T. A., Lockwood, J. L., Almryde, K. R., & Plante, E. M. (2011). Neural substrates of attentive listening assessed with a novel auditory Stroop task. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 4.
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  A common explanation for the interference effect in the classic visual Stroop test is that reading a word (the more automatic semantic response) must be suppressed in favor of naming the text color (the slower sensory response). Neuroimaging studies also consistently report anterior cingulate/medial frontal, lateral prefrontal, and anterior insular structures as key components of a network for Stroop-conflict processing. It remains unclear, however, whether automatic processing of semantic information can explain the interference effect in other variants of the Stroop test. It also is not known if these frontal regions serve a specific role in visual Stroop conflict, or instead play a more universal role as components of a more generalized, supramodal executive-control network for conflict processing. To address these questions, we developed a novel auditory Stroop test in which the relative dominance of semantic and sensory feature processing is reversed. Listeners were asked to focus either on voice gender (a more automatic sensory discrimination task) or on the gender meaning of the word (a less automatic semantic task) while ignoring the conflicting stimulus feature. An auditory Stroop effect was observed when voice features replaced semantic content as the "to-be-ignored" component of the incongruent stimulus. Also, in sharp contrast to previous Stroop studies, neural responses to incongruent stimuli studied with functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed greater recruitment of conflict loci when selective attention was focused on gender meaning (semantic task) over voice gender (sensory task). Furthermore, in contrast to earlier Stroop studies that implicated dorsomedial cortex in visual conflict processing, interference-related activation in both of our auditory tasks was localized ventrally in medial frontal areas, suggesting a dorsal-to-ventral separation of function in medial frontal cortex that is sensitive to stimulus context.
• Schmithorst, V. J., Holland, S. K., & Plante, E. (2011). Diffusion tensor imaging reveals white matter microstructure correlations with auditory processing ability. Ear and Hearing, 32(2), 156-167.
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  PMID: 21063207;PMCID: PMC3057932;Abstract: OBJECTIVE: Correlation of white matter microstructure with various cognitive processing tasks and with overall intelligence has been previously demonstrated. We investigate the correlation of white matter microstructure with various higher-order auditory processing tasks, including interpretation of speech-in-noise, recognition of low-pass frequency filtered words, and interpretation of time-compressed sentences at two different values of compression. These tests are typically used to diagnose auditory processing disorder (APD) in children. Our hypothesis is that correlations between white matter microstructure in tracts connecting the temporal, frontal, and parietal lobes, as well as callosal pathways, will be seen. Previous functional imaging studies have shown correlations between activation in temporal, frontal, and parietal regions from higher-order auditory processing tasks. In addition, we hypothesize that the regions displaying correlations will vary according to the task because each task uses a different set of skills. DESIGN: Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data were acquired from a cohort of 17 normal-hearing children aged 9 to 11 yrs. Fractional anisotropy (FA), a measure of white matter fiber tract integrity and organization, was computed and correlated on a voxelwise basis with performance on the auditory processing tasks, controlling for age, sex, and full-scale IQ. RESULTS: Divergent correlations of white matter FA depending on the particular auditory processing task were found. Positive correlations were found between FA and speech-in-noise in white matter adjoining prefrontal areas and between FA and filtered words in the corpus callosum. Regions exhibiting correlations with time-compressed sentences varied depending on the degree of compression: the greater degree of compression (with the greatest difficulty) resulted in correlations in white matter adjoining prefrontal (dorsal and ventral), whereas the smaller degree of compression (with less difficulty) resulted in correlations in white matter adjoining audiovisual association areas and the posterior cingulate. Only the time-compressed sentences with the lowest degree of compression resulted in positive correlations in the centrum semiovale; all the other tasks resulted in negative correlations. CONCLUSIONS: The dependence of performance on higher-order auditory processing tasks on brain anatomical connectivity was seen in normal-hearing children aged 9 to 11 yrs. Results support a previously hypothesized dual-stream (dorsal and ventral) model of auditory processing, and that higher-order processing tasks rely less on the dorsal stream related to articulatory networks and more on the ventral stream related to semantic comprehension. Results also show that the regions correlating with auditory processing vary according to the specific task, indicating that the neurological bases for the various tests used to diagnose APD in children may be partially independent. © 2011 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc.
• Christensen, T. A., Lockwood, J. L., Almryde, K. R., & Plante, E. (2010). Neural substrates of attentive listening assessed with a novel auditory Stroop task. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 4.
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  PMID: 21258643;PMCID: PMC3020403;Abstract: A common explanation for the interference effect in the classic visual Stroop test is that reading a word (the more automatic semantic response) must be suppressed in favor of naming the text color (the slower sensory response). Neuroimaging studies also consistently report anterior cingulate/medial frontal, lateral prefrontal, and anterior insular structures as key components of a network for Stroop-conflict processing. It remains unclear, however, whether automatic processing of semantic information can explain the interference effect in other variants of the Stroop test. It also is not known if these frontal regions serve a specific role in visual Stroop conflict, or instead play a more universal role as components of a more generalized, supramodal executive-control network for conflict processing. To address these questions, we developed a novel auditory Stroop test in which the relative dominance of semantic and sensory feature processing is reversed. Listeners were asked to focus either on voice gender (a more automatic sensory discrimination task) or on the gender meaning of the word (a less automatic semantic task) while ignoring the conflicting stimulus feature. An auditory Stroop effect was observed when voice features replaced semantic content as the "to-be-ignored" component of the incongruent stimulus. Also, in sharp contrast to previous Stroop studies, neural responses to incongruent stimuli studied with functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed greater recruitment of conflict loci when selective attention was focused on gender meaning (semantic task) over voice gender (sensory task). Furthermore, in contrast to earlier Stroop studies that implicated dorsomedial cortex in visual conflict processing, interference-related activation in both of our auditory tasks was localized ventrally in medial frontal areas, suggesting a dorsal-to-ventral separation of function in medial frontal cortex that is sensitive to stimulus context. © 2011 Christensen, Lockwood, Almryde and Plante.
• Holland, S. K., Byars, A. W., Plante, E., Szaflarski, J. P., Dietrich, K., & Altaye, M. (2010). Studies support probable long-term safety of MRI. Science, 329(5991), 512-513.
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  PMID: 20671170;
• Karunanayaka, P., Schmithorst, V. J., Vannest, J., Szaflarski, J. P., Plante, E., & Holland, S. K. (2010). A group independent component analysis of covert verb generation in children: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study. NeuroImage, 51(1), 472-487.
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  PMID: 20056150;Abstract: Semantic language skills are an integral part of early childhood language development. The semantic association between verbs and nouns constitutes an important building block for the construction of sentences. In this large-scale functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, involving 336 subjects between the ages of 5 and 18years, we investigated the neural correlates of covert verb generation in children. Using group independent component analysis (ICA), seven task-related components were identified including the mid-superior temporal gyrus, the most posterior aspect of the superior temporal gyrus, the parahippocampal gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus, the angular gyrus, and medial aspect of the parietal lobule (precuneus/posterior cingulate). A highly left-lateralized component was found including the medial temporal gyrus, the frontal gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus, and the angular gyrus. The associated independent component (IC) time courses were analyzed to investigate developmental changes in the neural elements supporting covert verb generation. Observed age effects may either reflect specific local neuroplastic changes in the neural substrates supporting language or a more global transformation of neuroplasticity in the developing brain. The results are analyzed and presented in the framework of two theoretical models for neurocognitive brain development. In this context, group ICA of fMRI data from our large sample of children aged 5-18years provides strong evidence in support of the regionally weighted model for cognitive neurodevelopment of language networks. © 2010 Elsevier Inc.
• Kittleson, M. M., Aguilar, J. M., Tokerud, G. L., Plante, E., & Asbøjrnsen, A. E. (2010). Implicit language learning: Adults' ability to segment words in Norwegian. Bilingualism, 13(4), 513-523.
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  Abstract: Previous language learning research reveals that the statistical properties of the input offer sufficient information to allow listeners to segment words from fluent speech in an artificial language. The current pair of studies uses a natural language to test the ecological validity of these findings and to determine whether a listener's language background influences this process. In Study 1, the "guessibility" of potential test words from the Norwegian language was presented to 22 listeners who were asked to differentiate between true words and nonwords. In Study 2, 22 adults who spoke one of 12 different primary languages learned to segment words from continuous speech in an implicit language learning paradigm. The task consisted of two sessions, approximately three weeks apart, each requiring participants to listen to 7.2 minutes of Norwegian sentences followed by a series of bisyllabic test items presented in isolation. The participants differentially accepted the Norwegian words and Norwegian-like nonwords in both test sessions, demonstrating the capability to segment true words from running speech. The results were consistent across three broadly-defined language groups, despite differences in participants language background. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010.
• Luo, F., Wan, W., Sikora, T., & Plante, E. (2010). Message from the conference chairs. ICALIP 2010 - 2010 International Conference on Audio, Language and Image Processing, Proceedings, i-ii.
• Plante, E., Bahl, M., Vance, R., & Gerken, L. (2010). Children with specific language impairment show rapid, implicit learning of stress assignment rules. Journal of Communication Disorders, 43(5), 397-406.
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  PMID: 20542518;PMCID: PMC2922431;Abstract: An implicit learning paradigm was used to assess children's sensitivity to syllable stress information in an artificial language. Study 1 demonstrated that preschool children, with and without specific language impairment (SLI), can generalize patterns of stress heard during a brief period of familiarization, and can also abstract underlying ordered rules by which stress patterns were assigned to syllables. In Study 2, the salience of stressed elements was acoustically enhanced. Counter to expectations, there was no evidence of learning with this manipulation for either the typically developing children or children with SLI. The results suggest that children with SLI and their typically developing peers are sensitive to syllable stress cues to language structure. However, attempts to draw attention to these patterns by making them more salient may prompt children to use alternate learning strategies that do not lead to an implicit understanding of how stress contributes to the structure of language.Learning outcomes: The reader will be able to understand: (1) that children with SLI can learn and generalize the rules for assigning word-level stress patterns within minutes of hearing examples, but (2) strategies to enhance learning may actually have the opposite effect for these children. © 2010 Elsevier Inc.
• Vannest, J., Rasmussen, J., Eaton, K. P., Patel, K., Schmithorst, V., Karunanayaka, P., Plante, E., Byars, A., & Holland, S. (2010). FMRI activation in language areas correlates with verb generation performance in children. Neuropediatrics, 41(5), 235-239.
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  PMID: 21210340;Abstract: Functional MRI mapping of language areas in children frequently employs a covert verb generation task. Because responses are not monitored, the relationship between fMRI activation and task performance is unknown. We compared fMRI activation during covert and overt verb generation to performance during the overt task. 15 children, ages 11-13 years, listened to concrete nouns and responded with related verbs covertly and overtly. A clustered fMRI acquisition allowed for recording of overt responses without motion artifacts. Region of interest analysis was also performed in areas that exhibited correlation between activation and performance during overt verb generation in left inferior frontal and left superior temporal gyri (along with their right hemisphere homologues). Regression analysis determined that during both covert and overt generation, left hemisphere regions showed positive correlations with average counts of verbs generated during the overt task. These results suggest that increased verb generation performance leads to increased activation. In addition, overt performance may be used as an estimator of covert performance. © 2010 Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.
• Bahl, M., Plante, E., & Gerken, L. (2009). Processing prosodic structure by adults with language-based learning disability. Journal of Communication Disorders, 42(5), 313-323.
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  PMID: 19324365;PMCID: PMC2856440;Abstract: Two experiments investigated the ability of adults with a history of language-based learning disability (hLLD) and their normal language (NL) peers to learn prosodic patterns of a novel language. Participants were exposed to stimuli from an artificial language and tested on items that required generalization of the stress patterns and the hierarchical principles of stress assignment that could be inferred from the input. In Study 1, the NL group successfully generalized the patterns of stress heard during familiarization, but failed to show generalization of the hierarchical principles. The hLLD group performed at chance for both types of generalization items. In Study 2, the intensity of stress elements was increased. The performance of the NL group improved whereas the hLLD groups' performance decreased on both types of generalization items. The results indicate that NL adults are able to successfully abstract the complex hierarchical rules of stress if the prosodic cues are made sufficiently salient, but this same task is difficult for adults with hLLD. Learning outcomes: The reader will be able to understand: (1) the difference in the ability of hLLD and NL adults to process stress assignment in an implicit learning context and (2) that typical adults can abstract complex hierarchical rules of stress assignment when provided with strong cues. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
• Greenslade, K. J., Plante, E., & Vance, R. (2009). The diagnostic accuracy and construct validity of the structured photographic expressive language test-preschool: Second edition. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 40(2), 150-160.
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  PMID: 18840676;PMCID: PMC2720527;Abstract: Purpose: In order to support evidence-based practice, this study served to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy, convergent validity, and divergent validity of the Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test-Preschool: Second Edition (SPELT-P2; J. Dawson, J. A. Eyer, J. Fonkalsrud, 2005) in order to determine whether it can be used as a valid measure for identifying language impairment in preschoolers. Method: The SPELT-P2 was administered to 54 children with typically developing language and 42 children with specific language impairment. Results: A discriminant analysis revealed good sensitivity (90.6%), good specificity (100%), and good positive and negative likelihood ratios, with a standard score cutoff point of 87 used to determine group membership. Analyses of convergent and divergent validity also supported use of the SPELT-P2 for identifying language impairment in preschoolers. Implications: The empirical evidence supports use of the SPELT-P2 as a valid measure for correctly identifying the presence or absence of language impairment in 4- and 5-year-old preschool children. © American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Hotz, G. A., Helm-Estabrooks, N., Nelson, N. W., & Plante, E. (2009). The pediatric test of brain injury: Development and interpretation. Topics in Language Disorders, 29(3), 207-223.
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  Abstract: The Pediatric Test of Brain Injury (PTBI) is designed to assess neurocognitive, language, and literacy abilities that are relevant to the school curriculum of children and adolescents recovering from brain injury. The PTBI is intended to help clinicians establish baseline levels of cognitive-linguistic abilities in the acute stages of recovery, identify strengths and weaknesses for informing intervention, monitor functional changes and track recovery patterns, and guide decision making related to school reintegration and educational performance. This article describes the research version of the PTBI with regard to theoretical concerns guiding its development, selection of neurocognitive and language abilities that are relevant to the school curriculum and likely to be affected by brain injury, the rationale for tracking early recovery, and research being conducted on the PTBI to establish criterion-referenced benchmarks for children and adolescents from age 6 through 16 years. Two case examples illustrate qualitative interpretations of results on each of the PTBI subtests, which are discussed with regard to implications for further curriculum-based language assessment and successful reintegration into school. © 2009 Wolters Kluwer Health | Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
• Specht, K., Hugdahl, K., Ofte, S., NygÅrd, M., BjØrnerud, A., Plante, E., & Helland, T. (2009). Brain activation on pre-reading tasks reveals at-risk status for dyslexia in 6-year-old children: Health and Disability. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 50(1), 79-91.
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  PMID: 18826418;Abstract: In this fMRI-study, 6-year-old children considered at risk for dyslexia were compared with an age-/gender-matched control group for differences in brain activation when presented with visual stimuli differing in demands for literacy processing. Stimuli were nameable pictures, brand logos familiar to children, and written words - these were either regularly spelled using early-acquired rules ("alphabetic") or more complex ("orthographic"). Brain responses distinguished between the presentation conditions, as a function of group, within many cortical areas. Activation in the alphabetic and orthographic conditions in the left angular gyrus correlated with individual at-risk index scores, and activation in inferior occipito-temporal regions further indicated differential activation for the two groups related to orthographic processing, especially. Since similar patterns are reported in adult dyslexics when processing written words, it appears that sensitivity to the cortical differentiation of reading networks is established prior to formal literacy training. © 2008 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.
• Vannest, J. J., Karunanayaka, P. R., Altaye, M., Schmithorst, V. J., Plante, E. M., Eaton, K. J., Rasmussen, J. M., & Holland, S. K. (2009). Comparison of fMRI data from passive listening and active-response story processing tasks in children. Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, 29(4), 971-976.
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  PMID: 19306445;PMCID: PMC2763568;Abstract: Purpose: To use functional MRI (fMRI) methods to visualize a network of auditory and language-processing brain regions associated with processing an aurally-presented story. We compare a passive listening (PL) story paradigm to an active-response (AR) version including online performance monitoring and a sparse acquisition technique. Materials and Methods: Twenty children (ages 11-13 years) completed PL and AR story processing tasks. The PL version presented alternating 30-second blocks of stories and tones; the AR version presented story segments, comprehension questions, and 5-second tone sequences, with fMRI acquisitions between stimuli. fMRI data was analyzed using a general linear model approach and paired t-test identifying significant group activation. Results: Both tasks showed activation in the primary auditory cortex, superior temporal gyrus bilaterally, and left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). The AR task demonstrated more extensive activation, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior/posterior cingulate cortex. Comparison of effect size in each paradigm showed a larger effect for the AR paradigm in a left inferior frontal region-of-interest (ROI). Conclusion: Activation patterns for story processing in children are similar in PL and AR tasks. Increases in extent and magnitude of activation in the AR task are likely associated with memory and attention resources engaged across acquisition intervals. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
• Yuan, W., Altaye, M., Ret, J., Schmithorst, V., Byars, A. W., Plante, E., & Holland, S. K. (2009). Quantification of head motion in children during various fMRI language tasks. Human Brain Mapping, 30(5), 1481-1489.
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  PMID: 18636549;PMCID: PMC2763570;Abstract: Abstract: Purpose: Head motion during functional MRI scanning can lead to signal artifact, a problem often more severe with children. However, the documentation for the characteristics of head motion in children during various language functional tasks is very limited in the current literature. This report characterizes head motion in children during fMRI as a function of age, sex, and task. Methods: Head motion during four different fMRI language tasks was investigated in a group of 323 healthy children between the age of 5 and 18 years. A repeated measures ANOVA analysis was used to study the impact of age, sex, task, and the interaction of these factors on the motion. Results: Pediatric subjects demonstrated significantly different amounts of head motion during fMRI when different language tasks were used. Word-Picture Matching, the only task that involved visual engagement, suffered the least amount of motion, which was significantly less than in any of the other three tasks; the latter were not significantly different from each other. Further examination revealed that the main effect of language task on motion was significantly affected by age, sex, and their interaction. Conclusion: Our results suggest that age, sex, and task are all associated with the degree of head motion in children during fMRI experiments. Investigators working with pediatric patients may increase their success by using task components associated with less motion (e.g., visual stimuli), or by using this large scale dataset to estimate the effects of sex and age on motion for planning purposes. Hum Brain Mapp 30:1481-1489, 2009. VVC 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
• Christensen, T. A., Antonucci, S. M., Lockwood, J. L., Kittleson, M., & Plante, E. (2008). Cortical and subcortical contributions to the attentive processing of speech. NeuroReport, 19(11), 1101-1105.
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  PMID: 18596608;PMCID: PMC3086600;Abstract: The neuroanatomical correlates of attentive listening were investigated with functional magnetic resonance imaging and an attention task in which listeners responded only to words that combined two specific attributes of voice and semantic content. This task was performed under two different attentive listening conditions: (i) diotically, with words presented sequentially, and (ii) dichotically, with male and female voices presented simultaneously but segregated to different ears. For both conditions, functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed bihemispheric but right-lateralized activity patterns in mid-prefrontal, anterior cingulate, and inferior parietal areas, as well as significant anterior insular and subcortical activation. Manipulating attentional demands under different listening conditions revealed an important role for right anterior insula, striatum, and thalamus in the regulation of attentive listening to spoken language. © Wolters Kluwer Health | LippincottWilliams & Wilkins.
• Isaki, E., Spaulding, T. J., & Plante, E. (2008). Contributions of language and memory demands to verbal memory performance in language-learning disabilities. Journal of Communication Disorders, 41(6), 512-530.
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  PMID: 18482731;Abstract: The purpose of this study is to investigate the performance of adults with language-based learning disorders (L/LD) and normal language controls on verbal short-term and verbal working memory tasks. Eighteen adults with L/LD and 18 normal language controls were compared on verbal short-term memory and verbal working memory tasks under low, moderate, and high linguistic processing loads. Results indicate no significant group differences on all verbal short-term memory tasks and verbal working memory tasks with low and moderate language loads. Statistically significant group differences were found on the most taxing condition, the verbal working memory task involving high language processing load. The L/LD group performed significantly worse than the control group on both the processing and storage components of this task. These results support the limited capacity hypothesis for adults with L/LD. Rather than presenting with a uniform impairment in verbal memory, they exhibit verbal memory deficits only when their capacity limitations are exceeded under relatively high combined memory and language processing demands. Educational Objectives: The reader will (1) understand the relationship between increased linguistic demands and working memory, and (2) learn about working memory skills in adults with language learning disorders. © 2008 Elsevier Inc.
• Plante, E., Christensen, T. A., Antonucci, S. M., Lockwood, J. L., Kittleson, M., & Plante, E. M. (2008). Cortical and subcortical contributions to the attentive processing of speech. Neuroreport, 19(11).
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  The neuroanatomical correlates of attentive listening were investigated with functional magnetic resonance imaging and an attention task in which listeners responded only to words that combined two specific attributes of voice and semantic content. This task was performed under two different attentive listening conditions: (i) diotically, with words presented sequentially, and (ii) dichotically, with male and female voices presented simultaneously but segregated to different ears. For both conditions, functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed bihemispheric but right-lateralized activity patterns in mid-prefrontal, anterior cingulate, and inferior parietal areas, as well as significant anterior insular and subcortical activation. Manipulating attentional demands under different listening conditions revealed an important role for right anterior insula, striatum, and thalamus in the regulation of attentive listening to spoken language.
• Spaulding, T. J., Plante, E., & Vance, R. (2008). Sustained selective attention skills of preschool children with specific language impairment: Evidence for separate attentional capacities. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 51(1), 16-34.
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  PMID: 18230853;Abstract: Purpose: The present study was designed to investigate the performance of preschool children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their typically developing (TD) peers on sustained selective attention tasks. Method: This study included 23 children diagnosed with SLI and 23 TD children matched for age, gender, and maternal education level. The children's sustained selective attention skills were assessed with different types of stimuli (visual, nonverbal-auditory, linguistic) under 2 attentional load conditions (high, low) using computerized tasks. A mixed design was used to compare children across groups and performance across tasks. Results: The SLI participants exhibited poorer performance than their peers on the sustained selective attention tasks presented in the auditory modality (linguistic and nonverbal-auditory) under the high attentional load conditions. Performance was comparable with their peers under the low attentional load conditions. The SLI group exhibited similar performance to their peers on the visual tasks regardless of attentional load. Conclusion: These results support the notion of attention difficulties in preschool children with SLI and suggest separate attentional capacities for different stimulus modalities. © American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Fisher, J., Plante, E., Vance, R., Gerken, L., & Glattke, T. J. (2007). Do children and adults with language impairment recognize prosodic cues?. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50(3), 746-758.
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  PMID: 17538113;Abstract: Purpose: Prosodic cues are used to clarify sentence structure and meaning. Two studies, one of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and one of adults with a history of learning disabilities, were designed to determine whether individuals with poor language skills recognize prosodic cues on par with their normal-language peers. Method: Participants were asked to determine whether low-pass filtered sentences matched unfiltered target sentences. Filtered sentences either matched the target sentence exactly or differed on between 1 and 3 parameters that affected the prosodic profile of the sentences. Results: Children with SLI were significantly poorer than their normal peers in determining whether low-pass filtered sentences matched or were different from unfiltered target sentences. The children's performance, measured in terms of response accuracy, deteriorated as the similarities between filtered and unfiltered sentences increased. Adults revealed a pattern of differential reaction time to sentence pairs that reflected their relative degree of similarity. There was no difference in performance accuracy for adults with a history of language/learning disabilities compared with their peers. Conclusion: Given that prosodic cues are known to assist language processing, the weak prosodic skills of preschool children with SLI may limit the amount of benefit that these children derive from the presence of prosodic cues in spoken language. That the adult sample did not show a similar weakness in this skill may reflect developmental differences, sampling differences, or a combination of both. © American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Holland, S. K., Vannest, J., Mecoli, M., Jacola, L. M., Tillema, J., Karunanayaka, P. R., Schmithorst, V. J., Yuan, W., Plante, E., & Byars, A. W. (2007). Functional MRI of language lateralization during development in children. International Journal of Audiology, 46(9), 533-551.
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  PMID: 17828669;PMCID: PMC2763431;Abstract: Changes in the distribution of language function in the brain have been documented from infancy through adulthood. Even macroscopic measures of language lateralization reflect a dynamic process of language development. In this review, we summarize a series of functional MRI studies of language skills in children ages of five to 18 years, both typically-developing children and children with brain injuries or neurological disorders that occur at different developmental stages with different degrees of severity. These studies used a battery of fMRI-compatible language tasks designed to tap sentential and lexical language skills that develop early and later in childhood. In typically-developing children, lateralization changes with age are associated with language skills that have a protracted period of development, reflecting the developmental process of skill acquisition rather than general maturation of the brain. Normative data, across the developmental period, acts as a reference for disentangling developmental patterns in brain activation from changes due to developmental or acquired abnormalities. This review emphasizes the importance of considering age and child development in neuroimaging studies of language. © 2007 British Society of Audiology, International Society of Audiology, and Nordic Audiological Society.
• Karunanayaka, P. R., Holland, S. K., Schmithorst, V. J., Solodkin, A., Chen, E. E., Szaflarski, J. P., & Plante, E. (2007). Age-related connectivity changes in fMRI data from children listening to stories. NeuroImage, 34(1), 349-360.
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  PMID: 17064940;Abstract: The way humans comprehend narrative speech plays an important part in human development and experience. A group of 313 children with ages 5-18 were subjected to a large-scale functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study in order to investigate the neural correlates of auditory narrative comprehension. The results were analyzed to investigate the age-related brain activity changes involved in the narrative language comprehension circuitry. We found age-related differences in brain activity which may either reflect changes in local neuroplasticity (of the regions involved) in the developing brain or a more global transformation of brain activity related to neuroplasticity. To investigate this issue, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was applied to the results obtained from a group independent component analysis (Schmithorst, V.J., Holland, S.K., et al., 2005. Cognitive modules utilized for narrative comprehension in children: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study. NeuroImage) and the age-related differences were examined in terms of changes in path coefficients between brain regions. The group Independent Component Analysis (ICA) had identified five bilateral task-related components comprising the primary auditory cortex, the mid-superior temporal gyrus, the most posterior aspect of the superior temporal gyrus, the hippocampus, the angular gyrus and the medial aspect of the parietal lobule (precuneus/posterior cingulate). Furthermore, a left-lateralized network (sixth component) was also identified comprising the inferior frontal gyrus (including Broca's area), the inferior parietal lobule, and the medial temporal gyrus. The components (brain regions) for the SEM were identified based on the ICA maps and the results are discussed in light of recent neuroimaging studies corroborating the functional segregation of Broca's and Wernicke's areas and the important role played by the right hemisphere in narrative comprehension. The classical Wernicke-Geschwind (WG) model for speech processing is expanded to a two-route model involving a direct route between Broca's and Wernicke's area and an indirect route involving the parietal lobe. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
• Norrix, L. W., Plante, E., Vance, R., & Boliek, C. A. (2007). Auditory-visual integration for speech by children with and without specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50(6), 1639-1651.
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  PMID: 18055778;Abstract: Purpose: It has long been known that children with specific language impairment (SLI) can demonstrate difficulty with auditory speech perception. However, speech perception can also involve the integration of both auditory and visual articulatory information. Method: Fifty-six preschool children, half with and half without SLI, were studied in order to examine auditory-visual integration. Children watched and listened to video clips of a woman speaking [bi] and [gi]. They also listened to audio clips of [bi], [di], and [gi], produced by the same woman. The effect of visual input on speech perception was tested by presenting an auditory [bi] combined with a visually articulated [gi], which tends to alter the phoneme percept (the McGurk effect). Results: Both groups of children performed at ceiling when asked to identify speech tokens in auditory-only and congruent auditory-visual modalities. In the incongruent auditory-visual condition, a stronger McGurk effect was found for the normal language group compared with the children with SLI. Conclusion: Responses by the children with SLI indicated less impact of visual processing on speech perception than was seen with their normal peers. These results demonstrate that the difficulties with speech perception by SLI children extend beyond the auditory-only modality to include auditory-visual processing as well. © American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Plante, E. (2007). Promoting international student research. ASHA Leader, 12(16), 15-16+17.
• Schmithorst, V. J., Holland, S. K., & Plante, E. (2007). Development of effective connectivity for narrative comprehension in children. NeuroReport, 18(14), 1411-1415.
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  PMID: 17712265;PMCID: PMC2762809;Abstract: A large-scale study of narrative comprehension using functional MRI was performed involving children of ages 5-18 years old using a recently published method, multivariate autoregressive modeling, modified for multisubject analyses to investigate effective connectivity and its development with age. Feedback networks were found during a narrative processing task and involved effective connectivity from Broca's area and the medial aspect of the superior frontal gyrus to the posterior aspects of the superior temporal gyrus bilaterally. The effective connectivity from Broca's area to the superior temporal gyrus in the left hemisphere was shown to increase with age. The results demonstrate the feasibility of performing multisubject multivariate autoregressive modeling analyses to investigate effective connectivity in the absence of an a priori model. © 2007 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc.
• Schmithorst, V. J., Holland, S. K., & Plante, E. (2007). Object identification and lexical/semantic access in children: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study of word-picture matching. Human Brain Mapping, 28(10), 1060-1074.
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  PMID: 17133401;PMCID: PMC2763496;Abstract: Theoretical models for lexical access to visual objects have been based mainly on adult data. To investigate the developmental aspects of object recognition and lexical access in children, a large-scale functional MRI (fMRI) study was performed in 283 normal children ages 5-18 using a word-picture matching paradigm in which children would match an aurally presented noun to one of two pictures (line drawings). Using group Independent Component Analysis (ICA), six task-related components were detected, including (a) the posterior superior temporal gyrus bilaterally; (b) the fusiform, inferior temporal, and middle occipital gyri bilaterally; (c) the dorsal aspect of the inferior frontal gyrus bilaterally, the left precuneus, the left superior/middle temporal gyrus, and the anterior cingulate; (d) the right medial fusiform gyrus; (e) a left-lateralized component including the inferior/middle frontal, middle temporal, medial frontal, and angular gyri, as well as the thalamus and the posterior cingulate; and (f) the ventral/anterior aspect of the inferior frontal gyrus bilaterally. Increased activation associated with age was seen in the components (b) and (d) (ventral visual pathway) for object recognition, and (c) and (f) likely associated with semantic maintenance and response selection. Increased activation associated with task performance was seen in components (b) and (d) (ventral visual pathway) while decreased activation associated with task performance was seen in component (f) (ventral/anterior inferior frontal gyrus). The results corroborate the continued development of the ventral visual pathway throughout the developmental period. © 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
• Alt, M., & Plante, E. (2006). Factors that influence lexical and semantic fast mapping of young children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49(5), 941-954.
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  PMID: 17077207;Abstract: Purpose: This purpose of this study was to investigate the lexical and semantic fast mapping ability of young children with specific language impairment (SLI) and normal language (NL), with a specific emphasis on the influence of phonological factors. Method: The study included 46 children (mean age 58 months), half with SLI and half with NL. Children were asked to fast map visual information only, visual-plusnonlinguistic- auditory information, and visual-plus-linguistic-auditory information. A mixed design was used to compare children across and within groups. Results: Children with SLI performed worse than children with NL overall. The SLI group showed specific deficits in semantic fastmapping when they sawvisual information only. This condition may have disrupted encoding because it varied from the expected auditory and visual pattern. The children with SLI also performed poorly when they were asked to map phonotactically infrequent linguistic information and when the difficulty of the task increased. A nonword repetition task was correlated with both semantic and lexical fast mapping. Conclusions: The findings are discussed in the light of their support for a limited capacity model of processing, as well as the impact of phonology on word learning. © American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Grunow, H., Spaulding, T. J., Gómez, R. L., & Plante, E. (2006). The effects of variation on learning word order rules by adults with and without language-based learning disabilities. Journal of Communication Disorders, 39(2), 158-170.
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  PMID: 16376369;Abstract: Non-adjacent dependencies characterize numerous features of English syntax, including certain verb tense structures and subject-verb agreement. This study utilized an artificial language paradigm to examine the contribution of item variability to the learning of these types of dependencies. Adult subjects with and without language-based learning disabilities listened to strings of three non-words for which the first and third elements had a dependent relationship. In the low variability condition, 12 non-words occurred in the middle position, and in the high variability condition, 24 non-words occurred in this position. Non-disabled adults were able to learn the non-adjacent contingencies and generalize the underlying structure to new strings, but only when variability was high. Adults with language-based learning disabilities did not perform above chance levels under either variability condition. Thus, this group showed poor sensitivity to statistical information in speech input that both infants and non-disabled adults are known to track. Learning outcomes: As a result of this activity, the reader will: (1) understand the advantages of using an artificial language to investigate language learning; (2) become familiar with a paradigm for studying the rapid learning of syntactic contingencies; (3) comprehend how the ability to map language structure differs for non-disabled adults and adults with a history of language/learning disability as a function of variability in the input the listener receives. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
• Jacola, L. M., Schapiro, M. B., Schmithorst, V. J., Byars, A. W., Strawsburg, R. H., Szaflarski, J. P., Plante, E., & Holland, S. K. (2006). Functional magnetic resonance imaging reveals atypical language organization in children following perinatal left middle cerebral artery stroke. Neuropediatrics, 37(1), 46-52.
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  PMID: 16541368;PMCID: PMC1859843;Abstract: We used verb generation and story listening tasks during fMRI to study language organization in children (7, 9 and 12 years old) with perinatal left MCA infarctions. Healthy, age-matched comparison children (n = 39) showed activation in left Broca's area during the verb generation task; in contrast, stroke subjects showed activation either bilaterally or in the right hemisphere homologue during both tasks. In Wernicke's area, comparison subjects showed left lateralization (verb generation) and bilateral activation (L > R) (story listening). Stroke subjects instead showed bilateral or right lateralization (verb generation) and bilateral activation (R > L) (story listening). Language is distributed atypically in children with perinatal left hemisphere stroke. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart.
• Norrix, L. W., Plante, E., & Vance, R. (2006). Auditory-visual speech integration by adults with and without language-learning disabilities. Journal of Communication Disorders, 39(1), 22-36.
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  PMID: 15950983;Abstract: Auditory and auditory-visual (AV) speech perception skills were examined in adults with and without language-learning disabilities (LLD). The AV stimuli consisted of congruent consonant-vowel syllables (auditory and visual syllables matched in terms of syllable being produced) and incongruent McGurk syllables (auditory syllable differed from visual syllable). Although the identification of the auditory and congruent AV syllables was comparable for the two groups, the reaction times to identify all syllables were longer in the LLD compared to the control group. This finding is consistent with previous research demonstrating slower processing in learning disabled individuals. Adults with LLD also provided significantly fewer integration-type or McGurk responses compared with their normal peers when presented with speech tokens representing a mismatch between the auditory and visual signal. These results suggest the poor integration for auditory-visual speech previously documented in children with poor language skills also occurs in adults with LLD. The reader will be able to (1) describe the McGurk effect; (2) describe group differences (language learning disabled and control adults) in auditory and auditory-visual speech perception of consonant-vowel syllables. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
• Peña, E. D., Spaulding, T. J., & Plante, E. (2006). The composition of normative groups and diagnostic decision making: Shooting ourselves in the foot. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 15(3), 247-254.
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  PMID: 16896174;Abstract: Purpose: The normative group of a norm-referenced test is intended to provide a basis for interpreting test scores. However, the composition of the normative group may facilitate or impede different types of diagnostic interpretations. This article considers who should be included in a normative sample and how this decision must be made relative to the purpose for which a test is intended. Method: The way in which the composition of the normative sample affects classification accuracy is demonstrated through a test review followed by a simulation study. The test review examined the descriptions of the normative group in a sample of 32 child language tests. The mean performance reported in the test manual for the sample of language impaired children was compared with the sample's norms, which either included or excluded children with language impairment. For the simulation, 2 contrasting normative procedures were modeled. The first procedure included a mixed group of representative cases (language impaired and normal cases). The second procedure excluded the language impaired cases from the norm. Results: Both the data obtained from test manuals and the data simulation based on population characteristics supported our claim that use of mixed normative groups decreases the ability to accurately identify language impairment. Tests that used mixed norms had smaller differences between the normative and language impaired groups in comparison with tests that excluded children with impairment within the normative sample. The simulation demonstrated mixed norms that lowered the group mean and increased the standard deviation, resulting in decreased classification accuracy. Conclusions: When the purpose of testing is to identify children with impaired language skills, including children with language impairment in the normative sample can reduce identification accuracy. © American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Plante, E., Alt, M., & Plante, E. M. (2006). Factors that influence lexical and semantic fast mapping of young children with specific language impairment. Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 49(5).
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  This purpose of this study was to investigate the lexical and semantic fast mapping ability of young children with specific language impairment (SLI) and normal language (NL), with a specific emphasis on the influence of phonological factors.
• Plante, E., Holland, S. K., & Schmithorst, V. J. (2006). Prosodic processing by children: An fMRI study. Brain and Language, 97(3), 332-342.
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  PMID: 16460792;PMCID: PMC1463022;Abstract: Prosodic information in the speech signal carries information about linguistic structure as well as emotional content. Although children are known to use prosodic information from infancy onward to assist linguistic decoding, the brain correlates of this skill in childhood have not yet been the subject of study. Brain activation associated with processing of linguistic prosody was examined in a study of 284 normally developing children between the ages of 5 and 18 years. Children listened to low-pass filtered sentences and were asked to detect those that matched a target sentence. fMRI scanning revealed multiple regions of activation that predicted behavioral performance, independent of age-related changes in activation. Likewise, age-related changes in task activation were found that were independent of differences in task accuracy. The overall pattern of activation is interpreted in light of task demands and factors that may underlie age-related changes in task performance. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
• Plante, E., Schmithorst, V. J., Holland, S. K., & Byars, A. W. (2006). Sex differences in the activation of language cortex during childhood. Neuropsychologia, 44(7), 1210-1221.
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  PMID: 16303148;Abstract: Sex differences have been well documented in the behavioral literature but have occurred inconsistently in the neuroimaging literature. This investigation examined the impact of subject age, language task, and cortical region on the occurrence of sex differences in functional magnetic resonance imaging. Two hundred and five (104 m, 101 f) right handed, monolingual English speaking children between the ages of 5 and 18 years were enrolled in this study. The study used fMRI at 3 T to evaluate BOLD signal variation associated with sex, age, and their interaction. Children completed up to four language tasks, which involved listening to stories, prosody processing, single word vocabulary identification, and verb generation. A sex difference for behavioral performance was found for the prosodic processing task only. Brain activation in the classical left hemisphere language areas of the brain and their right homologues were assessed for sex differences. Although left lateralization was present for both frontal and temporal regions for all but the prosody task, no significant sex differences were found for the degree of lateralization. Sex × age interaction effects were found for all but the task involving single word vocabulary. However effect sizes associated with the sex differences were small, which suggests that relatively large sample sizes would be needed to detect these effects reliably. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
• Richardson, J., Harris, L., Plante, E., & GerKen, L. (2006). Subcategory learning in normal and language learning-disabled adults: How much information do they need?. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49(6), 1257-1266.
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  PMID: 17197494;Abstract: Purpose: The purpose of this experiment was to determine if nonreferential morphophonological information was sufficient to facilitate the learning of gender subcategories (i.e., masculine vs. feminine) in individuals with normal language (NL) and those with a history of language-based learning disabilities (HLD). Method: Thirty-two adults listened for 18 min to a familiarization set of Russian words that included either 1 (single-marked) or 2 (double-marked) morphophonological markers indicating gender. Participants were then tested on their knowledge of both trained and untrained members of each gender subcategory. Results: Testing indicated that morphophonological information is sufficient for lexical subcategory learning in both NL and HLD groups, although the HLD group had lower overall accuracy. The HLD group benefited from double-marking relative to single-marking for subcategory learning. Conclusion: The results demonstrated that learning through implicit mechanisms occurred after a relatively brief xposure to the language stimuli. In addition, the weaker overall learning by the HLD group was facilitated when multiple cues to linguistic subcategory were available in the input group members received. © American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Schmithorst, V. J., Holland, S. K., & Plante, E. (2006). Cognitive modules utilized for narrative comprehension in children: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study. NeuroImage, 29(1), 254-266.
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  PMID: 16109491;PMCID: PMC1357541;Abstract: The ability to comprehend narratives constitutes an important component of human development and experience. The neural correlates of auditory narrative comprehension in children were investigated in a large-scale functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study involving 313 subjects ages 5-18. Using group independent component analysis (ICA), bilateral task-related components were found comprising the primary auditory cortex, the mid-superior temporal gyrus, the hippocampus, the angular gyrus, and medial aspect of the parietal lobule (precuneus/posterior cingulate). In addition, a right-lateralized component was found involving the most posterior aspect of the superior temporal gyrus, and a left-lateralized component was found comprising the inferior frontal gyrus (including Broca's area), the inferior parietal lobule, and the medial temporal gyrus. Using a novel data-driven analysis technique, increased task-related activity related to age was found in the components comprising the mid-superior temporal gyrus (Wernicke's area) and the posterior aspect of the superior temporal gyrus, while decreased activity related to age was found in the component comprising the angular gyrus. The results are discussed in light of recent hypotheses involving the functional segregation of Wernicke's area and the specific role of the mid-superior temporal gyrus in speech comprehension. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
• Spaulding, T. J., Plante, E., & Farinella, K. A. (2006). Eligibility criteria for language impairment: Is the low end of normal always appropriate?. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 37(1), 61-72.
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  PMID: 16615750;Abstract: Purpose: The assumption that children with language impairment will receive low scores on standardized tests, and therefore that low scores will accurately identify these children, is examined through a review of data in the manuals of tests that are intended for use in identifying such children. Method: Data from 43 commercially available tests of child language were compiled to identify whether evidence exists to support their use in identifying language impairment in children. Results: A review of data concerning the performance of children with impaired language failed to support the assumption that these children will routinely score at the low end of a test's normative distribution. A majority of tests reported that such children scored above 1.5 SD below the mean, and scores were within 1 SD of the mean for more than a quarter (27%) of the tests. The primary evidence needed to support the purpose of identification, test sensitivity and specificity, was available for 9 of the 43 tests, and acceptable accuracy (80% or better) was reported for 5 of these tests. Implications: Specific data supporting the application of "low score" criteria for the identification of language impairment is not supported by the majority of current commercially available tests. However, alternate sources of data (sensitivity and specificity rates) that support accurate identification are available for a subset of the available tests. © American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Szaflarski, J. P., Schmithorst, V. J., Altaye, M., Byars, A. W., Ret, J., Plante, E., & Holland, S. K. (2006). A longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging study of language development in children 5 to 11 years old. Annals of Neurology, 59(5), 796-807.
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  PMID: 16498622;PMCID: PMC2265796;Abstract: Objective: Language skills continue to develop rapidly in children during the school-age years, and the "snapshot" view of the neural substrates of language provided by current neuroimaging studies cannot capture the dynamic changes associated with brain development. The aim of this study was to conduct a 5-year longitudinal investigation of language development using functional magnetic resonance imaging in healthy children. Methods: Thirty subjects enrolled at ages 5, 6, or 7 were examined annually for 5 years using a 3-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging scanner and a verb generation task. Data analysis was conducted based on a general linear model that was modified to investigate developmental changes whereas minimizing the potential for missing data. Results: With increasing age, there is progressive participation in language processing by the inferior/middle frontal, middle temporal, and angular gyri of the left hemisphere and the lingual and inferior temporal gyri of the right hemisphere and regression of participation of the left posterior insula/extrastriate cortex, left superior frontal and right anterior cingulate gyri, and left thalamus. Interpretation: The age-related changes observed in this study provide evidence of increased neuroplasticity of language in this age group and may have implications for further investigations of normal and aberrant language development. © 2006 American Neurological Association.
• Kraemer, R., Plante, E., & Green, G. E. (2005). Changes in speech and language development of a young child after decannulation. Journal of Communication Disorders, 38(5), 349-358.
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  PMID: 15963335;Abstract: This report reviews the speech and language development of a child who, as result of complete subglottic stenosis, was aphonic from birth until 2 years and 11 months of age at which time laryngotracheal reconstruction provided normal respiration. The boy had congenital subglottic stenosis requiring neonatal tracheostomy. The congenital subglottic stenosis progressed to complete subglottic stenosis during the neonatal period. The child's speech and language development was monitored for a 24-week period following airway reconstruction. Learning outcomes: The reader will learn about and be able to describe: (1) the speech and language development of a child who was aphonic from birth until 35 months of age, (2) the effects of surgical repair of a tracheotomy on the child's speech and language development, (3) the likely importance of babbling in speech and language development. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
• Perona, K., Plante, E., & Vance, R. (2005). Diagnostic accuracy of the structured photographic expressive language test: Third edition (SPELT-3). Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 36(2), 103-115.
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  PMID: 15981706;Abstract: Purpose: This study examined the empirical evidence for using the Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test: Third Edition (SPELT-3; Dawson, Stout, & Eyer, 2003) to diagnose language impairment in preschool children. The SPELT-3 is a revision of the SPELT-II (Werner & Kresheck, 1983), which has been proven in the past to have high levels of discriminant accuracy in identifying preschoolers with language impairment. Method: Forty-two 4- and 5-year-old children with a specific language impairment (SLI) and 43 children with typically developing (TD) language abilities were studied to determine the classification accuracy and other aspects of validity for the SPELT-3. Results: Results from both an exploratory and a confirmatory sample indicated 90% sensitivity and 100% specificity when a cutoff standard score of 95 was applied to the data. In addition, use of the SPELT-3 was supported by additional data on convergent and divergent aspects of validity. Implications: The data provide empirical support for the use of the SPELT-3 for the purpose of differentiating between children with normal language and those with impaired language. © American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Weismer, S. E., Plante, E., Jones, M., & Tomblin, J. B. (2005). A functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation of verbal working memory in adolescents with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 48(2), 405-425.
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  PMID: 15989401;Abstract: This study used neuroimaging and behavioral techniques to examine the claim that processing capacity limitations underlie specific language impairment (SLI). Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate verbal working memory in adolescents with SLI and normal language (NL) controls. The experimental task involved a modified listening span measure that included sentence encoding and recognition of final words in prior sets of sentences. The SLI group performed significantly poorer than the NL group for both encoding and recognition and displayed slower reaction times for correct responses on high complexity encoding items. fMRI results revealed that the SLI group exhibited significant hypoactivation during encoding in regions that have been implicated in attentional and memory processes, as well as hypoactivation during recognition in regions associated with language processing. Correlational analyses indicated that adolescents with SLI exhibited different patterns of coordinating activation among brain regions relative to controls for both encoding and recognition, suggesting reliance on a less functional network. These findings are interpreted as supporting the notion that constraints in nonlinguistic systems play a role in SLI. ©American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Alt, M., Plante, E., & Creusere, M. (2004). Semantic Features in Fast-Mapping: Performance of Preschoolers with Specific Language Impairment Versus Preschoolers with Normal Language. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47(2), 407-420.
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  PMID: 15157140;Abstract: This study examined the receptive language skills of young children (4-6 years old) with specific language impairment (SLI). Specifically, the authors looked at their ability to fast-map semantic features of objects and actions and compared it to the performance of age-matched peers with normally developing language (NL). Children completed a computer task during which they were exposed to novel objects and actions with novel names. The children then were asked questions about the semantic features of these novel objects and actions. Overall, the questions about actions were more difficult for children than objects. The children with SLI were able to recognize fewer semantic features than were their peers with NL. They also performed poorly relative to their peers on a lexical label recognition task. These results lend support to the idea that children with SLI have broader difficulties with receptive vocabulary than simply a reduced ability to acquire labels.
• Creusere, M., Alt, M., & Plante, E. (2004). Recognition of vocal and facial cues to affect in language-impaired and normally-developing preschoolers. Journal of Communication Disorders, 37(1), 5-20.
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  PMID: 15013376;Abstract: The current study was designed to investigate whether reported [J. Learn. Disabil. 31 (1998) 286; J. Psycholinguist. Res. 22 (1993) 445] difficulties in language-impaired children's ability to identify vocal and facial cues to emotion could be explained at least partially by nonparalinguistic factors. Children with specific language impairment (SLI) and control participants received an affect discrimination task, which consisted of the following cue situations: (1) facial expression and unfiltered speech; (2) lowpass-filtered speech only; (3) facial expression only; and (4) facial expression and filtered speech. The results of the study indicated that impaired and nonimpaired group performance differed only for the items including facial expression and nonfiltered speech. Developmental and investigative implications of this finding are addressed. Learning outcomes: As a result of this activity, the participant will be able to summarize the findings from existing research on affect comprehension in children with language impairments (LI). As a result of this activity, the participant will be able to discuss ways in which language impairment and difficulties in understanding emotion cues are associated and propose how these associations might influence social interactions. © 2003 Published by Elsevier Inc.
• Pankrats, M., Morrison, A., & Plante, E. (2004). Difference in standard scores of adults on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Revised and Third Edition). Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47(3), 714-718.
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  PMID: 15212579;Abstract: Differences in the standard scores for the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R; L. M. Dunn & L. M. Dunn, 1981) and the PPVT-Third Edition (PPVT-III; Dunn & Dunn, 1997b) are known to exist for children, with typically higher scores occurring on the PPVT-III. However, these tests are administered into adulthood as well, and score equivalence must be evaluated for this age range. Analysis of data from the PPVT-R and PPVT-III tests from 76 adult participants revealed significant score differences. Participants with poor language skills scored significantly higher on the PPVT-III than on the PPVT-R. The control group showed no significant difference between the PPVT-R and PPVT-III scores. The results suggest that the two tests should not be considered interchangeable.
• Plante, E. (2004). Evidence based practice in communication sciences and disorders. Journal of Communication Disorders, 37(5), 389-390.
• Plante, E., Pankratz, M., Morrison, A., & Plante, E. M. (2004). Difference in standard scores of adults on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Revised and Third Edition). Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 47(3).
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  Differences in the standard scores for the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R; L. M. Dunn and L. M. Dunn, 1981) and the PPVT-Third Edition (PPVT-III; Dunn and Dunn, 1997b) are known to exist for children, with typically higher scores occurring on the PPVT-III. However, these tests are administered into adulthood as well, and score equivalence must be evaluated for this age range. Analysis of data from the PPVT-R and PPVT-III tests from 76 adult participants revealed significant score differences. Participants with poor language skills scored significantly higher on the PPVT-III than on the PPVT-R. The control group showed no significant difference between the PPVT-R and PPVT-III scores. The results suggest that the two tests should not be considered interchangeable.
• Byars, A. W., Holland, S. K., Strawsburg, R. H., Bommer, W., Dunn, R. S., Schmithorst, V. J., & Plante, E. (2002). Practical aspects of conducting large-scale functional magnetic resonance imaging studies in children. Journal of Child Neurology, 17(12), 885-890.
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  PMID: 12593460;PMCID: PMC1351160;Abstract: The potential benefits of functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for the investigation of normal development have been limited by difficulties in its use with children. We describe the practical aspects, including failure rates, involved in conducting large-scale functional MRI studies with normal children. Two hundred and nine healthy children between the ages of 5 and 18 years participated in a functional MRI study of language development. Reliable activation maps were obtained across the age range. Younger children had significantly higher failure rates than older children and adolescents. It is concluded that it is feasible to conduct large-scale functional MRI studies of children as young as 5 years old. These findings can be used by other research groups to guide study design and plans for recruitment of young subjects.
• Plante, E. M. (2002). Journal of Communication Disorders: Introduction. Journal of Communication Disorders, 35(4), 309-.
• Plante, E., Creusere, M., & Sabin, C. (2002). Dissociating sentential prosody from sentence processing: Activation interacts with task demands. NeuroImage, 17(1), 401-410.
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  PMID: 12482093;Abstract: Sentence processing was contrasted with processing of syntactic prosody under two task conditions in order to examine the representation of these components of language and their interaction with working memory load. Twelve adults received fMRI scans while they listened to low-pass filtered and unfiltered sentences either passively, or during tasks that required subjects to remember and recognize information contained in the stimuli. Results indicated that temporal activation for prosodic stimuli differed compared to activation for sentence stimuli only during passive listening tasks. The inclusion of memory demands was associated with frontal activation, which was differentially lateralized for sentence and prosodic stimuli. The results demonstrate differential brain activation for prosodic vs sentential stimuli which interacts with the memory demands placed on the subjects. © 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).
• Plante, E., Gomez, R., & Gerken, L. (2002). Sensitivity to word order cues by normal and language/learning disabled adults. Journal of Communication Disorders, 35(5), 453-462.
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  PMID: 12194564;Abstract: Sixteen adults with language/learning disabilities (L/LD) and 16 adults who lacked a personal or familial history of L/LD participated in a study designed to test sensitivity to word order cues that signaled grammatical versus ungrammatical word strings belonging to an artificial grammar. In an exposure phase, participants heard word strings constructed of novel CVC words for a period of 5min. In a test phase, participants were asked to judge new sentences as either obeying or violating the rules of the grammar they heard. L/LD participants performed significantly below the comparison group on this task. The results suggest that this skill, which emerges early in life for normal children, is problematic for adults with L/LD. Learning outcomes: The reader will become familiar with a paradigm that allows assessment of rapid learning of word order rules and how this learning differs for normal and language/learning disabled adults. Copyright © 2002 Elsevier Science Inc.
• Holland, S. K., Plante, E., Byars, A. W., Strawsburg, R. H., Schmithorst, V. J., & Ball Jr., W. S. (2001). Normal fMRI brain activation patterns in children performing a verb generation task. NeuroImage, 14(4), 837-843.
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  PMID: 11554802;Abstract: Although much is known concerning brain-language relations in adults, little is known about how these functions might be represented during the developmental period. We report results from 17 normal children, ages 7-18 years, who have successfully completed a word fluency paradigm during functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3 Tesla. Regions of activation replicate those reported for adult subjects. However, a statistically significant association between hemispheric lateralization of activation and age was found in the children. Specifically, although most subjects at all ages showed left hemisphere dominance for this task, the degree of lateralization increased with age. This study demonstrates that fMRI can reveal developmental shifts in the pattern of brain activation associated with semantic language function. © 2001 Academic Press.
• Plante, E. (2001). Neuroimaging in communication sciences and disorders: An introduction. Journal of Communication Disorders, 34(6), 441-443.
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  PMID: 11725856;
• Plante, E., Boliek, C., Mahendra, N., Story, J., & Glaspey, K. (2001). Right hemisphere contribution to developmental language disorder - Neuroanatomical and behavioral evidence. Journal of Communication Disorders, 34(5), 415-436.
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  PMID: 11565962;Abstract: Developmental language disorder (DLD) is identified by virtue of the verbal deficits that define it. However, numerous studies have also documented nonverbal deficits in this population. This study attempts to explain the co-occurrence of both verbal and nonverbal deficits in this population from a brain-based perspective. Two samples of adults selected for DLD were compared with subjects without such a history on verbal and nonverbal skills in exploratory and confirmatory studies. Subjects also received MRI scans, which were used to determine the relation between left- and right-hemisphere regions hypothesized to relate to the behavioral skills tested. Results revealed replicable differences between groups on both verbal and nonverbal tasks. In addition, a significant association between performance on tests sensitive to facial affect and spatial rotation with the gray matter volume within the right supramarginal gyrus was found in both samples. These results support the hypothesis of a right hemisphere contribution to the profile of DLD. Learning outcomes: As a result of this activity, the participant will be able to describe evidence in support of a role for the right hemisphere in DLD. © 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
• Plante, E. (2000). Plasticity in learning and recovery: An introduction. Journal of Communication Disorders, 33(4), 271-272.
• Plante, E., Petten, C. V., & Senkfor, A. J. (2000). Electrophysiological dissociation between verbal and nonverbal semantic processing in learning disabled adults. Neuropsychologia, 38(13), 1669-1684.
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  PMID: 11099725;Abstract: Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded as 16 adults with learning disabilities (LD) and 16 controls were presented with two sets of stimuli. The first set comprised pairs of line drawings and environmental sounds (nonverbal condition); the second consisted of printed and spoken words (verbal condition). In the controls, semantically related items elicited smaller N400s than unrelated items in both conditions, with opposing hemispheric asymmetries for spoken words and environmental sounds. The LD group did not show a significant difference between related and unrelated words, despite a robust context effect for nonspeech sounds. The results suggest anomalous processing limited to the verbal domain in a simple semantic association task in the LD group. Semantic deficits in this group may reflect a relatively specific deficit in forming verbal associations rather than a more general difficulty that spans both verbal and nonverbal domains. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd.
• Gray, S., Plante, E., Vance, R., & Henrichsen, M. (1999). The diagnostic accuracy of four vocabulary tests administered to preschool-age children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 30(2), 196-206.
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  Abstract: This study examined the empirical evidence for using four vocabulary tests (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III [Dunn & Dunn, 1997], Receptive One-Word Vocabulary Test [Gardner, 1985], Expressive Vocabulary Test [Williams, 1997], Expressive One-Word Vocabulary Test-Revised [Gardner, 1990]) to screen or identify specific language impairment (SLI) in preschool-age children. Tests were administered to 31 4- and 5-year-old children with SLI and 31 age-matched controls with normal language (NL). All children spoke General American English. Despite moderate to strong inter-test correlations, no test was a strong identifier of SLI. The group with SLI scored lower than the NL group on each test; however, the individual scores of children with SLI typically fell within the normal range. Vocabulary tests are frequently administered to determine whether a child's language skills require further evaluation (screening), as a method of identifying SLI in children, or simply to describe aspects of language functioning. These purposes for administering a vocabulary test require various forms of empirical evidence in support of their use. Our data support construct validity for the four vocabulary tests examined, but do not support their use for identification purposes. Clinicians must apply a degree of sophistication in evaluating the evidence presented for the validity relative to the purposes for which the test will be administered. Unfortunately, although many test manuals offer inter-test correlations or statiscally significant group differences as evidence of construct validity, they often omit data that would support common clinical uses, such as screening or identification.
• Petten, C. V., Coulson, S., Rubin, S., Plante, E., & Parks, M. (1999). Time Course of Word Identification and Semantic Integration in Spoken Language. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, 25(2), 394-417.
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  PMID: 10093207;Abstract: The minimum duration signal necessary to identify a set of spoken words was established by the gating technique; most words could be identified before their acoustic offset. Gated words were used as congruous and incongruous sentence completions, and isolation points established in the gating experiment were compared with the time course of semantic integration evident in event-related brain potentials. Differential N400 responses to contextually appropriate and inappropriate words were observed about 200 ms before the isolation point. Semantic processing was evident before the acoustic signal was sufficient to identify the words uniquely. Results indicate that semantic integration can begin to operate with only partial, incomplete information about word identity. Influences of semantic constraint, word frequency, and rate of presentation are described.
• Plante, E. (1999). Infant-toddler development: An introduction. Journal of Communication Disorders, 32(4), 191-193.
• Clark, M. M., & Plante, E. (1998). Morphology of the inferior frontal gyrus in developmentally language- disordered adults. Brain and Language, 61(2), 288-303.
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  PMID: 9468774;Abstract: The inferior frontal gyrus has traditionally been considered an important conical region for language and may be important for understanding developmental language disorders. The morphology of the inferior frontal gyrus, as it appeared on T1-weighted sagittal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, was evaluated using a classification system that distinguished between seven basic morphological variants of the gyral and sulcal patterns in this region. This classification scheme was applied to the MRI scans of 41 neurologically normal adult subjects. To examine the relation between sulcal morphology and subject status, these subjects were sorted first by family history for developmental language disorders and then resorted by expression of behavioral signs consistent with a diagnosis of this disorder as determined by standardized testing. Morphological types that included an extra sulcus in the inferior frontal gyrus were statistically associated with the behaviorally based classification of subjects, but not with a positive family history for developmental language disorders. Because gyral patterns are prenatally determined, this finding is consistent with the theory that altered prenatal development contributes to the expression of a developmental language disorder.
• Plante, E. (1998). Criteria for SLI: The Stark and Tallal legacy and beyond. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 41(4), 951-957.
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  PMID: 9712140;Abstract: Since it first appeared, the Stark and Tallal (1981) criteria for the selection of children with specific language impairment (SLI) has had a profound influence on research with this population. A review of the recent literature indicates that these criteria continue to be used, in part or in whole, in current research. However, the recent literature also provides illustrations of the use and interpretations of norm-referenced tests that can serve to update current best practices in subject selection. The original criteria for IQ and language test scores, along with their more recent adaptations, are reconsidered in light of current information on the use of tests with SLI.
• Plante, E. (1998). Introduction to feedback and executive control in human communication. Journal of Communication Disorders, 31(6), 459-460.
• Plante, E., Uecker, A., Senkfor, A., & Gmitro, A. F. (1998). Image manipulation and error estimation for MRI analysis. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 85(2), 175-180.
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  PMID: 9874153;Abstract: Manipulation of MRI images prior to volumetric analysis is a common practice that may unwittingly lead to errors in measurement. In this study, we examine the effects of two types of image manipulation: changes in the total number of slices used to obtain volume estimates (slice sampling rate) and image rotation. A phantom containing two regularly-shaped and two irregularly-shaped regions of interest (ROIs) was scanned using an SPGR sequence and 1-mm slices. Changes in slice sampling rate produced marked effects on volume estimation of irregularly-shaped ROIs. Comparatively little error was associated with changes in slice sampling rates for regularly- shaped ROIs. In addition, there was an interaction between image rotation in non-orthogonal planes and slice sampling rate. The data suggests that the ability to detect anatomical effects may be influenced by an investigator's choices concerning the number of slices included in a region of interest and image rotation when estimating volumes.
• Isaki, E., & Plante, E. (1997). Short-term and working memory differences in language/learning disabled and normal adults. Journal of Communication Disorders, 30(6), 427-437.
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  PMID: 9397387;Abstract: Fifteen adults who reported a childhood history of speech-language and/or learning disability (L/LD) were tested on two verbal memory tasks. Their performance on sentence repetition and reading span measures was compared with that of a matched control group who reported no childhood history of L/LD. Results indicated statistically significant group performance differences on both short-term and working memory tasks. This suggests that verbal memory difficulties may be a longterm component of L/LD.
• Krassowski, E., & Plante, E. (1997). IQ variability in children with SLI: Implications for use of cognitive referencing in determining SLI. Journal of Communication Disorders, 30(1), 1-9.
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  PMID: 9017474;Abstract: The practice of cognitive referencing assumes that IQ scores can be used as a measure of intellectual potential from which language scores may deviate. To test the validity of this assumption the WISC scores of children with specific language impairment were compared over time. The variability of WISC scores from children with SLI from their initial evaluation and from the federally-mandated three year re-evaluation was analyzed. Significant differences in the performance scale scores were found. This indicates that the IQ scores of these children are more properly interpreted as reflecting current abilities rather than potential for language learning. This further calls into question the practice of cognitive referencing as a method of determining the presence of a language impairment, eligibility for services, and the service delivery model for which a child qualifies.
• Merrell, A. W., & Plante, E. (1997). Norm-referenced test interpretation in the diagnostic process. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 28(1), 50-58.
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  Abstract: This study examines the extent to which norm-referenced tests can assist in addressing two independent clinical questions within the diagnostic process: "Is there a language impairment?" and "What are the specific areas of deficit?" Children's performance on two tests, the Test for Examining Expressive Morphology and the Patterned Elicitation Syntax Test, was examined from the perspective of each question. For the first question, a discriminant analysis using 40 preschool children (20 with specific language impairment [SLI], and 20 with normally developing language) revealed 90% sensitivity and 95% specificity for each test. For the second question, an item analysis revealed inconsistent pass/fail rates and low point-to-point agreement for the performance of children with SLI on items targeting the same morphosyntactic structure across tests. Given their high discriminant capacity, but inconsistent item-level performance, the results demonstrate that norm-referenced tests can be appropriate diagnostic tools for one diagnostic purpose but inappropriate for addressing another.
• Jackson, T., & Plante, E. (1996). Gyral morphology in the posterior Sylvian region in families affected by developmental language disorder. Neuropsychology Review, 6(2), 81-94.
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  PMID: 8976499;Abstract: This study describes the family aggregation of gyral morphology in the posterior perisylvian region in families that contain one or more children with a developmental language disorder. The probands in these families were 8 male and 2 female children referred through therapy programs and schools for children with language and reading problems. Family members included both biological parents (10 m, 10 f) and all available siblings (6 m, 4 f). Gyral morphology in the members of these families was compared with control subjects (10 m, 10 f) who were without a personal or family history of developmental language disorders. Gyral morphology was evaluated using T1-weighted sagittal scans from a GE Signa 1.5T magnet, 5 mm consecutive slices through the full brain volume. A less common type of Sylvian fissure morphology was more frequently found in the hemispheres of language-disordered subjects and their first-degree relatives than in control subjects. In addition, the pattern of Sylvian fissure morphology across generations within the families suggests that this feature might be inherited from either parent. The elevated rate of extra gyri in the posterior perisylvian region in families affected by language disorder links an anomaly within a language-related brain region with familial risk for this disorder.
• Plante, E., Boliek, C., Binkiewicz, A., & Erly, W. K. (1996). Elevated androgen, brain development and language/learning disabilities in children with congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 38(5), 423-437.
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  PMID: 8698150;Abstract: Individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) provide a test population for the theory that elevated testosterone levels alter prenatal brain development and increase the risk of learning disabilities. Eleven subjects with CAH, five of their non-CAH siblings and 16 matched control subjects participated in two studies. The first study documented hand preference, verbal skills and non-verbal skills. A higher prevalence of language/learning disability was found in both the CAH subjects and their families than in the control subjects. The second study examined the prevalence of atypical perisylvian asymmetries on MRI scans. These revealed an atypical pattern of asymmetry (R = L or R > L) in the majority of the subjects with CAH and in all of their siblings. One subject with CAH also showed evidence of a neuromigratory disturbance in the posterior left hemisphere. Of the control subjects, only one showed an atypical pattern of asymmetry and none showed evidence of a neuromigratory disorder. The findings indicate that an elevated familial rate for language-based learning disabilities and altered brain asymmetries co-occur in families with the gene for CAH.
• Plante, E., Shenkman, K., & Clark, M. M. (1996). Classification of adults for family studies of developmental language disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 39(3), 661-667.
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  PMID: 8783143;Abstract: A variety of approaches has been used to classify the status of adult subjects in familial studies of developmental language disorders. In this report, we directly compare the results of four different methods that appear in the research literature. Two of the approaches rely on case history reports, and two are performance-based methods. Subjects included 24 parents (12 mothers, 12 fathers) of children with developmental language disorders and 24 unrelated adult control subjects (12 female, 12 male) who completed case history items and standardized language testing designed for classification purposes. All classification methods identified more parents than control subjects as "affected." However, classification by case history methods resulted in fewer affected adults than classification through standardized testing. This outcome suggests that the variability in classification rates in studies to date may be the result of method rather than subject sample differences. © 1996, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Swisher, L., Restrepo, M. A., Plante, E., & Lowell, S. (1995). Effect of implicit and explicit 'rule' presentation on bound-morpheme generalization in specific language impairment. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 38(1), 168-173.
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  PMID: 7731206;Abstract: This study addressed whether generalization of a trained bound morpheme to untrained vocabulary stems differs between children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with normal language (NL) under two controlled instructional conditions. Twenty-five children with NL and 25 children with SLI matched for age served as subjects. Contrasts between affixed and unaffixed words highlighted the affixation 'rule' in the 'implicit-rule' condition. The 'rule' was verbalized by the trainer in the 'explicit-rule' condition. Bimodal generalization results occurred in both subject groups, indicating that generalization was not incremental. Chi-square analyses suggested that the SLI group generalized the bound morpheme less often than the NL group under the explicit-rule training condition. The findings add to those that indicate children with SLI have a unique language-learning style, and suggest that the explicit presentation of metalinguistic information during training may be detrimental to bound-morpheme generalization by preschool-age children with SLI.
• Bellaire, S., Plante, E., & Swisher, L. (1994). Bound-morpheme skills in the oral language of school-age, language-impaired children. Journal of Communication Disorders, 27(4), 265-279.
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  PMID: 7876407;Abstract: Bound-morpheme skills of school-age, language-impaired (LI) children were explored with three tasks designed to assess multiple dimensions of this component of language. Ten English-speaking, school-age LI children (Mean age: 10:3) and ten children with normal language (Mean age: 9:9) served as subjects. A two-way analysis of variance revealed significant group differences. Fisher a priori testing documented significant group differences for a measure of English bound-morpheme skill levels, a measure of ability to generalize English bound-morphemes to novel words, and a measure of ability to learn novel bound-morphemes attached to novel words. The findings indicate that core features of developmental language impairment in preschool children-poor ability to learn, to use, and to generalize bound-morphemes-are also present in school-age, LI children. © 1994.
• Plante, E., Swisher, L., Kiernan, B., & Restrepo, M. A. (1993). Language matches: Illuminating or confounding?. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 36(4), 772-776.
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  PMID: 8377489;Abstract: The practice of matching younger, language-matched controls, in addition to age-matched controls, is often used in studies of language-disordered children to examine the role of 'language level' on performance. However, the interpretation of the relative performance of subjects in studies using such dual control groups is problematic. Conceptual concerns arise with the use of language matches because language is a multidimensional skill that is not reflected equivalently for the language-disordered children and their language-matched controls. Furthermore, matching by language level inevitably introduces an extraneous age effect that confounds interpretation. In addition, erroneous interpretations of null findings can occur when no differences are found between language-disordered and language-matched groups.
• Swisher, L., & Plante, E. (1993). Nonverbal IQ tests reflect different relations among skills for specifically language-impaired and normal children: Brief report. Journal of Communication Disorders, 26(1), 65-71.
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  PMID: 8340491;
• Restrepo, M. A., Swisher, L., Plante, E., & Vance, R. (1992). Relations among verbal and nonverbal cognitive skills in normal language and specifically language-impaired children. Journal of Communication Disorders, 25(4), 205-219.
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  PMID: 1304003;Abstract: This study tested the hypothesis that specifically language-impaired (SLI) children have a qualitatively different cognitive system from that of normal language (NL) children. Twenty NL and 20 SLI children between the ages of 4:2 (years: months) and 5:11 were presented with experimental language-learning measures, experimental nonverbal measures, and verbal and nonverbal norm-referenced tests. A confirmatory analysis of the covariance matrix structures of the two subject groups indicated that relations among cognitive skills differed between NL and SLI children. In addition, a planned comparison indicated that the relation between nonverbal rule-induction and novel bound-morpheme learning differed significantly between groups. The findings indicate that a "qualitative-differences" model of specific language impairment better accounts for the co-occurrence of poor verbal and poor nonverbal cognitive skills in SLI children than a "low-normal" model. © 1993.
• Plante, E. (1991). MRI findings in the parents and siblings of specifically language-impaired boys. Brain and Language, 41(1), 67-80.
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  PMID: 1884192;Abstract: Four families that include a specifically language-impaired (SLI) boy were studied to test the hypothesis that developmental language disorders are biologically transmittable. A majority of the parents of the SLI boys had experienced communication difficulty (i.e., difficulty with speech, language, or academic skills) as children. Evidence of communication difficulty was paired on an individual basis with neuroanatomical data obtained through quantitative analysis of magnetic resonance imaging scans. Atypical perisylvian asymmetries were documented in a majority of the parents and were frequently associated with a history of communication difficulty. Atypical perisylvian asymmetries and disordered language skills were also documented for siblings of SLI boys. These findings suggest that atypical perisylvian asymmetries reflect a transmittable, biological factor that places some families at risk for language impairment. © 1991.
• Plante, E., & Turkstra, L. (1991). Sources of error in the quantitative analysis of MRI scans. Magnetic Resonance Imaging, 9(4), 589-595.
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  PMID: 1779731;Abstract: The increasing use of quantitative analysis of MRI scans in the literature has produced a need to identify potential sources of bias in such analysis procedures. Six sources of bias are demonstrated in this paper. These include bias attributable to partial volume effects, head tilt, plane of view, use of noncontiguous slices, contrast/intensity manipulations, and magnetic inhomogeneities. The magnitude of bias for each source varied according to whether a hemisphere or regions within a hemisphere were measured, with regional effects typically exceeding hemisphere effects. © 1991.
• Plante, E., Swisher, L., Vance, R., & Rapcsak, S. (1991). MRI findings in boys with specific language impairment. Brain and Language, 41(1), 52-66.
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  PMID: 1884191;Abstract: Magnetic resonance imaging scans of specifically language-impaired (SLI) boys were examined to determine whether atypical cerebral findings could be documented in children whose primary deficits were in language skills. Clinical examination of the scans failed to reveal any visually obvious lesions or abnormalities. In contrast, measurement of the scans revealed atypical perisylvian asymmetries in most of these subjects. The distribution of perisylvian asymmetries in SLI subjects was significantly different from the distribution in controls (p < .01). Measurement of other brain regions revealed that extraperisylvian areas were occasionally deviant in individual SLI subjects; but no one region was consistently deviant across the SLI group. Thus, only atypical perisylvian asymmetries were linked to the language disorder. These neuroanatomical findings suggest that a prenatal alteration of brain development underlies specific language impairment. © 1991.
• Nakamura, M., Plante, E., & Swisher, L. (1990). Predictors of novel inflection learning by preschool-aged boys. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 33(4), 747-754.
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  PMID: 2273887;Abstract: This study addressed the extent to which performance on selected verbal and nonverbal measures contributes to the prediction of inflection learning. Twenty normal boys between the ages of 4:4 (years:months) and 5:7 were presented with stories designed to teach novel vocabulary and morphological inflections. A multiple regression analysis indicated that the measure of current inflection skills accounted for nearly half of the variance in inflection learning results. In addition, performance on a posttest of vocabulary learning significantly (p < .05) contributed to the prediction equation. Although closer analysis of the findings indicates that the relation between nonverbal rule learning and inflection learning warrants further investigation, none of the three nonverbal measures was a significant contributor to the prediction equation. The results suggest that inflection learning may be tied more to other language abilities than to nonverbal cognitive skills in normally developing boys.
• Plante, E., Swisher, L., & Vance, R. (1989). Anatomical correlates of normal and impaired language in a set of dizygotic twins. Brain and Language, 37(4), 643-655.
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  PMID: 2819420;Abstract: This report presents findings for a set of dizygotic twins at age 4 years 9 months. The male was diagnosed as specifically language impaired. For both children, the left-right perisylvian configuration was atypical. Only the male's configuration was symmetrical, a finding in line with autopsy data reported for subjects with "developmental dyslexia" who also may have had a form of language impairment. In addition, the male had an atypical (L > R) configuration of the cerebral hemispheres, a finding not seen in his twin, or in a series of volunteers without a history of developmental language impairment. The in utero effects of gonadal hormones that may account for these findings are discussed. © 1989.
• Plante, E., Gaffney, G. R., & Tsai, L. Y. (1988). Lack of similar findings may be due to underutilization of MRI technology. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 18(3), 462-465.
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  PMID: 3170464;

Presentations

• Plante, E. M. (2019, November). Optimizing language learning in children.. ASHA Convention. Orlando FL: ASHA.
• Plante, E. M. (2019, November). When tests disagree. Resolving contraditions with evidence. ASHA convention. Orlando FL: ASHA.
• Plante, E. M. (2019, October). Evidence-based language & literacy assessment. Inservice. Suhaurita AZ: Suhaurita School District.
• Plante, E. M. (2018, February). Enhancing treatment outcomes by the strategic incorporation of variability during treatment sessions. Webinar for the Arizona State Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Arizona: ArSHA.
• Plante, E. M. (2018, March). Using research on learning to make treatment better, stronger, faster.. Utah State Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Salt Lake: Utah State Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
• Plante, E. M. (2018, May). Grammar intervention for children with developmental language disorder. Public lecture. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong.
• Plante, E. M. (2018, May). Implicit Learning in Individuals with Developmental Language Disorder. Conference. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong.
• Plante, E. M. (2018, May). Try to overwhelm them: Facilitating learning in treatment.. Annual Speech-Language-Hearing Awareness and Information Day. San Diego: San Diego State University.
• Kapa, L., Erikson, J. A., Plante, E. M., & Vance, R. (2017, June). Executive function and word learning in preschool aged children with SLI. Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders. Madison, WI.
• Oglivie, T. K., Eidsvag, S., Privette, C. M., Mailend, M., & Plante, E. M. (2017, June). Group versus individual treatment for children with SLI. Symposium on research in Child Language Disorders. Madison, WI.
• Plante, E. M. (2017, March). Integrated assessment of language and literacy. Utah State Speech, Language, and Hearing Association.
• Plante, E. M. (2017, March). Principles of learning. Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona.
• Ellis Weismer, S., Goffman, L., McGregor, K., Plante, E. M., & Storkel, H. (2016, June). Learning and Teaching about Grants and Scientific Writing.. Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders. Madison, WI.
• Plante, E. M. (2016, February). Grant Writing: Getting to Outstanding. Dyphagia Research Society. Tucson.
• Plante, E. (2015, June). Learning without Trying. Colloquium. Bergen, Norway: Dept of Biopsychology, University of Bergen.
• Plante, E. (2015, June). So simple a baby can do it: Why paying attention to infant learning can benefit language treatment. Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders.
• Plante, E. (2015, May). Learning without Trying. Callier Center conference. University of Texas at Dallas: University of Texas at Dallas.
• Plante, E. (2015, November). Statistical learning in a treatment setting. Workshop on procedural learning. University of Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.
• Plante, E. M. (2015, Fall). Testing. In-service Marana School District. Marana School District: Marana School District.
• Plante, E. M. (2015, November). Improving treatment with variability. Roosevelt School District, Pheonix. Phoenix, AZ: Roosevelt School District.
• Plante, E. M. (2015, November). Learning in the context of language disorders made better, stronger, faster. University of Connecticut Colloquium. University of Connecticut: University of Connecticut.
• Plante, E. M. (2015, fall). Statistical learning in a treatment setting. Workshop on Procedural Learning, Amsterdam. Amsterdam: U Amsterdam.
• Plante, E. M., & Kapa, L. (2015, June). Impaired cognitive flexibility in preschoolers with SLI. Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders.
• Plante, E. M., & Ryals, B. (2015, November). How to Launch & Build a Successful Research Career. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention. Denver: ASHA.
• Plante, E., Plante, E., Alt, M., Alt, M., Meyers, C. N., & Meyers, C. N. (2015, November). Using Learning Theory to Improve Treatment. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention. Denver: ASHA.
• Vance, R., Plante, E. M., & Kapa, L. (2015, November). Sustained attention and inhibitory control abilities in preschoolers with specific language impairment. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Annual Convention.
• Alt, M., & Plante, E. M. (2014, September 2014). The Common Core: What it Means for Speech-Language Pathologists in Arizona. GBC Conference. Tucson, AZ: Grunewald-Blitz Clinic for Children with Communication Disorders and the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at the University of Arizona.
• Hotz, G., & Plante, E. M. (2014, November). Neurocognitive assessment in children recovering from brain injury.. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention. Orlando, FL.
• Nelson, N. W., Plante, E. M., & Anderson, M. A. (2014, November). Assessing oral and written language among school-age students: Issues of validity.. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention.
• Ryals, B., & Plante, E. M. (2014, November). How to launch and build a successful research career.. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention. Orlando, FL.

Poster Presentations

• Tucci, A., Plante, E. M., & Vance, R. (2018, June). Can efficiency of enhanced conversational recast treatment be improved with high density doses?. Symposium for Research in Child Language Disorders. Madison, WI: NIH.
• Tucci, A., Plante, E. M., Vance, R., Oglivie, T., & Yeats, C. (2017, June). Item analysis for the development of the shirts and shoes test for 6-year-olds. Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders. Madison, WI.
• Aguilar, J. M., & Plante, E. M. (2016, June). Exemplar variability facilitates word learning for children with specific language impairment. Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders. Madison, WI.
• Dailey, N. S., Patterson, D. K., & Plante, E. M. (2016, June). Structural Differences of the Reading Network in Adults with Dyslexia. Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders. Madison, WI.
• Kapa, L., Plante, E. M., & Vance, R. (2016, June). Artificial Grammar Learning in Preschoolers with and without SLI.. Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders. Madison, WI.
• Oglivie, T., Mailend, M., & Plante, E. M. (2016, June). Receptive Language Deficits in Children with SLI.. Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders. Madison, WI.
• Plante, E. M., & Kapa, L. (2016, January). Executive function abilities in preschoolers with specific language impairment. Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development.
• Vance, R., Plante, E. M., & Kapa, L. L. (2016, June). Artificial grammar learning in preschoolers with and without SLI. Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders.
• Nelson, N. W., Anderson, M. A., Plante, E. M., & Applegate, E. B. (2015, July). Assessing Sound/Word and Sentence/Discourse Abilities to Profile the Needs of Students with Language Learning Disabilities.. ASHA Schools Conference. Phoenix, AZ: ASHA.
• Plante, E. (2015, June). Distributional-based lexical category acquisition in infants with and without a family history of speech or language impairment. Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders.
• Plante, E. (2015, June). Identification accuracy of the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills. Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders. Madison, WI.
• Plante, E. (2015, June). Impaired cognitive flexibility in preschoolers with SLI: Evidence from dimentional change card sort performance.. Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders. Madison, WI.
• Plante, E. (2015, June). Investigation of dose schedule for preschool children with specific language impairment. Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders.
• Plante, E. M., & Kapa, L. (2015, November). Sustained Attention & Inhibitory Control Abilities in Preschoolers With Specific Language Impairment. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention. Denver: ASHA.
• Plante, E. M., & Nelson, N. W. (2015, November). Identification Accuracy of the Test of Integrated Language & Literacy Skills. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention. Denver: ASHA.
• Sandoval, M., Patterson, D. K., & Plante, E. (2015, November). The Brain Basis of Distributional-Based Syntactic Category Acquisition: An fMRI Learning Study. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention. Denver: ASHA.
• Alt, M., Nicholas, K., Hauwiller, E., & Plante, E. M. (2014, June). Effect of variability on preposition learning by preschoolers with impaired and normal language. Society for Research in Child Language Disorders. Madison, WI.
• Kapa, L., Plante, E. M., & Vance, R. B. (2014, June). The effect of exemplar variability on grammar learning among preschoolers with and without SLI. Society for Research in Child Language Disorders. Madison, WI.
• Meyers, C., Plante, E. M., Nicholas, K., Dailey, N., Ogilivie, T., & Vance, R. B. (2014, June). Attention orienting or consolidation? Optimizing the use of an auditory stimulation phase for treatment of morpheme errors.. Society for Research in Child Language Disorders.
• Nicholas, K., Alt, M., Hauwiller, E., & Plante, E. M. (2014, June 2014). Effect of variability on preposition learning by preschoolers with impaired and normal language.. Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders. Madison, WI: SRCLD.
• Plante, E. M., & Vance, R. B. (2014, June). Reliability of the Shirts and Shoes Test in Phase II development. Society for Research in Child Language Disorders. Madison, WI.
• Plante, E. M., Nelson, N. W., Applegate, B., & Anderson, M. (2014, June). Reliability of the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills (TILLS) Standardization Version.. Society for Research in Child Language Disorders. Madison, WI.
• Szaflarski, J. P., Wang, Y., Mekibib, A., Rajagopal, A., Byars, A., Plante, E. M., & Holland, S. K. (2014, summer). Ten Years in the Making: A Longitudinal Study of Language Development in Children and Adolescents. Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology. Philadelphia, PA.
• Vance, R., Plante, E. M., & Kapa, L. L. (2013, June). The effect of exemplar variability in grammar learning among preschoolers with and without SLI. Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders.

Reviews

• Montgomery, J. W., Gillam, R. B., & Plante, E. (2024. Enhancing Syntactic Knowledge in School-Age Children With Developmental Language Disorder: The Promise of Syntactic Priming(pp 580-597).
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  We propose that implicit learning, including syntactic priming, has therapeutic promise to enhance the syntactic knowledge of children with developmental language disorder (DLD).