Summary of ongoing projects
Title
Development and Standardization of Boston Naming Test in
bilinguals (Kannada - English and Telugu – English)
Principal Investigator
Dr. Shyamala. K.C
Funding Agency
AIISH Research Fund
Fund
Rs.4,06,000.00
Status
Ongoing.
Summary: Confrontation naming has long been recognized as one of the most sensitive tasks for
identifying and quantifying neurogenic language deficits. The Boston Naming Test (BNT) (Kaplan,
Goodglass & Weintraub, 1983) is the single most frequently used test of visual confrontation
naming in Western countries. The BNT has been used in the evaluation of patients with focal left
and right CVAs, with diffuse brain damage resulting from head injury, anoxia or progressive
dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease. The BNT published norms include 84 normal adults (ages 18
– 59) with scores grouped according to those with greater or less than 12 years of education, and 82
aphasic adults with performance divided into 6 severity levels. The BNT has been translated and
standardized in many languages like Spanish, and has been used with patients with aphasia,
dementia, etc. To date, this BNT has not been standardized in any of the Indian languages. Hence as
a first step this project is aimed towards accurate interpretation of naming performance of Indian
clinical populations by developing BNT in Kannada and Telugu and obtain normative data on
healthy bilingual adults who are proficient in Kannada-English and Telugu-English languages
Title
Bilingual Aphasia: Evidence from Indian (Dravidian and Indo-European)
Languages
Principal Investigator
Dr. Shyamala. K.C
Funding agency
Central Institute of Indian Languages
Fund
Rs. 4,00,000.00
Status
Sanctioned. Financial details awaited.
Summary: The proposed research project aims at discovering more about bilingual aphasia by
studying the interesting linguistic phenomena in the four Dravidian languages: Kannada,
Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam, compared with two Indo-European languages, Hindi and
English.
The following research questions form the basis of the proposed study: 1) Are the
deficits in the two different languages parallel or non-parallel? 2) If they are non-parallel,
what is the exact nature of the difference? Does it lie in one of the interesting structural
differences between the languages? 3) What is the level of breakdown? 4) What is the extent
of involvement at each linguistic level (phonology, morphology, syntax, discourse, etc.)?
This study will throw light on the emerging trends of bilingualism in India. It will give
further information on how aphasia manifests similarly and differently across two unrelated
languages (Dravidian languages and English) of aphasics, as compared to two related ones
(Hindi and English). It is also likely to shed new light on other communication disorders,
their assessment and intervention besides bilingual aphasia.
Title
Cognitive Linguistic Deficits in Aphasia
Principal Investigator
Dr. Shyamala. K.C
Funding Agency
AIISH Research Fund
Fund
2,62,000.00
Status
Ongoing.
Summary: The aim of the project is to investigate cognitive linguistic deficits in Individuals
with aphasia. The debate on whether cognition and language are related and whether
cognition precedes language or vice versa still continues .It has been observed that there is
considerable overlap in the cognitive and language domain. Several studies have been done in
the area of cognitive deficits in aphasia on various cognitive domains such as attention,
memory, orientation, scanning, visualneglect, reasoning/problem solving and integration. But
none of the studies has given in depth information of those deficits on language skills in
individuals with aphasia in our context.
20 normal healthy adult individuals and 20 matched right handed individuals with
aphasia following left hemisphere damage areassessed for various cognitive domains using
Western aphasia Battery (WAB), Addenbrooke’s cognitive Examination-revised (ACE-R)
and Cognitive Linguistic Assessement protocol for adults (CLAP) as a part of cognitive
linguistic assessment protocol. The subjects will be analyzed for various cognitive linguistic
deficits present.
Title
Genotyping and a Genetic association study in Autism
Principal Investigator
Dr. Shyamala. K.C
Funding Agency
AIISH Research Fund
Fund
5,72,000.00
Status
ongoing
Summary: The aim of the project is to investigate the genotyping and genetic association in
children with autism. Number and role of genes playing in Autism are still not clear.
Genotyping of selected genes will give the genetic Association in Indian scenario. Initially
5ml blood samples will be collected from 50 children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and
50 normal children.DNA extraction will be done using Phenol chloroform method.
Quantification and quality check of DNA will be done.SNP Genotyping will be done using
Allelic Discrimination assay protocol in Real Time PCR (Applied Biosystems 7900HT).
Title
Articulatory Kinematic Analysis of Stop Consonants in Normal
Adults in Five Indian languages using Articulograph AG 500
Principal Investigator
Dr. R. Manjula
Funding Agency
ARF, AIISH
Fund
Rs. 2,05,900 lakhs
Status
Ongoing
Summary: The study addresses the issue of multilingual influence on spatio – temporal
measures derived from Kinematic trajectories using Articulograph AG 500. It is hypothesized
that there are cross language differences in the spatio - temporal dimensions of speakers
belonging to different native language groups while uttering a common sound. The study
analyses the spatio – temporal measures obtained from kinematic trajectories for reiterated
utterances of stop consonants embedded in different vowel neighbourhood by normal adult
speakers of Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi using Articulograph AG 500.
Attempt is made to establish norms for spatio-temporal indices and velocity curves in five
languages for the selected task.
Principal Investigator
Funds for improvement of S & T infrastructure in universities and
higher educational institutions (FIST)
Dr. R. Manjula
Funding Agency
Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India
Fund
Rs 70 lakh
Status
Ongoing
Title
Summary: Funds for improvement of S & T infrastructure in Universities and Higher
educational institutions (FIST) is initiated by the Department of Science and
Technology. The grants- in – aid under “FIST” is to provide infra structural facilities for
research and teaching in the department in identified areas. The department of Speech
pathology has been identified for support in Level –1 category by the DST for purchase
of equipment and maintenance of the same.
Principal Investigator
Development of intervention module for preschool children with
communication disorders – Extension of Phase II
Dr. N. Swapna
Co-investigator
Dr. K.S. Prema & Dr. Y.V. Geetha
Funding Agency
AIISH Research fund
Fund
Rs. 75, 000/-
Status
Completed
Title
Summary: The aim of this project was to develop an intervention module incorporating
checklists, score sheet and activities for training children with communication disorders for
ten different skills viz. self help, social, motor, cognitive, sensory, speech and language, play,
pre-reading, pre-writing and pre-arithmetic skills and to assess the efficacy of the activities
listed in the intervention module on children with hearing impairment (HI) and mental
retardation (MR) in the age group of 3-6 years. The data was collected and analyzed. It was
seen that the activities in the intervention module were effective in training the children with
communication disorders and brought about a significant improvement in the child’s
developmental level.
Title
Development of Early Literacy Screening Tool
Principal Investigator
Ms. Jayashree C Shanbal
Co-investigator
Dr. S.P. Goswami
Funding Agency
AIISH Research fund
Fund
Rs. 4, 32,000.00
Status
Ongoing
Summary: The project aimed to develop an early literacy screening tool to identify
children with learning difficulties. The screening tool was developed in order to study
the acquisition of early literacy skills in children in the age range of 3-6 years of age.
The tool is in the process of field testing in the clinical population. The outcome of the
project will be a screening tool for speech-Language Pathologists which can be used to
identify children at risk for learning difficulties in schools.