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Comparing language samples of Bangla speakers using a colour photograph and a black-and-white line drawing
(Wiley online library, 2020-09-01) Mazumdar B.; Donovan N.J.; Sultana, Asifa; Department of English and Humanities
A comprehensive aphasia assessment is necessary to diagnose the type and severity of aphasia differentially and guide appropriate interventions. One component of an aphasia assessment is the picture description task (PDT), designed to probe spontaneous speech fluency and information content. Most aphasia assessments use black-and-white line drawings (LD) to elicit spontaneous language samples from people with aphasia (PWA). However, recent studies reported two visuographic variables: (1) colour (over black and white) and (2) photograph (over LD), that tended to encourage easier and faster comprehension and increased overall naturalistic language production from neurologically healthy individuals as well as PWA. Additionally, a suitable stimulus for a PDT should always be culturally relevant to the target population. Therefore, we suggest that a new PDT must include a culturally appropriate colour photograph (CP). To investigate if a culturally appropriate CP elicits longer and more complex utterances than a culturally appropriate black-and-white LD from neurologically healthy native Bangla speakers. Methods & Procedures: A total of 30 participants (mean age = 36.03 years) were recruited based on self-reports of no known impairments in cognition, language, vision and hearing. All were of middle socioeconomic status with at least 12 years of formal education. A culturally appropriate CP was selected showing multiple characters performing various functions. Later, an artist prepared the black-and-white LD of that CP. The elicited language samples using these two pictures were transcribed and coded following preset transcription and coding guidelines. The transcribed samples were further analysed using the Bangla adaptation of Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software. To identify the differences in language production between these two picture types, investigators used four measurement variables: mean length of utterances (MLU), complexity index (CI), total number of words (TNW) and words per minute (WPM). Of the four measures, only MLU showed a statistically significant difference between the CP and the black-and-white LD. CI demonstrated a strong correlation with MLU for the CP, which indicates that the participants who produced higher MLU for the CP also produced a higher CI for the CP. There were no significant differences between the two picture types for CI, TNW and WPM. Conclusions & Implications: This study found that the grammatical complexity, as measured by MLU, of spontaneous language production of neurologically healthy adults was higher when a CP was used in a PDT. A CP may also be beneficial for PWA to produce complex language samples. What this paper adds What is already known on the subject There are studies on neurologically healthy individuals as well as on PWA that identified the impact of using different visuographic variables (colour and photograph) separately, which enhanced the picture comprehension and improved performances on associated language production tasks. To our knowledge, no studies have identified the combined impact of these two visuographic variables on spontaneous language production. Therefore, this initial study on neurologically healthy Bangla adults reports the impact of using a CP as a stimulus item for a PDT task to elicit spontaneous language samples. What this paper adds to existing knowledge This study reports that using a culturally appropriate CP for a PDT enhances the grammatical complexity of spontaneous language production of neurologically healthy adults. To our knowledge, this is the first study in Bangla that used the MLU as a measurement variable to analyse adults’ spontaneous language production. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? The development of future aphasia assessments should consider incorporating CPs as stimuli for PDTs, which may guide speech–language pathologists to provide accurate diagnoses for aphasia and related language disorders.
Development of verb inflections among Bangla-speaking children with language disorder
(Wiley online library, 2019-01-01) Sultana, Asifa; Stokes S.; Klee T.; Fletcher P.; Department of English and Humanities
Children with language disorder across languages have problems with verb morphology. The nature of these problems varies according to the typology of the language. The language analyzed in this paper is the Standard Bangla spoken in Dhaka, Bangladesh, by more than 200 million people. It is an underexplored language with agglutinative features in its verb inflections. Some information on the acquisition of the language by typically developing children is available, but to date we have no information on the nature of ALD. As in many places in the developing world, the circumstances for research into language disorder are challenging, as there is no well-ordered infrastructure for the identification of these children and approaches to intervention are not evidence based. This study represents the first attempt to characterize the nature of morphosyntactic limitations in standard Bangla-speaking children with language disorder. To describe the performance of a group of children with language disorder on elicitation procedures for three Bangla verb inflections of increasing structural complexity—present simple, present progressive and past progressive—and to compare their abilities on these forms with those of a group of typically developing Bangla-speaking children. Nine children with language disorder (mean age = 88.11 months) were recruited from a special school in Dhaka. Eight of the children also had a differentiating or co-occurring condition. They responded to three tasks: a semi-structured conversation to elicit present simple, and two picture-based tasks to elicit present progressive and past progressive. Their performance was compared with data available from a large group of younger typically developing children.Group data indicated a comparable trajectory of performance by the children with language disorder with the typically developing children (present simple > present progressive > past progressive), but with significantly lower mean scores. Standard deviations suggested considerable individual variation and individual profiles were constructed for each child, revealing varying patterns of ability, some of which did not accord with the typical developmental trajectory and/or substitution patterns.This study identified verb morphology deficits in Bangla-speaking children with language disorder who had asociated conditions. Variation in performance among the children suggests that individual profiles will be most effective in guiding intervention.
Clinical note generation from doctor-patient conversations using parameter-efficient fine-tuning large language models: Comparative study
(JMIR Publications Inc., 2026-01-01) Ahmed, Saib; Sadeque, Farig Yousuf; Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Background: Clinical note documentation is a vital yet time-intensive task in health care. While advancements in natural language processing have transformed many domains, generating accurate summaries of doctor-patient conversations remains underexplored due to the limited availability of open-source datasets. Large language models (LLMs), with their training on vast datasets, present a promising solution to this challenge. Objective: Precision in clinical summarization is crucial, as it directly impacts patient care and safety. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of parameter-efficient, fine-tuned, decoder-only LLMs for clinical note generation from doctor-patient conversations. We focus on assessing medical accuracy, robustness, and the feasibility of parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) approaches under practical resource constraints. Methods: We used the Medical Training Summarization Dialog dataset containing 1700 doctor-patient conversations paired with clinical notes. Several decoder-only LLMs, including Mistral, Meditron, and Llama, were fine-tuned using PEFT techniques to reduce computational and memory overhead. Evaluation was performed using standard automatic metrics, including the Recall-Oriented Understudy for Gisting Evaluation score and bidirectional encoder representations from transformers score, to assess content overlap and semantic similarity between generated and reference clinical notes. In addition, an expert physician assessed the LLM-generated notes for medical accuracy, completeness, concision, relevance, and clinical coherence and readability. Results: Model performance was evaluated using the Recall-Oriented Understudy for Gisting Evaluation score and bidirectional encoder representations from transformers scores, demonstrating that Meditron-7B and Llama3-8B achieved state-of-the-art results among open-source, parameter-efficient, fine-tuned models, with Mistral-7B also performing competitively. The findings indicate that decoder-only LLMs, particularly Llama variants, outperform traditional models. Moreover, fine-tuning with higher quantization has the potential to further enhance performance. Human expert evaluation further indicated that Llama3-8B and Mistral-7B produced clinically coherent and accurate summaries, with Meditron-7B and Llama3-3B also performing reliably across evaluation criteria. The findings suggest that higher quantization during fine-tuning may improve efficiency without substantially compromising performance. Conclusions: This study underscores the potential of the PEFT of decoder-only LLMs to transform clinical workflows by streamlining medical documentation, thereby enabling health care professionals to dedicate more time to patient care. These models offer a scalable and resource-efficient alternative to traditional architectures and have the potential to streamline clinical documentation workflows.
The lived experience of older adults' occupational adaptation following a stroke
(Wiley online library, 2013-02-01) Williams, Shoshannah; Murray C.; BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health
Following a stroke, individuals' abilities may not match the demands of their environment and occupations, resulting in compromised occupational performance. The process of adaptation can enable adjustment of the way occupations are performed to achieve occupational mastery. The purpose of this honours study was to investigate and describe older adults' lived experience of occupational adaptation following a stroke. An interpretative phenomenological approach was used. Participants in the community were recruited through Domiciliary Care service co-ordinators. In-depth interviews were conducted with three men and two women, aged 68-78 years who had experienced a stroke up to 14 years ago. Data were analysed using the Colazzi's method to formulate themes. Experiencing a stroke is initially a 'shock to the system' and while 'your whole life changes', there are still ways to 'get on and do your best'. The theme 'your whole life changes' had three subthemes: 'apprehension and fear', 'problem solving' and 'stretching the limitations'. Resilience, motivation and effort are the required qualities for adaptive responses after stroke. Coping strategies identified to facilitate occupational mastery include the use of humour, touch, expressing anger, using self-talk, maintaining hope, having a sense of being fortunate and supportive friends and family.These findings support an empowering approach to therapy, facilitating clients to identify and utilise individually appropriate coping strategies to negotiate negative emotions and apprehension and enable the required personal qualities for occupational adaptation.
Real-time detection performance of RTSP vs. USB cameras for UGVs
(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2025-01-01) Sadman, Raheeb; Safi, Safwan Sattar; Mahe, Jahedul Alam; Maliha, Sabrina; Mashkura, Mahadia; Ali Sikder, Sajid; Anan, Ahmad Ali Akand; Abrar, Fahim; Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Real-time object detection is critical for ensuring the operational safety of unmanned ground vehicles (U G V s) in industrial inspection and last mile delivery applications, yet the impact of camera interface selection remains poorly understood. This study presents the first systematic comparison of USB web cams versus network cameras for UGV perception systems, focusing on safety critical scenarios including emergency braking and obstacle avoidance. Our experimen-tal results demonstrate that USB-based systems consistently outperform networked alternatives, offering superior frame processing efficiency, enhanced navigation precision during avoidance maneuvers, and significantly improved operational stability in prolonged deployments. These advantages are a result of USB's direct hardware interfacing and predictable low latency characteristics. The outcomes conclusively establish that for UGV applications, directly connected USB cameras provide more reliable vision performance, enabling robust collision avoidance in dynamic environments while maintaining exceptional tracking consistency and system robustness. Additionally, the study highlights the significant reduction in detection latency and jitter, which are important for real-time decision-making in fast-paced, safety in critical operations.