Approximately 2.5% to 3% of the children are intellectually impaired who lack fine motor coordination abilities like eye-hand coordination, grip strength in fingers, etc. There is a need to improve their condition for better survival. Pranayama has been found to be very effective in the case of general children in the development of these abilities. But there is very little study on the application of pranayama practice for children with intellectual impairment. In the present five mild intellectually impaired children of age ranges 7 -10 years practiced the pranayama for 60 days. The performance of all children shows significant difference at 0.01 levels at 20 degree of freedom for the "inserting pegs task" developed by Indian Medico Instruments. It indicates the pranayama in an effective way to improve the fine motor coordination ability among children with intellectual impairment.

One important theoretical question about word production concerns whether the phonemes of a word are retrieved in parallel or in sequential order. To address this question, Meyer and Schriefers (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 17:1146-1160, 1991 used an auditory picture-word interference task and manipulated the position of the phonemes shared between a distractor word and a target picture. They found that begin-related distractors (e.g., boatbone) facilitated naming times when they were presented within 150 ms before or after the picture, whereas end-related distractors (e.g., cone-bone) were effective only if presented within 150 ms after the picture. This suggested that the word's end phonemes were activated later than the beginning ones. However, it remained unclear whether these effects genuinely reflected facilitation at the level of phonological retrieval. In this study, we examined later distractor presentation onsets, so that the distractors had little opportunity to influence earlier, lexical selection processes. At the latest onset tested, end-related-but not begin-related-distractors significantly facilitated naming. We concluded that late-presented distractors do indeed influence phonological encoding, and that their asymmetric effects support a sequential model of phoneme retrieval.Keywords Word production . Phonological encoding . Phonological retrieval . Word form retrieval . Picture-word interference task . Serial order Current theories propose that word retrieval involves at least two major stages: lexical selection, in which the speaker selects a word that matches the desired concept, and phonological retrieval, in which she or he then retrieves the word's phonological form. This information provides the input to subsequent, articulatory-motor programming processes (see, e.g., Dell, 1986Dell, , 1988Foygel & Dell, 2000;Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999;Rapp & Goldrick, 2000;Roelofs, 1997Roelofs, , 2004). Most contemporary models propose that the phonemes of a word are retrieved simultaneously, irrespective of their position. Only at subsequent, articulatory-motor stages do operations become sequential (Levelt et al., 1999;Roelofs, 1997;Roelofs, 2004;Shattuck-Hufnagel, 1992). For example, Roelofs and colleagues proposed that all phonemes of a morpheme are activated in parallel, accompanied by number labels to identify their position (this is called segmental spellout). The phoneme string is then converted into a series of articulatory-motor commands by a process that operates sequentially (called syllabification and prosodification; Levelt et al., 1999;Roelofs, 1997Roelofs, , 2004. However, an alternative possibility is that phoneme retrieval is itself sequential: that is, the word's early phonemes initially receive more activation than later ones, and as retrieval unfolds, later phonemes receive progressively more activation (Dell, Juliano, & Govindjee, 1993;Hartley & Houghton, 1996;Houghton, 1990;Sevald & Dell, 1994;Vousden, Brown, & Harley, 2000; se...

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<p>In the auditory picture-word interference task, participants name pictures whilst ignoring auditory distractor words. Previous studies have reported faster naming latencies when distractors are phonologically related to the target (e.g., tiger-typist) than when they are unrelated. By varying the position of overlap of the shared phonemes and the onset of the distractor, this task may provide valuable insights into the time course of phonological encoding. In the current study, participants named pictures while hearing distractor words that were: begin-related (e.g., letter-lesson); end-related (e.g., letter-otter); or unrelated to the target (e.g., letter-cabin). Distractor onsets varied from -200ms (before target) to +400ms (after target). The study was carried out in two phases: in the first phase, the task was administered to a group of 24 young control participants; in the second phase, it was administered to an individual with aphasia, NP, and a group of six older controls. Phonological facilitation effects of begin-related distractors displayed a fairly consistent pattern across the four distractor onsets for all participant groups. In almost all instances, these effects were significant but were noticeably stronger at early onsets especially around the onset of the target presentation, consistent with previous findings in the literature. Only NP showed strong begin-related facilitation effects at the latest onset. The end-related distractors however, produced somewhat different facilitation effects across the different groups. For the young controls and NP, these effects were stronger and significant at later onsets. The older controls only displayed marginally significant effects at 200ms after the target. Findings from the current study provide support for serial pattern of phoneme retrieval in multisyllabic words, in which a word‟s first syllable becomes available before later syllable(s).</p>

<p>In the auditory picture-word interference task, participants name pictures whilst ignoring auditory distractor words. Previous studies have reported faster naming latencies when distractors are phonologically related to the target (e.g., tiger-typist) than when they are unrelated. By varying the position of overlap of the shared phonemes and the onset of the distractor, this task may provide valuable insights into the time course of phonological encoding. In the current study, participants named pictures while hearing distractor words that were: begin-related (e.g., letter-lesson); end-related (e.g., letter-otter); or unrelated to the target (e.g., letter-cabin). Distractor onsets varied from -200ms (before target) to +400ms (after target). The study was carried out in two phases: in the first phase, the task was administered to a group of 24 young control participants; in the second phase, it was administered to an individual with aphasia, NP, and a group of six older controls. Phonological facilitation effects of begin-related distractors displayed a fairly consistent pattern across the four distractor onsets for all participant groups. In almost all instances, these effects were significant but were noticeably stronger at early onsets especially around the onset of the target presentation, consistent with previous findings in the literature. Only NP showed strong begin-related facilitation effects at the latest onset. The end-related distractors however, produced somewhat different facilitation effects across the different groups. For the young controls and NP, these effects were stronger and significant at later onsets. The older controls only displayed marginally significant effects at 200ms after the target. Findings from the current study provide support for serial pattern of phoneme retrieval in multisyllabic words, in which a word‟s first syllable becomes available before later syllable(s).</p>