Communication Disorders:
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A massive reference work on the scale of MITECS (The MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences), The MIT Encyclopedia of Communication Disorders will become the standard reference in this field for both research and clinical use. It offers almost 200 detailed entries, covering the entire range of communication and speech disorders in children and adults, from basic science to clinical diagnosis.MITECD is divided into four sections that reflect the standard categories within the field (also known as speech-language pathology and audiology): Voice, Speech, Language, and Hearing. Topics covered in MITECD include cochlear implants for children and adults, pitch perception, tinnitus, alaryngeal voice and speech rehabilitation, neural mechanisms of vocalization, holistic voice therapy techniques, computer-based approaches to children's speech and language disorders, neurogenic mutism, regional dialect, agrammatism, global aphasia, and psychosocial problems associated with communicative disorders.

Why do many people with disorders of communication experience a sense of demoralization? Do these subjective experiences have any bearing on how such problems should be treated? How can professionals dealing with speech, language, hearing and other communication disorders analyse and respond to the subjective and relational needs of clients with such problems? In this book, authors in the fields of communication disorders analyse the psychological, social and linguistic processes and interactions that underpin clinical practice, from both client and clinician perspectives. The chapters demonstrate how it is possible to analyze and understand client-clinician discourse using qualitative research, and describe various challenges to establishing relationships such as cultural, gender and age differences. The authors go on to describe self-care processes, the therapeutic use of the self, and various psychological factors that could be important for developing therapeutic relationships. Also covered are the rarely considered topics of spirituality and transpersonal issues, which may at times be relevant to clinicians working with clients who have debilitating, degenerative and terminal illnesses associated with certain communication disorders. While this book is geared toward the needs of practicing and training speech, language and hearing clinicians, other professional such as teachers of the deaf, psychotherapists, nurses, and occupational therapists will find the ideas relevant, interesting and easily translatable for use in their own clinical practice.

In recent decades, a growing number of children have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a condition characterized by, among other features, social interaction deficits and language impairment. Yet the precise nature of the disorder's impact on language development is not well understood, in part because of the language variability among children across the autism spectrum. The contributors to this volume -- experts in fields ranging from communication disorders to developmental and clinical psychology to linguistics -- use innovative techniques to address two broad questions: Is the variability of language development and use in children with ASD a function of the language, such that some linguistic domains are more vulnerable to ASD than others? Or is the variability a function of the individual, such that some characteristics predispose those with ASD to have varying levels of difficulty with language development and use? Contributors investigate these questions across linguistic levels, from lexical semantics and single-clause syntax, to computationally complex phonology and the syntax-pragmatics interface. Authors address both spoken and written domains within the wider context of language acquisition. This timely and broadly accessible volume will be of interest to a broad range of specialists, including linguists, psychologists, sociologists, behavioral neurologists, and cognitive neuroscientists.

Provides both students and professionals in speech-language pathology multidisciplinary bases to implement clinical services with Spanish speakers. This book offers theoretical and empirical grounds to develop evidence-based clinical procedures for monolingual Spanish and bilingual Spanish-English children and adults with communication disorders.

The Handbooks of Applied Linguistics provide a state-of-the-art description of established and emerging areas of Applied Linguistics. Each volume gives an overview of the field, explains the most important traditions and their findings, identifies the gaps in current research, and gives perspectives for future directions.