The fast pace and relative ease at which individuals with typical language acquire and use words belie the complexity and vulnerability of lexical representation development (i.e., word learning) and lexical-semantic processing. Lexical-semantic processing impairments are common in both developmental and acquired communication disorders and, even…

Background: Spontaneous speech of aphasic persons is often scored on rating scales assessing aphasic symptoms. Rating scales have the advantage of an easy and fast scoring system, but might lack sensitivity. Quantitative analysis of either aphasic symptoms or basic parameters provides a useful alternative. Basic parameters are essential units of…

An aphasic patient is described as one whose poor repetition of sentences and of lists of words contrasts with his or her surprisingly good performance on immediate problem recognition tasks. This result is interpreted as suggesting a distinction between phonological input and output buffers. (41 references) (Author/LB)

The Wernicke-Lichtheim-Geschwind (WLG) theory of the neurobiological basis of language is of great historical importance, and it continues to exert a substantial influence on most contemporary theories of language in spite of its widely recognized limitations. Here, we suggest that neurobiologically grounded computational models based on the WLG…

Five papers describe clinical research completed by graduate students in speech-language pathology and audiology. The first study examines the linguistic input of three adults (a mother, teacher, and clinician) to a language impaired 8-year-old. The clinician's approach, less directive than that of the other two, facilitated spontaneous speech and…

Two studies are reported in which the following theory is tested: the agrammatic sentence form that is observed in the spontaneous speech of Broca's aphasics is attributable to the selection of elliptical syntactic structures in which the slots for many of the closed-class words that appear in complete sentences are lacking. (54 references)…

The report presents information from a survey of the needs and characteristics of children with severe communication disorders in Ontario and the programs available to serve them. It is explained that information was gathered from structured interviews with principals, teachers, and 28 parents of language handicapped children, as well as visits to…

Articles on communication and language disorder are presented. All but one are in French; the other is in German. They include: "Specificity of Developmental Dysphasia: Implications for Intervention" (Marc Montfort, Adoracion Juarez Sanchez); "Difficulties with Language Development and Discursive Capacity" (Genevieve de Weck); "Language Production…