This volume has been composed as an appreciation of Martin L. Albert in the year of his 60th birthday. At least one contributor to each paper in this volume has been touched by Marty in some way; lie has mentored some, been a fellow student with some, and been a colleague to most. These contributors, as well as many others, view Marty as a gifted scientist and a wonderful human being. The breadth of his interests and intellectual pursuits is truly impressive; this breadth is reflected, only in part. by the diversity of the papers in this volume. His interests have ranged from psychopharmacology to cross-cultural understanding of dementia, through the aphasias, to the history of the fields that touch on behavioral neurology, especially neurology per se, cognitive psychology, speech-language pathology, and linguistics. Throughout his scholarly work, Martha Taylor Sarno notes, Marty never loses the human perspective, e. g. , the "powerfully disabling effect on the individual person" with aphasia or other neurological disorder. For those readers who only how a portion of his work, we thought that we should describe him here. Many of the people whom Marty has influenced have been able to contribute to this volume. We have invited some others who were unable to contribute to express their appreciation for him, as well.

Application of analytic discourse techniques to clinical practice is relatively recent. This book's contributors begin with the notion that systematic examination of discourse provides a rich source of data for describing the complex relationships among language, social context, and the cognitive processes that underlie discourse comprehension and production. Evidence is provided that when discourse is studied across different clinical populations, analysis yields an optimal opportunity for developing dynamic models of brain and language that more thoroughly account for the complexity of language use in social contexts. Accordingly, studies presented in this volume have a dual focus -- to examine the implications of discourse research on neurolinguistic theories and to evaluate the contribution of discourse analysis to understanding the clinical status of patients with brain damage. As such, this volume reports patterns of preserved and impaired discourse behavior in normal adults and in different adult clinical populations. It also describes numerous tasks designed to elicit a variety of discourse genres and a host of techniques created to describe how subjects order information and relate ideas across sentences. In addition, it includes numerous abstract units and linguistic devices targeted to examine those aspects of discourse that govern cohesion, organization, and topic manipulation. This volume is unique because it presents both theoretical and clinical papers that examine a variety of communication pathologies. Clinicians often report dissatisfaction with formal test batteries in that results are often at variance with clinical observation of performance in real life situations. To address this concern, this work proposes methods for examining discourse that move the examiner closer to naturalistic sampling. The research presented demonstrates that discourse analysis provides clinically significant information that contributes to the understanding of the cognitive, linguistic, and social status of people with communication disorders. These studies also offer a framework to support continuously evolving diagnostic and treatment paradigms for adults with neurological communication pathologies.

This volume has been composed as an appreciation of Martin L. Albert in the year of his 60th birthday. At least one contributor to each paper in this volume has been touched by Marty in some way; lie has mentored some, been a fellow student with some, and been a colleague to most. These contributors, as well as many others, view Marty as a gifted scientist and a wonderful human being. The breadth of his interests and intellectual pursuits is truly impressive; this breadth is reflected, only in part. by the diversity of the papers in this volume. His interests have ranged from psychopharmacology to cross-cultural understanding of dementia, through the aphasias, to the history of the fields that touch on behavioral neurology, especially neurology per se, cognitive psychology, speech-language pathology, and linguistics. Throughout his scholarly work, Martha Taylor Sarno notes, Marty never loses the human perspective, e. g. , the "powerfully disabling effect on the individual person" with aphasia or other neurological disorder. For those readers who only how a portion of his work, we thought that we should describe him here. Many of the people whom Marty has influenced have been able to contribute to this volume. We have invited some others who were unable to contribute to express their appreciation for him, as well.

In this broad overview of current theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of bilingualism, the contributors examine the dynamics of bilingual language processing over time from the perspectives of neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. This multidisciplinary approach is fundamental to an understanding of how the bilingual's two (or more) language systems interact with each other and with other higher cognitive systems, neurological substrates, and social systems. Contributors examine the nature of bilingualism during various phases of the life cycle and in various health/pathology conditions. Topics range from code separation in the young bilingual child, across various types of language pathologies in adult bilinguals, to language choice problems in dementia.

How do our brains enable us to speak creatively and build up an understanding of language? This accessible book examines the linguistic and neuro-anatomical underpinnings of language and considers how language skills can systematically break down in individuals with different types of brain damage. By studying children with language disorders, adults with right-hemisphere brain damage, demented patients and people with reading problems, the authors provide an understanding of how language is organized in the brain.

Application of analytic discourse techniques to clinical practice is relatively recent. This book's contributors begin with the notion that systematic examination of discourse provides a rich source of data for describing the complex relationships among language, social context, and the cognitive processes that underlie discourse comprehension and production. Evidence is provided that when discourse is studied across different clinical populations, analysis yields an optimal opportunity for developing dynamic models of brain and language that more thoroughly account for the complexity of language use in social contexts. Accordingly, studies presented in this volume have a dual focus -- to examine the implications of discourse research on neurolinguistic theories and to evaluate the contribution of discourse analysis to understanding the clinical status of patients with brain damage. As such, this volume reports patterns of preserved and impaired discourse behavior in normal adults and in different adult clinical populations. It also describes numerous tasks designed to elicit a variety of discourse genres and a host of techniques created to describe how subjects order information and relate ideas across sentences. In addition, it includes numerous abstract units and linguistic devices targeted to examine those aspects of discourse that govern cohesion, organization, and topic manipulation.
This volume is unique because it presents both theoretical and clinical papers that examine a variety of communication pathologies. Clinicians often report dissatisfaction with formal test batteries in that results are often at variance with clinical observation of performance in real life situations. To address this concern, this work proposes methods for examining discourse that move the examiner closer to naturalistic sampling. The research presented demonstrates that discourse analysis provides clinically significant information that contributes to the understanding of the cognitive, linguistic, and social status of people with communication disorders. These studies also offer a framework to support continuously evolving diagnostic and treatment paradigms for adults with neurological communication pathologies.

How do our brains enable us to speak creatively and build up an understanding of language? This concise and accessible book examines the linguistic and neuro-anatomical underpinnings of language and considers how language skills can systematically break down in individuals with different types of brain damage, such as children with language disorders, adults with right-hemisphere brain damage, demented patients, and people with reading problems. In a wide-ranging discussion, the authors also cover the effects of brain damage on bilingual people, as well as the reading and writing difficulties experienced by dyslexics and dysgraphics. Information is also provided on 'split-brain' patients, visual-gestural languages, and language savants. By studying the linguistic behaviour of these groupings, the authors provide an understanding of how language is organized in the brain.