Hardbound. An international constellation of leading scientists in the fields of linguistics, language development, cognitive sciences, neuropsychology and psychology have contributed to this excellent work. Their contributions elucidate a variety of important aspects of crucial mechanisms in cognition and language processing. Important issues highlighted include the early development of these mechanisms as well as the effects of weaknesses in these mechanisms in terms of language learning deficits in developmental dyslexia.Based on lectures given at a multidisciplinary conference, the volume is written in a universal style to accommodate scientists outwith their own fields.The book will be invaluable to a broad spectrum of professionals dealing directly or indirectly with the remediation of individuals afflicted with learning difficulties.
A balanced view of recent research on reading disability is presented by leading international scholars representing various subdisciplines of psychology and allied sciences. The volume provides researchers, graduate students, educators and other professionals with up-dated and practical useful knowledge of and insights into the latest theories and findings of the nature and causes of reading disability. Rational guidelines for assessment, prevention and intervention are also provided, based on such concepts as phonological and orthographical processing, automaticity and metacognition. Several chapters are written without technical terminology, yet with scientific rigor, and should be readable by a wide audience.
This highly interdisciplinary project presents new results and the state of the art of knowledge in the psychology and neurophysiology of language, reading and dyslexia. It concentrates on basic cognitive functions of understanding and producing language and disorders within its spoken and written execution. The book grew out of the Basic Mechanisms of Language and Language Disorders conference (Leipzig, Sept. 1999).
In this volume a group of well-known experts of the field cover topics ranging from basic visual and auditory information processing to higher order cognition in reading and dyslexia, from basic research to remediation approaches and from well-established theories to new hypotheses about reading acquisition and causes for its failure. Reading is one of the most intriguing feats human evolution ever came up with. There is no evolutionary basis for reading as such; reading is secondary to language and the result of a complex skill acquisition at the end of which almost all pre-existing cognitive functions are mobilized. With the right instruction and practice most people learn this skill smoothly. Some, however, have problems, despite same opportunities and general cognitive abilities. This developmental dyslexia results from a neuro developmental disorder leading to deficits in reading relevant information processing. But what deficits are these, and can they be trained?
The first truly systematic, multi-disciplinary, and cross-linguistic study of the language and writing system factors affecting the emergence of dyslexia.
Understanding the mechanisms responsible for developmental dyslexia (DD) is a key challenge for researchers. A large literature, mostly concerned with learning to read in opaque orthographies, emphasizes phono-logical interpretations of the disturbance. Other approaches focused on the visual-per-ceptual aspects of orthographic coding. Recently, this perspective was supported by imaging data showing that individuals with DD have hypo-activation in occipito-temporal areas (a finding common to both transpar-ent and opaque orthographies). Nevertheless, it is difficult to infer causal relationships from activation data. Accommodating these findings within the cognitive architecture of reading processes is still an open issue. This is a general problem, which is present in much of the literature. For example, several studies investigating the perceptual and cognitive abilities that distinguish groups of children with and without DD failed to provide explicit links with the reading process. Thus, several areas of investigation (e.g., acoustic deficits or magnocellular deficiencies) have been plagued by replication failures. Furthermore, much research has neglected the possible contribution of comorbid symptoms. By contrast, it is now well established that developmental disorders present a large spectrum of homotopic and heterotopic co-morbidities that make causal interpretations problematic. This has led to the idea that the etiology of learning difficulties is multifactorial, thus challenging the traditional models of DD. Recent genetic studies provide information on the multiple risk factors that contribute to the genesis of the disturbance. Another critical issue in DD is that much of the research has been conducted in English-speaking individuals. However, English is a highly irregular orthography and doubts have been raised on the appropriateness of automatically extending interpretations based on English to other more regular orthographies. By contrast, important information can be gotten from systematic comparisons across languages. Thus, the distinction between regular and irregular orthographies is another potentially fruitful area of investigation. Overall, in spite of much research current interpretations seem unable to integrate all available findings. Some proposals focus on the cognitive description of the reading profile and explicitly ignore the distal causes of the disturbance. Others propose visual, acoustic or phonological mech-anisms but fail to link them to the pattern of reading impairment present in different children. The present Research Topic brings together studies based on different methodological approaches (i.e., behavioural studies examining cognitive and psycholinguistic factors, eye movement inves-tigations, biological markers, neuroimaging and genetic studies), involving dyslexic groups with and without comorbid symptoms, and in different orthographies (transparent and opaque) to identify the mechanisms underlying DD. The RT does not focus on a single model or theory of dyslexia but rather brings together different approaches and ideas which we feel are fruitful for a deeper understanding developmental dyslexia.
With advances in medicine and medical innovation, the face of neurosurgery has changed dramatically. A new era of surgeons values the need to undertake research in everyday practice and actively participate in the clinic and laboratory in order to improve patient prognosis. Highlighting the principles of basic neuroscience and its application to neurosurgical disease, this book breaks down neurological conditions into current academic themes and advances. The book is split into two sections, with the first covering basic and computational neuroscience including neuroanatomy, synaptic transmission and the growing use of artificial intelligence. The second section concentrates on specific conditions, such as gliomas, spinal tumors, and peripheral nerve injury. Outlining the clinical and pathophysiological principles of neurological conditions, this valuable book describes key animal models, helping clinicians design and conduct appropriate research projects to further knowledge and improve prognosis.
The Progress in Infancy Research Series is dedicated to the presentation of innovative and exciting research on infants, both human and animal. Each volume in the series is designed to stand alone and contains autonomous chapters which are based on high quality programs of research with infants. These chapters integrate the work of the authors with that of other experts working in the same or related areas. The authors wish to present high quality critical syntheses bearing on infant perception and sensation, learning and memory processes, and other aspects of development. This series will be a forum for the presentation of technological breakthroughs, methodological advances, and new integrations that might create platforms for future programmatic work on the complexities of infant behavior and development. Each volume in the series is dedicated to an outstanding investigator whose research has illuminated the nature of infant behavior and development, and whose contributions to the field have been of seminal importance.
From a May 1992 conference (no location mentioned), 11 papers discuss the neural, genetic, visual cognitive, and auditory mechanisms relating to the study of reading and language. They also describe two methods for functional neural imaging: identifying two pathways used for verbal response selection, and the neuromagnetic assessment of human cortical function. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
A child with developmental dyslexia or an adult with a reading disorder following brain damage might read the word shoe as ‘show’, why does this happen? Most current information processing models of reading distinguish between two alternative procedures for the pronunciation of a printed word. The difference between these concerns the level at which orthography is translated to phonology in one, the word-level procedure, a word is read aloud with reference to knowledge specific to that whole word. In the other, the sub-word-level procedure, a printed word is pronounced with reference to knowledge about smaller segments which occur in many different words. Both procedures contribute to normal skilled reading and its acquisition. But if one of the procedures is disrupted, then oral reading will be forced to rely on the alternative routine. Surface dyslexia is a general label for any disorder of reading which results from inadequate functioning of the word-level procedure and in consequence abnormal reliance on sub-word level translation from orthography to phonology. Originally published in 1985, this book provides new evidence about the diverse manifestations of surface dyslexia in adult neurological patients and in children with developmental disorders of reading. The data are drawn from speakers of a range of languages with distinct orthographies. Process models for the pronunciation of print are elaborated, and an appendix gives neurological information on the patients reported.
