Recent Advances in Language and Communication

Language ability is not only universal, but of vast potential, and related to numerous other cognitive and social functions. This book explores individual language process development and how it proceeds in a very predictable manner, parallel to specific areas of brain development. The authors' acquaint the reader with the current debate on the prevalence of oral and written linguistic difficulties as a precursor of Specific Learning Difficulties (SLD). The difficulties in verb/action processing found in patients with Parkinson's disease are discussed as well. The inferential abilities of children with Specific Language Impairments (SLI) are also reviewed. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) and its effects on communication are explored in Chapter 6. The authors' findings suggest that communication difficulty persist for years after injury, independent from other cognitive abilities. In later chapters, the authors examine atypical language development and psychopathological risk. The remaining chapters review nonverbal behavior and its importance in objectifying and verifying the diagnosis of mental disorders, if any; the communication challenges for the deaf (and applications that can help impaired people in some aspects of their life); and finally, the importance of segmental duration -- a very important component of a text-to-speech (TTS) system in order to produce high quality synthetic speech which sounds natural.