Cognitive Neuropsychological Approaches to the Treatment of Language Disorders

Cognitive neuropsychology is a field of study in which disorders of cognition are evaluated and interpreted from the perspective of models of Normal Cognitive Function. The Goal Is To Offer Theoretically Motivated explanations of what has gone wrong and what remains intact in the multi- Component Mental System. Rehabilitation Efforts Motivated From This perspective attempt to characterize patients' deficits with reference to a normal model; therapy is designed on the basis of hypotheses about the nature of the underlying disorder.
Cognitive neuropsychological treatment studies have generated interest from researchers and clinicians alike. Researchers have found that data from treatment studies can contribute important information to the cognitive model what is used to guide the treatment by allowing investigations of symptom associations/dissociations as performance changes over time. Clinicians have found this approach useful for predicting patterns of generalization to untreated functions, and for identifying patients who are likely to respond to specific interventions.
This volume reports six original treatment studies carried out from this perspective, targeting symptoms of word retrieval, sentence comprehension, reading aloud and written spelling. An introduction to this approach, with a summary of contributions, is also provided.