Introduction to Communication Disorders

About our authors Robert E. Owens, Jr., Ph.D. ("Dr. Bob") is a Retired Professor at the College of St. Rose in Albany, New York, and a New York State Distinguished Teaching Professor. He holds Honors from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and the New York Speech-Language-Hearing Association. He is the author of Language Development, An Introduction (10 editions); Language Disorders, A Functional Approach (7 editions); Early Communication Intervention; Program for the Acquisition of Language with the Severely Impaired (PALS); Help Your Baby Talk, Introducing the New Shared Communication Method; and Queer Kids, The Challenge & Promise for Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual Youth. His Language Development text is the most widely used in the world and has been translated into Spanish, Korean, Mandarin, and Arabic. His latest project is SUGAR (Sampling Utterance and Grammatical Analysis Revised), a free, valid, easy, quick language sample analysis method that he has coauthored with Stacey Pavelko, Ph.D. Dr. Bob has presented over 230 professional papers and workshops around the globe. His professional interests are language disorders in infants, toddlers, and preschoolers who are also some of his best friends. And he's a gran'pa!

Kimberly A. Farinella, Ph.D., CCC-SLP is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Northern Arizona University, where she teaches Motor Speech Disorders at the graduate level and Speech Science at the undergraduate level. She also serves as Clinic Director of the Northern Arizona University Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic and supervises graduate student clinicians with pediatric and adult clients with various speech sound disorders of neurological origin. She has presented nationally on the differential diagnosis and treatment of children with severe speech sound disorders. Dr. Farinella completed her doctoral training at the University of Arizona and her post-doctoral fellowship in the Division of Speech Pathology, Department of Neurology, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Her research interests include treatment efficacy for childhood apraxia of speech, interprofessional practice, and the systematic study of the principles of motor learning.