Communicating with Normal and Retarded Children explores the way in which normal children acquire language and the mistakes they make. It aims to trace the common growth between professions in understanding of normal language development and the retarded person's language and to encourage research, particularly of an interdisciplinary kind. This book is organized into five main sections. The contributors provide different professional perspectives of how and why the mentally retarded get their communication wrong and what remedies can be applied. They also present their own research findings, often in little-explored areas or from a novel angle, and offer their opinion on the types and topics of research that should be carried out. This book will be of interest to academic and clinical psychologists, educators, linguists, advisors and tutors in nursing and social studies, child health doctors, psychiatrists, and a range of therapists.

Communicating with Normal and Retarded Children explores the way in which normal children acquire language and the mistakes they make. It aims to trace the common growth between professions in understanding of normal language development and the retarded person's language and to encourage research, particularly of an interdisciplinary kind.

The North Carolina State Legislature's mandate to Division TEACCH has three major components. First, to provide the most up-to-date and cost effective services possible for families with autistic or similar language impaired children; second, to conduct research aimed toward the better under standing of such devastating disorders; and third, to provide training for the professionals needed to pursue these goals. One element in achieving these aims is to hold annual conferences on topics of special importance to the under standing and treatment of autism and similar disorders. In addition to training professionals and parents on the most recent de velopments in each conference topic, we are publishing a series, Current Issues in Autism, based on these conferences. These books are not, however, simply the published proceedings of the conference papers. Instead, some chapters are expanded conference presentations, whereas others come from national and in ternational experts whose work is beyond the scope of the conference, but es sential in our attempt at comprehensive coverage of the conference theme. These volumes are intended to provide the most current knowledge and profes sional practice available to us at the time.

"This book contains research into the cognitive phenomenon of 'joint attention'. Philosophical and psychological perspectives on the nature and significance of this phenomenon are examined"--Provided by publisher.

Written by therapists experienced in working with nonspeaking clients and their families, this helpful book includes many issues pertinent to the assessment and training of augmented communicators. The field of augmentative communication, which is rapidly gaining recognition in all areas of rehabilitation, is thoroughly addressed here. A summary of the prerequisites for implementing a communication system will be particularly useful to anyone working with nonspeaking clients who do not yet have a method of communication. Included among the topics are assessing cognitive function in clients unable to take intelligence tests in standardized fashion, finding a match between the motor capabilities of the client and the motor demands of various aided and unaided communication systems, and promoting the involvement of the family in the development of a communication system. This indispensable resource also offers information about publication, equipment vendors, and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), the primary leader in augmentative communication.

Information analysis centers were developed to help the scientist and practitioner cope with the ever increasing mass of published and unpublished information in a specific field. Their establishment resulted from a further extension of those pressures that had brought about the formation of the specialized primary journal and the abstracting services at the turn of the century. The information analysis center concept was greatly advanced by the 1963 report of the President's Science Advisory Committee Panel on Science Information. This report stated: " . . . scientific interpreters who can collect relevant data, review a field, and distill information in a manner that goes to the heart of a technical situation are more help to the overburdened specialist than is a mere pile of relevant docu ments. " Such specialized information centers are operated in closest possible contact with working scientists in the field. These centers not only furnish information about ongoing research and dis seminate and retrieve information but also create new information and develop new methods of infor mation analysis, synthesis, and dissemination. The continually expanding biomedical literature produced by scientists from the world's laboratories, research centers, and medical centers led the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke in 1964 to initiate a National Neurological Information Network of specialized centers for neurological information. The Centers are designed to bring under control and to promote ready access to important segments of the literature.