Brain, Behavior and Learning in Language and Reading Disorders - M. Mody, et al., (Guilford, 2008) WW

416 Pages·2008·2.32 MB·English

BRAIN, BEHAVIOR, AND LEARNING
IN LANGUAGE AND READING DISORDERS

CHALLENGES IN LANGUAGE AND LITERACY

Elaine R. Silliman and C. Addison Stone, Series Editors

Frame Work in Language and Literacy: How Theory Informs Practice
Judith Felson Duchan

Phonological Awareness: From Research to Practice
Gail T. Gillon

Handbook of Language and Literacy: Development and Disorders
C. Addison Stone, Elaine R. Silliman, Barbara J. Ehren, and Kenn Apel, Editors

Language and Literacy Learning in Schools
Elaine R. Silliman and Louise C. Wilkinson, Editors

Children’s Comprehension Problems in Oral and Written Language:
A Cognitive Perspective
Kate Cain and Jane Oakhill, Editors

Brain, Behavior, and Learning in Language and Reading Disorders
Maria Mody and Elaine R. Silliman, Editors

Brain, Behavior, and
Learning in Language
and Reading Disorders

Edited by

MARIA MODY and ELAINE R. SILLIMAN

Series Editor’s Note by C. Addison Stone

THE GUILFORD PRESS
New York
London

© 2008 The Guilford Press
A Division of Guilford Publications, Inc.
72 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012
www.guilford.com

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, translated, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording,
or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Last digit is print number:
9
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brain, Behavior, and Learning in Language and Reading Disorders / edited by
Maria Mody and Elaine R. Silliman.
p. ; cm. — (Challenges in language and literacy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59385-831-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Language disorders in children.
2. Language disorders.
3. Reading disability.
4. Neuropsychology.
I. Mody, Maria.
II. Silliman, Elaine R.
III. Series.
[DNLM: 1. Language Disorders—therapy.
2. Child.
3. Learning Disorders—therapy.
WL 340 L287596 2008]
RJ496.L35L3665 2008
618.92′855—dc22
2008010096

To my parents, who taught me to question
—M. M.

To Paul, whose patience makes all possible
—E. R. S.

About the Editors
About the Editors

About the Editors

Maria Mody, PhD, is a cognitive neuroscientist in the Department of Radi-
ology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School,
Boston, specializing in developmental disorders of reading and language.
She is a member of the faculty in the Health Sciences and Technology Pro-
gram at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and also
teaches in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at
Emerson College in Boston.
Dr. Mody uses a variety of neuroimaging methods, including func-
tional magnetic resonance imaging, magnetoencephalography, and electro-
encephalography, to examine the relationship between spoken language
and reading in normal and atypical development. Her work is supported by
funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Mental Illness and
Neuroscience Discovery Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is a
past Associate Editor of the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Re-
search, and has published in a variety of journals, including Neuropsy-
chologia, Journal of Phonetics, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,
and NeuroImage. Dr. Mody lectures widely, both nationally and interna-
tionally. Her work focuses on children with dyslexia, autism, and specific
language impairment.

Elaine R. Silliman, PhD, is Professor of Communication Sciences and Dis-
orders and Cognitive and Neural Sciences at the University of South
Florida in Tampa, Florida. She is a Fellow of the American Speech–Lan-
guage–Hearing Association (ASHA) and the International Academy for Re-
search on Learning Disabilities. She also holds the Honors of the New York
State Speech–Language–Hearing Association and the Distinguished Alumni

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Achievement Award from the Graduate Center of the City University of
New York.
Dr. Silliman is a past Editor of the ASHA journal Language, Speech,
and Hearing Services in Schools. Her research has appeared in a wide vari-
ety of journals, including Developmental Neuropsychology; Learning Dis-
abilities Research and Practice; Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in
Schools; and the American Journal of Speech–Language Pathology. She
also is the author or coauthor of 18 chapters and a coeditor of five books.
Dr. Silliman’s current research interests include the development of aca-
demic language proficiency in children who are struggling with reading,
writing, and spelling, including monolingual English-speaking students
with social dialect variations and bilingual (Spanish–English) students.

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About the Editors

Series Editor’s Note
Series Editor’s Note

Series Editor’s Note

I am pleased to present the sixth volume in The Guilford Press series
Challenges in Language and Literacy. In their introduction to this volume,
coeditors Maria Mody and Elaine Silliman characterize their goal as the
production of a book that “stimulate[s] new thinking about development
and disorders of language and reading.” The book certainly does this; how-
ever, it does much more. Like the best edited volumes, the editors ap-
proached their endeavor with a clear purpose in mind, and they go beyond
the simple presentation of recent work to provide a substantive contribu-
tion to the field.
In framing the book’s purpose, the editors argue that progress in our
understanding of typical and atypical development of oral and written lan-
guage has been constrained by two related factors. First, theorists have
failed to incorporate into their models the wide complexity and variations
that exist within and across groups of people. Second, there has been little
movement beyond the standard rhetoric of nature versus nurture toward a
more dynamic view of cognitive–linguistic behavior. Consequently, the edi-
tors argue, “efforts to understand disorders of higher cognition, such as
reading and language impairments, have become mired in oversimplistic
localizationist accounts of brain–behavior relationships or theories of envi-
ronmental constraints.”
To build their case for a more nuanced understanding of language and
literacy disorders, the editors have assembled a set of papers from promi-
nent scholars that facilitates the integration of current knowledge from cog-
nitive, neurolinguistic, and neuroimaging studies with analyses of differen-
tial response to experiential history and variation in outcome. The “big”
argument evident in the editors’ design for this book is the need to elabo-
rate a theory of the dynamic interplay of experience and neurocognitive
functioning in typical/atypical development. Included in this notion is the

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need to attend seriously to individual differences within the “typical” and
“atypical” populations (e.g., varying developmental trajectories for late
talkers) as we strive to develop a principled understanding of the dynamics
involved in the development and treatment response of individuals with
atypical language and literacy.
The editorial team brings a strong interdisciplinary background to the
present project. Both editors are prominent authorities in speech–language
pathology with particular expertise in developmental language and reading
disabilities. In addition, they bring rich experience in cognitive behavior
and neuroscience, particularly as applied to the study of the language–
reading interface. The book’s contributing authors are all recognized
experts representing a range of disciplinary perspectives on language and
literacy disabilities, including education, neuropsychology, developmental
psychology, cognitive science, behavioral genetics, pediatrics, and speech–
language pathology. Through thoughtful selection of authors and careful
orchestration of the manuscript preparation process, the editors have cre-
ated an unusually well-integrated edited volume. To further enhance this
integration, the editors provide useful bridging introductions to the various
sections, which highlight the common threads running through the chap-
ters. In addition, the editors have contributed a capstone chapter of their
own, which serves simultaneously as an encapsulation of major themes run-
ning through the volume and as a stimulating call for future work.
The present volume embodies many of the themes of the Challenges in
Language and Literacy series of which it is a part. The aim of the series is to
integrate interdisciplinary perspectives on language and literacy with empiri-
cally based programs and practices for promoting effective learning out-
comes in diverse students. The series is based on the premise that oral and
written language skills are functionally intertwined in individual develop-
ment. Understanding the complexity of this relationship requires the collabo-
rative contributions of scholars and practitioners from multiple disciplines.
The series focuses on typical and atypical language and literacy development
from the preschool years to young adulthood. Its goal is to provide informa-
tive, timely resources for a broad audience, including practitioners, academ-
ics, and students in the fields of language science and disorders, educational
psychology, general education, special education, and learning disabilities.
I am confident that this book will do what we have in mind for the en-
tire series, that is, stimulate the thinking and the practice of professionals
devoted to the integration of work on language and literacy in myriad set-
tings devoted to research and practice. The book is an important step for-
ward in the integration of disciplinary perspectives on the acquisition of
language and literacy.

C. ADDISON STONE

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Series Editor’s Note