Childhood Language Disorders and Hypotheses in Psycholinguistics Neurolinguistics

Why do childhood aphasias tend to be characterized by rapid and complete recovery of verbal communication, whereas in Landau-Kleffner syndrome and expressive alalia, verbal communication may remain underdeveloped? Why is brain plasticity ineffective in the case of these syndromes? The first part of the book is devoted to finding answers to these questions. The book discusses the influence of the nature of brain lesions (structural damage to the brain and dysfunction of specific brain regions) on the course and outcome of childhood language syndromes. The concept that the language system can be disrupted in two distinct ways-with focal and dysfunctional syndromes exhibiting different age-related sensitivities-helps explain the persistence of alalia in contrast to early structural brain damage. In the second part of the book, the syndrome of impressive (sensory) alalia (F80.2 ICD-10) is analyzed from the perspective of neurolinguistic theory, in light of concepts regarding the duality of the language process (implicit competence and metalinguistic knowledge).