Williams Syndrome

In the last 20 years, Williams syndrome has captured the interest of large numbers of scientists and attracted considerable media attention in spite of its rarity (estimated at no more than one in 30,000 births). Those diagnosed display a unique pattern of behavioral, cognitive, and physical limitations and strengths with fascinating neurogenetic implications-a pattern that poses enormous challenges to their parents and caregivers. The authors, a specialist in learning disabilities and a developmental psychologist, review basic information about Williams syndrome, its medical conditions, paradoxical profile, and neurobiological mechanisms; and discuss distinctive features of the language and perceptual and motor performance of children and adults with the syndrome. Offering strategies for building on the first and dealing with the second, they describe typical aptitudes, such as social skills, curiosity, memory, and musicality; and behavioral problems, such as fears and anxieties, distractibility, impulsivity, poor adaptability, low frustration tolerance, and atypical activity. They examine differences between Williams syndrome and other developmental disorders, such as Down syndrome, Fragile X, Prader-Willi, ADHD, and autism, and similarities in its symptoms to those of anxiety disorder, simple phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and depression. They organize their problem-specific alternatives for treatment into five major categories, and summarize important points about characteristics and interventions in numerous helpful tables. Finally, they consider promising new directions for research, clinical intervention, education, and systems for care delivery. Throughout, they stress variations among individuals and subgroups in ability level, skills, talents, and problem severity; and emphasize the necessity of recognizing these components in planning treatment on an individual basis. Comprehensive and readable, Understanding Williams Syndrome: Behavioral Patterns and Interventions is an essential guide for all those professionally, scientifically, or personally involved with this so frequently misunderstood and underserved population-psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other mental health professionals; special educators, and vocational counselors; speech-language, physical, and occupational therapists; audiologists; physicians; and parents.

This unique, edited book bridges studies in language disorders and linguistic theory with timely contributions from leading scholars in language development. It presents an attempt to define Specific Language Impairment, relating it to children of normal and disordered language capabilities. The chapter presentations examine language development across a variety of populations of children, from those with Specific Language Impairment to second language learners. The contributors discuss criteria for the definition of SLI, compare and contrast SLI with profiles of children with other disorders and dialects, and offer a comprehensive look at the Whole Human Language, which ties together spoken and signed languages. Methodological concerns that affect the credibility and generalizability of the findings are discussed and controversies between opposing linguistic approaches to language acquisition are presented. The conceptual thread that gradually reveals itself as the chapters unfold is a theoretical issue of central importance to cognitive theory, as well as to our understanding of the biological correlates of language-it concerns the variability that linguistic competence can manifest in children under different biological conditions and life circumstances. Language Competence Across Populations: Toward a Definition of Specific Language Impairment is an essential volume for advanced students and scholars in linguistics and psychology who have an interest in language acquisition and language disorders, as well as for the clinical professionals dealing with children with language impairments.

Based on the Annual Symposium of the Jean Piaget Society, Biology and Knowledge Revisited focuses on the classic issue of the relationship between nature and nurture in cognitive and linguistic development, and their neurological substrates.