Aphasia in Atypical Populations

Research in the field of aphasiology has concentrated on a limited sample of the population. The language representation theories put forth have systematically been based on the observation of subjects who were adult, monolingual, right-handed, using an alphabetic code, etc. Bilingual individuals, ideographic code users, and children, for example, were placed in separate categories, excluded from the typical aphasic population. This book analyzes whether there are data to support such an exclusionary approach or conversely whether these differences (eg. bilingualism vs. monolingualism) have little effect on language representation in the brain. The specific purpose of each chapter in this volume is to review the literature pertinent to each population and to try to deduce whether (and potentially how) these atypical populations are indeed different from something defined as the typical aphasic population in regard to language organization. The ultimate goal of this book is to better understand whether the language representation model used in aphasiology can be extended to these atypical populations, or conversely, whether significant differences merit the development of a new model.