The study of communication impairment has, up until now, failed to include the influence of both social and health psychology in its core understanding of the problem. The discipline of neuropsychology has given remarkable insights into language impairments, yet we have little knowledge about what influences the behaviour of people with language impairments. This book is intended to redress the balance, in order to recognise the importance of social behaviour in the complexity of the communication problem, by exploring the aspects of social and health psychology which are relevant to the communicatively impaired speaker and looking at ways in which we can understand their predicament more fully.

>Shelagh Brumfitt, University of Sheffield, UK.