ACQ Vol 10 No 1 2008

two parent groups would show a similar profile of communi­ cation abilities and disabilities. The study recruited three parent groups: 30 parents of children with autism, 30 parents of children with SLI, and 30 parents of typically developing children. The participants were administered a range of linguistic, memory and literacy tasks, as well as a checklist that examined pragmatic language ability. Both the autism and SLI parent groups were found to have communicative deficits – a result that once again highlights the genetic component of both disorders. However, the two groups displayed a different pattern of communicative abilities and disabilities. The parents of children with SLI performed poorly on the linguistic, memory and literacy tasks, but showed no difficulties with pragmatic language. The reverse was true for the autism parent group: they had good performance on the linguistic, memory and literacy tasks, but experienced difficulties with some aspects of pragmatic language. The “double dissociation” between linguistic per­ formance and social communication ability suggests that SLI and autism may result from a different underlying genetic cause. Syntactic processing in aphasia Caplan, D., Waters, G., DeDe, G., Michaud, J., & Reddy, A. (2007). A study of syntactic processing in aphasia I:

Behavioural (psycholinguistic) aspects. Brain and Language , 101 , 103–150. This study examined syntactic comprehension in a large group of patients with aphasia secondary to left hemisphere stroke. The authors sought to investigate two main views of why aphasic individuals have difficulties with syntactic compre­ hension. The first view suggests that these impairments result from specific deficits in parsing, while the second view maintains that a reduction in cognitive resources disrupts comprehension. Forty-two participants with aphasia and 25 healthy adults completed five tests of syntactic processing. Cognitive load – the number of mental operations required to successfully complete a task – increased across the various tests. The behavioural data was then subject to individual and group data analysis. As expected, general proficiency in the tasks was reduced for the patients with aphasia compared to the healthy adults. There was considerable variability in the performance of the aphasic patients, and, for the most part, these individuals did not show a stable pattern of errors for any task. However, there was a trend for the aphasic group to make more errors in syntactic processing as the cognitive load increased. This finding supports the view that syntactic comprehension is impaired because there is a reduction in cognitive resources available to process multiple mental operations.

Speech Pathology Australia National Employment Register is now available on the website www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au This member-only service assists speech pathologists to find employment. Members seeking employment can choose to have their contact details uploaded onto the website or alternatively view the list of vacant positions on the ‘Job Board’. Employers can choose to advertise vacant speech pathology positions on the ‘Job Board’ which members can then access and apply for. This free of charge service aims to assist members seeking employment. We would also recommend you seek other sources when looking for employment. Forms for completion can be downloaded from the website if you wish to use this service at any time in the future. For more information see the Association’s website or contact National Office.

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S peech P athology A ustralia