Treatment as a tool for investigating cognition

Lyndsey Nickels is a speech pathologist and Research Professor at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her research uses the cognitive neuropsychological approach to focus on developing theories of language processing, understanding language impairments, and evaluating their treatment.　 Saskia Kohnen is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Cognitive Science, and Clinical Director of the Macquarie Cognition Clinic for Reading, at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her current research is focused on reading and spelling assessment, and interventions for children and adults.　 Brenda Rapp is a Professor in Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, and editor-in-chief of the journal Cognitive Neuropsychology. Her research focus is on understanding the cognitive and neural bases of written language processing.

Introduction: Challenges in the use of treatment to investigate cognition 1. Can verbal working memory training improve reading? 2. Intervening to alleviate word-finding difficulties in children: case series data and a computational modelling foundation 3. The nature of facilitation and interference in the multilingual language system: insights from treatment in a case of trilingual aphasia 4. Training-induced improvement of noncanonical sentence production does not generalize to comprehension: evidence for modality-specific processes 5. Rule-based learning of regular past tense in children with specific language impairment