A Mediational Point of View

It is the internalization of overt action that makes thought, and particularly the internalization of external dialogue that brings the powerful tool of language to bear on the stream of thought and if neither hand nor intellect alone prevails, the tools and aids that do are the developing streams of internalized language and conceptual thought that sometimes run parallel and sometimes merge, each affecting the other. - -Vygotsky (1962)

This issue of Topics in Language Disorders (TLD), coordinated by Issue Editors Drs. Hagstrom and Shadden, will bring readers to an exciting exploration of the new work by researchers and clinicians in a number of disciplines such as psychology, psycholinguistics, speech-language pathology, child development, etc. As the issue editors note, they present information from a number of perspectives but leave it to the readers to select their own approaches. To set the stage, their Foreword identifies the paths to understanding the utility of a broader view of helping clients, child or adult, from the framework of the identity process.

After reading this issue in its initial stages of development by the authors, I took the opportunity to read once more Vygotsky's Thought and Language (see above), paying attention to Jerome S. Bruner's Introduction in which he points out that Vygotsky was born in 1896 and that his work in psychology began in 1924, with Luria and Leontyev as collaborators. In his work he took issue with Jean Piaget, and others. His work was suppressed in Russia and did not reappear until 1956. He died in 1934 of tuberculosis and Thought and Language was published posthumously in 1934. However, this reader found much of current interest in 2004.

Because treatment of stuttering is presented as an identity issue in this volume, I scanned a publication in which Van Riper addressed fluency problems in both children and adults in the year 1955. Calling speech a safety valve for the emotions, he speaks to the "troubles of adults who have yet to learn to talk themselves out of the tangles of their frustrations but by using verbal catharsis they discover not only the fine calmness which follows such verbal release, but more important still, solutions for the problems which had previously seemed insoluble" (Van Riper & Butler, 1955, pp. 141-142). Van Riper suggests that all children can be helped to build better barriers to the influences that destroy fluency, for example, interruptions, hurry, competition for the listener's ear, loss of a listener, noise, or unfavorable reaction by the listener. He recommended desensitization procedures (Van Riper & Butler, 1955, pp. 108-109).

To bring a forword look to this forword issue, it seemed appropriate to explore a bit outside our human communication and disorders view. It soon became apparent that there is much available. For example, those SLPs who provide therapy to middle school and high schoolers may wish to explore the influence of their emerging gender identity on the students' psychological well-being (see Yunger, Carver, & Perry, 2004). These authors provide new research findings regarding advances being made on gender identity on cognitive development. For those readers who wish to learn more about assessment and intervention, a resource is found in Liben and Bigler's monograph published in 2002. Read on and find out how OATS and COATS can assist you.

Jerome Bruner, who wrote the Introduction to Thought and Language (1962, p. x) notes that it is Vygotsky's mediational point of view that infuses cognitive processing and higher order concepts and a developmental theory that reflects one of many roads to individuality.

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