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Working Group 37 Psychology and Linguistics: Research and Practice (2020–)
Working Group 37 Psychology and Linguistics: Research and Practice (2020–)
Working Group 37 Psychology and Linguistics: Research and Practice (2020–)
In all types of therapy―and especially in psychotherapy―an essential precondition for success is functional communication between therapist and client. Functional communication is also crucial for establishing a therapeutic relationship. This requires an understanding of how patients use and process language.
As communication is not only the basis for therapy but also for social interaction of any kind, speech and language disorders as well as dysfunctional communication in general frequently result in mental stress. Conversely, some of these mental problems can lead to social-communicative deficits. Psychology therefore also has an important part to play in language therapy, thus suggesting an urgent need for training language therapists in psychology.
This points to a significant intersection between (clinical) psychology and (clinical) linguistics, which is the focus of this working group. The working group provides a platform for exchange between linguists, speech therapists, speech scientists, and psychologists. It also offers the opportunity to discuss new approaches to research in these fields. Specific topics of current interest are research on the voice (esp. prosody) in psychotherapy, speech disorders in the context of psychiatric disorders, and practical workshops on conversation techniques in speech therapy.