Author Biography:
Anu Klippi, Ph.D., speech and language therapist is a professor of logopedics and head of the Department of Speech Sciences at the University of Helsinki. She is the author of Conversation as an Achievement in Aphasics (1996). She has published a number of scholarly articles on the different fields of logopedics, on the methodological questions of the research of logopedics, and on the training of speech and language therapists. Her principal interests are communication and interaction with people with communication disorders, and especially with people with aphasia and with dementia. In particular, the question concerning the relationship between verbal and nonverbal behaviour, as well as the question of the capacity of nonverbal behaviour to convey meanings in conversation, has been elucidated in her study.

Kaisa Launonen, Ph.D., is a speech and language therapist, and a professor of logopedics at the Department of Speech Sciences in the University of Helsinki. Her doctoral thesis (1998, in Finnish) dealt with development, application and long-term effects of an Early Signing Programme in the early intervention of children with Down syndrome. She is the leading researcher in Finland in the field of augmentative and alternative communication where her principal interests are in developmental issues and in people with the most severe communication challenges. She has active research collaboration also in the international field of AAC where she has contributed to several edited publications. Her other interests cover early interaction and communication development, as well as ethical issues in communication intervention, professional ethics of speech and language therapists, and research ethics.