Developmental Aphasia Observed in a Department of Child Psychiatry

Recent experience in the Department of Psycho- logical Medicine, Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh, has shown that educational difficulties due to developmental aphasia were contributory aetiological factors in a wide variety of behaviour disorders. In the majority of patients the nature of the educational difficulties had not been recognized in time for them to obtain the maximum benefit from remedial teaching. In spite of increasing interest in the condition there still appears to be considerable delay in its diagnosis (Brain, 1955; Methven, 1955; Pearce, 1953; Morley, Court, Miller and Garside, 1955). As a result many children suffer from unnecessarily severe educational retardation and emotional stress. Yet we believe that the histories and findings on examination of the majority of patients constitute a very characteristic clinical syndrome which should be recognized at an early stage. In the present paper we review the findings in 78 children of average intelligence who showed no evidence of cerebral damage.