Children with developmental specific disorder of linguistic semantic processing

Abstract

    Neuropsychologycal evaluations were performed in 15 children who were suspected to have a disorder in the process of comprehending linguistic meaning. Regional cerebral blood flow (r-CBF) was also studied. These children had low scores on the linguistic tests compared with normal children of the same age. Although they could understand non-linguistic meaning, they had difficulty in understanding linguistic meaning. The disorder involved both auditory and visual processes. Even if these children could repeat verbal information and read aloud relatively well, they could not understand the meaning of what was spoken or read. It was thought that there was a discrepancy between phonological and semantic ability. A common decrease lesion of r-CBF to each case was the left temporal lobe that was known to cause the semantic disorder in acquired adult aphasia.