Abstract
For a period of over a year 42 children with retarded deve lopment of speech in whom neither hearing impairment nor marked mental retardation was initially detected were observed for their natural progress of speech and language development, and the following results were obtained:
1) Natural progress of retarded speech development was poorer in the children with a prolonged delay of unsupported walking than in the children with normal begining of walking.
2) Out of a total of 42 children 4 had been diagnosed earler as so-called “audimutitas” These children with audimutitas had not only extremely poor progress of speech and language development, but also various neurological impairments; such as severe articulatory apraxia, developmental apraxia, slight nerve deafness and slight mental defficiency associated with severe language retardation. According to this fact it was concluded that so-called audimutitas is not an isolated speech disorder but a group of severe developmental speech and language disorders showing aphasic syndrome.
