Three hundred and eighty children were diagnosed as “delayed speech and language development” at our speech clinic in Kinki University Hospital from 1977 to 1989. To investigate the language abilities and the possible causal factors of these children as a group, medical records and speech and language records including case histories of each child were reviewed and statistically analyzed.
At the first referral,77 % of the children were under age 6, and 51% were between ages 2 1/2 and 4 1/2 years old. The incidence was higher for the boys than the girls at the ratio of three to one. The average onset of walking was 17 ± 8.0 months, and the average onset of speech was 20.5 ± 11.6 months. Seventy percent of the subjects were normal in their communicative manners,10% were autistic and 20% were in-between.
Language abilities were evaluated by using a five level scale, which was proposed by the Committee of Delayed Speech and Language Development in the Japanese Society of Logopedics and Phoniatrics. Abilities of receptive language and of expressive language were evaluated separately. In both abilities, more than one third of the subjects were evaluated at level 3, that is, the child points at the picture card when the object shown on each card is mentioned, or a child answers the name of the object or picture shown to him.
Seventy five percent of the subjects showed some kind of anomalies or deficiencies besides speech and language deficiencies. Mental retardation was seen in 43% of the subjects.
