Acquired aphasia in childhood: Case studies of five children

Abstract

This paper documents the recovery of five children with acquired aphasia from acute onset for 2 years. The children, who were aged between 6 and 15 years at onset, were regularly assessed using comprehensive language tests in order to establish detailed profiles of their recovery in relation to the presenting neurology. The neurological causes were strictly lateralized with the exception of one child with Landau-Kleffner syndrome. The battery of language tests used appeared to provide a comprehensive description of the original deficits and the recovery. Paraphasias were common in the recovery phase. There was evidence of persisting language processing difficulties in some children even when test results had shown a return to the normal range. Recovery, which could only be crudely related to the size of brain lesion and neurological deficit, was maximal in the first 3 months. The graphic presentation of this data in a standardized format is a useful method of cross-child comparison.