Abstract
Summary
An enquiry into the prevalence and associations of disorders of speech and language in a large national sample of 7-year-old children taking part in the NCDS led to the definition of a group of 215 children (144 boys and 71 girls) with normal hearing but marked speech defects. These children were studied in depth in relation to social factors, perinatal experience, developmental history and school progress. The rest of the national sample was used as controls. The group as a whole came from lower-income homes and the children were later members of large families. They had been later in walking and talking, were more clumsy, had more visual defects and demonstrated more emotional disturbance than the controls. Their performance in reading, number work, copying-design and draw-a-man tests was below average. Provisional figures for the follow-up at 11 years showed that more than half of the children were attending special schools or receiving remedial teaching. Some suggestions for improved methods of identification, assessment, treatment and follow-up are offered.