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Language Disabilities

ormation Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities (2000), the cause is often unknown. However, conditions cited include autism, mental retardation, cerebral palsy, hearing loss, neurological disorders, brain injury, drug abuse, and physical impairments such as cleft lip or palate.

In a study of the psychiatric and behavioral characteristics of several hundred children showing signs of language difficulties at an early age, Cantwell and Baker (1980) found that those showing evidence of delayed language acquisition tended to be found either mentally retarded or autistic. More than half of those who had acquired language but exhibited other symptoms of neuropsychiatric dysfunction tended to be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. However, an extra problem of diagnosis has been asserted in the case of language disorders, which are more difficult to identify than such conditions as Down syndrome and mental retardation (Freedman, 1995).

Autism is marked by an absence of, deviation from, or developmental delay in the acquisition of linguistic speech plus an absence of nonverbal communication cues. Autistics who fail to acquire language by the age of six are unlikely to do so at any time during life, and those who acquire words but not sentences during that period are likely never to develop linguistic communication skills (Williams, 1990). Although symptoms of autism, such as impaired language, may decline or disappear as the child moves into adolescence, social impairments such as failure to communicate effectively may not necessarily disappear (LeCouteur, et al., 1996). In a comparative study of normal preschoolers and adolescent autistics, it was found the former group could better track a conversation and pay attention to the people talking than the latter. Indeed, the autistic adolescents did not even appear to understand the concept of a conversation or adopt a consciously observant attitude toward the emotional conten...

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Language Disabilities. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 06:22, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1683101.html