Familiarity and course of specific language impairment of 175 children

Aims: Specific language impairment (SLI) comprises speech and language deficiencies, which cannot be attributed to intellectual disability, hearing loss, organic brain disease, emotional disorders or low stimulating environment.

The heritibility of SLI has been demonstrated by a large number of researches.

In this study we have characterized 175 children with SLI with a focus on familiarity and the course of speech development.

Method: 175 children at the age of 3 to 6 years were included into this study. Personal and family history were recorded, a non-verbal intelligence test was performed (SON-R),

expressive and receptive vocabulary was measured by AWST-R and SETK. Furthermore grammar and phonology were assessed.

Results: 73% of the index patients were males, 41% had a family background of SLI, 43% of SLI and dyslexia and 5% with dyslexia.

1^st relatives have suffered from SLI in 46%, 2^nd relatives in 22% and 1^st and 2^nd relatives in 7%.

68% of the children had a vocabulary of less than 60 words and no sentence production (no syntax) at the age of 3 to 3 ½ years.

We noticed a rapid progress in speech development in the majority of children in the age of 4 to 4 ½ years, but with phonological and morphological deficits.

Despite of intensive treatments in due time 88% of the 5-years old and 63% of the 6-years old children still had SLI.

Conclusion: The observed familiarity and the pronounced therapy resistance support the assumption of genetic factors involved in the cause of SLI phenotype.

Phenotyping, course of disease and collected samples enables mapping of postulated generic factors by linking and association approaches.