[Comparative study of the structural gramatical performance in dyslalic and dysphasic children]

The comparative performance in the repetition of a set of sentences was investigated in 8 children with developmental aphasia, average 5-7 years and 8 dyslalic ones, average 5-3 years. None presented any hard neurological signs. A battery of sentences was devised for repetition purpose and used as stimulus. Production proved to be less advanced in the group of children with developmental aphasia characterized as follows: highly systematic reduction of the models, lack of consistency in the substitutions both on the phonetic and the lexical levels ill-formed constructions in certain types of structures, high percentage of omission of function words. The dyslalic children's performance however proved to be more advanced and the subjects reproduced well-formed sentences in every single sentence regardless of the sentence length or type. The test devised might turn out to be helpful in practice for the correct diagnosis between patients with developmental aphasia and children with multiple and complex dyslalias.