Partial imitation and partial sensory agnosia in mentally normal children with convulsive disorders

Mentally normal 6-9 year old children with or without convulsive disorders were examined using the procedures of the five soft signs (SS) selected from conventional soft neurological signs and Bergès' gesture imitation tasks. In comparisons of SS between the 60 children with convulsive disorders (CD group) and the 38 without (N group), the average number of SS detected in each case and the incidence ratio of the two signs--partial imitation (PI) and partial sensory agnosia (PSA)--were higher in the CD group than the N group. Examinations of relationships between age, IQ, error index (EI; an index taken from the Continuous Performance Test) and SS, and of correlations among the SS, found two kinds of SS: age-related and El-related signs. The former included right-left confusion, clumsiness and PI, which correlated with each other, while the latter included unstableness of lateral gazing and PSA, which did not correlate with each other. Even though several factors belonging to characteristics of convulsive disorders were evaluated concerning the presence or absence of PI and PSA, there was only one relationship: PSA was more common in children with febrile convulsions than in those with epilepsy. We speculated that PSA reflected an immaturity of the brain in children with febrile convulsions.