[Speech production and speech comprehension of dysgrammatic speech of preschool children]

The language comprehension and production abilities of 15 preschool children with developmental language disorders (LD) (4;11 yrs.-7;1 yrs.) and 15 control children (3;8 yrs.-4;7 yrs.) were investigated. For this purpose a test consisting of 135 picture cards was devised. On the production task (plural and comparative forms) the majority of the LD children performed significantly poorer than the control children. The results of the comprehension tests (plural and comparative forms and short sentences) showed marked deficits for the majority of the LD children (11 of 15), especially (but not only) in the identification of single forms. These combined expressive-receptive deficits should be considered in an etiological concept of developmental dysphasia. It is discussed whether these deficits are indicative of far-reaching disorders in the processing of language.