Psychiatric symptomatology in language-impaired children: a comparison

This paper reports a detailed comparison of two groups of children from the same psychiatric clinic, one with a delay in language development and an age- and sex-matched control group with no such delay. The language-delay group was highly likely to have either a diagnosis of mental retardation or infantile autism. Very few psychiatric symptoms occurred more frequently in the language-delay group than in the comparison group, and those that did were characteristic of retarded or autistic children. The language-delay group was more likely to have other developmental abnormalities, hearing impairment, and evidence of central nervous system dysfunction.