[Linguistic thinking disorders, dysphasia, and quality of life]

This study focuses on the nature and scope of thought disturbances in dysphasic children (age 6 to 10). It is a developmental and clinical study. The dysphasic child clearly manifests disturbances in language. These can be understood as disturbances of the linguistic "containers of thought". What impact do they have on the development of cognitive and affective experiences? A controlled study of logical operations involving reversibility and invariates shows some significant differences between dysphasic children and a matched group of non patient children. Findings, both, quantitative and qualitative, point to some specific difficulties in the acquisition of operative (in Piaget sense) structures of thought. Often regarded as "practical persons" dysphasic children manifest peculiar ways of integrating their affective experiences in a factual mode akin to alexithymia. Linguistic anomalies seem to be important elements of some complex "noeto linguistic" disturbances. Linguistic difficulties have a global impact on the quality of life of dysphasic children and need further investigation for developing relevant intervention programs.