[Specific delays of language development in special education students]

The frequencies of specific language retardation and deficits in short term memory span are the subject of this epidemiological investigation of children attending the first grade of a special school for educationally subnormal children in Erlangen and München/Rosenheim. The children at the mean age of seven were examined according to the "Multi-axial Classification of Child Psychiatric Disorders". The following prevalences were found: 16 children (21%) of the sample from Erlangen and 24 children (33%) of the sample from München/Rosenheim had an specific language retardation, in both sample the most frequent disorders were retardations of the expressive language (11% and 21%). In both sample most children had substantially deficits in the acoustic short term memory span, while they were better on visual short term memory span. Significant correlations between acoustic short term memory span and specific language retardations were found.