[Early auditory evoked potentials in children with language development disorders]

One of the prerequisites for normal language development is a highly sensitive auditory perception. An auditory perception deficit is therefore likely to affect the normal course of language acquisition. To test this hypothesis, we studied the BAEPs in 25 preschool boys with an expressive developmental language disorder and 12 boys with a history of stuttering. These children had no hearing disorders. Comparisons with the control group (49 neurologically healthy male subjects with normal hearing) revealed a statistically significant delay of waves III, IV and V in the language impaired subjects, whereas no significant differences were detected in the group of stutterers. Our findings suggest that a delayed or altered conduction of acoustic stimuli is important to the pathogenesis of developmental language disorders.