Defects of Non-Verbal Auditory Perception in Children with Developmental Aphasia

SOME otherwise normal children fail to learn to speak and are designated developmental aphasics. Several authors have suggested that auditory perceptual deficits, particularly of sequencing, may be the primary dysfunction 1–4 . Efron 5 suggested that the left temporal lobe mediates temporal analysis and that it is the disruption of this function which is central to adult aphasia. We examined children with developmental aphasia and demonstrated inferior discrimination of sound quality to which a sequencing difficulty could be secondary.