Review of research on the clinical presentation of acquired childhood aphasia.

OBJECTIVE

The traditional description of the clinical picture of acquired childhood aphasia (ACA) claims that ACA is invariably nonfluent, that recovery of language disorder is rapid and complete, and that ACA commonly occurs after right hemisphere damage. However, since the late 1970s the publication of several case studies has led to reject this longstanding standard doctrine. This review, which concerns the revised insights into ACA, aims at making an inventory of the recently described aphasic symptomatologies and neuroradiological data.

METHODS

The literature on ACA with emphasis on the studies published since 1978.

RESULTS

Recent case studies show a great variety of aphasic symptomatologies including auditory comprehension disorders, paraphasias, neologisms, logorrhoea, jargon, impaired repetition abilities, and a host of linguistic deficits in reading and writing. Not only the typology of the aphasias but also the recently established clinicoradiological correlations appear to resemble those found in adults. Also, recovery from ACA shows to be less complete than previously thought.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings bear consequences as to theories on cerebral organization of language in childhood. It appears that already in infancy the two cerebral hemispheres are no equal substrate for language representation. Therefore, prognosis and final outcome of ACA are not uniformly favourable.