Language Development and Language Disorders in Children and Adolescents

The first part of this chapter will provide an overview of the authors’ orientation; this will be followed by a second part on normal language development and then by a third part on language disorders. Thus the discussion of language disorders is the ultimate goal of this chapter. “Language-affecting disorders” would be a better, though more cumbersome term—it connotes the disturbance of the language function while avoiding the issue of primacy of affected modality. The emphasis is meant to be on the factor “disorders,” as they appear to a professional involving the patients he or she sees. The disorders discussed will include “mental” and “physical” language disorders; the focus will be on the kind of background knowledge, information, and viewpoint that would benefit a clinician in trying to understand a patient’s language as a given part of behavior and as a clue to many aspects of functioning and of organization. Any clinician—speech pathologist, special educator, internist—must know of the many factors (biological, psychological, and social) that may combine to produce a symptom or syndrome. The language of the patient’s presentation may be a central focus or may be something on the periphery of the patient’s main problem, much as high blood pressure may be an idiopathic disease entity or a sign of nephritis, or learning disability may be a syndrome or one sign of schizophrenia.