Delayed speech and language development is a condition in which children who are developing speech and language are not able to understand and express themselves with speech symbols and communicate with others in daily life in the same way as normal children for the expected period of time due to various reasons. It is the most common childhood language development problem.
I. Etiology
1. Visual impairment
Congenital blindness is a result of blocked visual afferents and impairment of visual perception, visual association and visual memory of external objects, which affects the basic conceptual understanding of children’s language development and leads to delayed language development.
2.Hearing impairment
Congenital hearing loss affects the input of auditory language information, resulting in deafness and mute. Depending on the type and degree of hearing loss, clinical manifestations vary (see the section on auditory language disorders for details).
3.Autism
These children are significantly behind their peers in language development, often making screeching sounds or meaningless self-talk, deaf to verbal commands, or appearing to have reactive language. They often reverse pronouns such as “you” and “I” and say “your” as “my ” “I want” to say “you want”, lack of general conversation when a question and answer, a mutual exchange of characteristics, often appear to answer the wrong question, or answer is not the main point, the tone of a single, tone and rhythm lack of There is a lack of variation in tone and rhythm, and a lack of emotional expression. Severe cases of autism have no oral communication for life.
4. Mental retardation
The child’s language development depends on the level and nature of his or her intellectual development. Usually, language development starts late, develops slowly, and reaches a low level. Oral comprehension, verbal expression, and prosody are all delayed compared to normal children. When they are able to speak, they often have difficulty expressing their thoughts and requests, and their speech lacks organization and coherence, and is incoherent, making it impossible for people to understand the meaning of their language. In addition, inaccurate pronunciation and slurred speech is another prominent feature of their speech, which is due to the low ability of hearing and speech discrimination of children with mental retardation, as well as the defective movement of the organ of construction, which affects the accuracy of pronunciation, and the incidence of stuttering is higher than normal children.
5.Abnormal morphology of articulatory organs (congenital cleft lip and palate).
6, abnormal motor function (such as traumatic brain injury, encephalitis sequelae, cerebral palsy, etc. affect the composition movement).
7.Language – speech environment deprivation.
8.Specific language-speech developmental disorders.
9.Bilingual environment.
II. Diagnosis
The criteria for language delay are generally defined as language development that lags behind the actual age level by more than six months and involves.
1. delays in verbal expression.
2. delay in communication skills.
3. delay in the level of comprehension of things or spoken language. A language proficiency assessment is required, and the speech therapist will further analyze the results and make a diagnosis.
III. Treatment
Children diagnosed with a speech delay require specialized speech therapy. This can be done in a hospital where speech therapy is conducted, or in some specialized special education institutions for training. A professional speech therapist will develop a training plan based on a specific analysis of the child’s condition, assessment results and family environment. A combination of individualized training and group therapy is usually used. Most children require long-term rehabilitation.