J Korean Child Neurol Soc.  2009 May;17(1):50-57.

Speech Delay of Children with Mental Retardation

• Kim GN
• Lee KS
• Kim JY

Abstract

PURPOSE:The purposes of this paper are to analyse the degree of language delay according to the classification and the etiology of mental retardation and to assess the efficacy of language treatment in children who received language treatment.
METHODS
The number of the subjects for the research is 79. The subjects had been diagnosed as children of mental retardation after a language development test from the language treatment center of the Chungnam National University Hospital from January, 2003 to December, 2007. We gathered the data concerning their main complaints, their etiology of mental retardation, their results of a language development test and an intelligence test, and their results of language treatment.
RESULTS
The results of our analysis to the data are as follows: The distribution of mental retardation classified as mild, moderate, and severe is 51.9% of the subjects, 27.9% and 20.2% each. The etiology of mental retardation is distributed as postnatal(20.3%), prenatal(13.9%), prenatal(5.1%), and idiopathic(60.7%). According to the classification of mental retardation, receptive, expressive, and synthetic language show a significant difference. There is no significant difference in the etiology of mental retardation in statistics. Among 28 children taken a language test after language treatment, 14 mild mental retarded children made their language delay to be shortened by 19.9 months, 10 moderate mental retarded children made their language delay to be shortened by 7.2 months, and 4 severe mental retarded children reduced their language delay by 1.3 month.
CONCLUSION
The more severe mental retardation is, the longer language delay occurred. But there is no significant difference to language delay according to the etiology of mental retardation. After language treatment, mild mental retarded children show the remarkable shortening of language delay, while moderate and severe mental retarded children are slightly shortening. Therefore, it is thought that more active language treatment is needed to mild mental retarded children.

Keyword

Mental retardation; Language developmental disorders

MeSH Terms

Child
Humans
Intellectual Disability
Intelligence Tests
Language Development
Language Development Disorders
Language Tests