Language Impairment in Children.

Language impairment is a group of conditions characterized by the late appearance or slow development of language in children who do not have sensory, motor, emotional, or general intellectual deficits that might be considered basic to their difficulties (Weiner, 1974). These conditions, first described in the literature of the nine teenth century (Gall, 1835; Vaisse, 1866), are often seen in children who are suspected of having some minimal degree of cerebral damage although such damage is often not revealed by neurological exam ination (Benton, 1964). Bilateral cerebral damage is often postulated since the language development of these children is much slower than that of children suffering from unilateral damage as a conse quence of cerebral insult to the language-dominant (usually left) hemisphere (Goodglass & Geschwind, 1976),1 Available evidence suggests that across time language impaired children continue to exhibit difficulties, at least through childhood (deAjuriaguerra, Jaeggi, Guignard, Kocher, Maquard, Roth, & Schmid, 1965; Weiner, 1972; Wolpaw & Nation, Note 1) and into adolescence (Morley, 1973; Weiner, 1974). A number of terms have been used to refer to language impaired