Developmental Language Learning Impairments

It is estimated that for every 1000 3-year-old children, approximately 50 to 100 will have some form of language disorder. Of these, approximately 20 to 30 are severely impaired; that is, their language age is less than two-thirds their chronological age. Longitudinal studies have shown that these children are at very high risk for developing subsequent language-based learning disabilities (dyslexia). Epidemiological research has shown that, unfortunately, almost 70% of these developmental language disorders go undiagnosed until the child begins to fail to learn to read, at which point they are diagnosed as a reading impairment.