ABSTRACT
Descriptions of the syndrome of disorders of language learning in children date back at least to the early 19th century. Gall (1825) was perhaps the first to describe children with poor understanding and use of speech and to differentiate them from the mentally retarded. The syndrome was referred to by early writers as "childhood aphasia" because of the supposed associations between deficits seen in children's language development and those observed in adults with specific neurological lesions. These writers distinguished between what they called congenital aphasia, a developmental difficulty in the acquisition of language, and acquired aphasia in childhood, a syndrome similar to that seen in adults with neurological traumas. Broadbent (1872) emphasized that acquired childhood aphasias were usually transient. This transience, which is noted by a variety of writers (summarized by Lennenberg, 1967), serves as a primary distinction between acquired aphasias, which have known points of onset and verifiable neurological correlates, and developmental disorders of language learning, which are recognized when the child fails to learn to speak normally but have no obvious point of onset or identifiable neurological basis.
