Developmental Language Delay

Symptoms: 
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• ​Reduced babble, vocalizations, and consonant-vowel repertoire.
• Lack of willingness/inability to imitate.
• Inconsistent speech patterns: able to clearly produce some words spontaneously but unable to produce the same sounds in other words or phrases.
• Few or no speech errors on familiar, automatic utterances (e.g., thank you).
• Frequent errors on longer, more complex utterances.
  
• Unusually equal stress and pauses across words.
  
• Normal IQ, receptive language, muscle tone, and sensory profile.
  
  

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​Treatment: 
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A speech-language pathologist would work alongside a caregiver to help a child learn to imitate and acquire new sound patterns of increasing length and complexity.  Instruction in appropriate prosody (i.e., stress, rhythm, intonation) may also be indicated. Research has yet to definitively conclude whether the basis of the disorder is motor or linguistic; therefore, elements of both treatment approaches are incorporated as deemed necessary.