Language breakdown and recovery in a child with an acquired epileptic aphasia

A longitudinal linguistic analysis of a 6-year-old boy (GA) with an acquire d epileptic aphasia ("Landau-Kleffner Syndrome"; LKS) was conducted to dete rmine in what ways language breakdown and recovery occur. Language comprehe nsion and production at the syllabic, phonemic, lexical, and morphosyntacti c levels were assessed shortly before, during the acute phase of the illnes s, and at recovery, which was very rapid. Results show that in the acute ph ase, GA presented not only an auditory agnosia for speech and nonspeech sou nds but also provided strong evidence that in production, prosody and speec h processing were impaired. (C) 1999 Academic Press.