Perception and comprehension of linguistic and affective prosody in children with Landau-Kleffner syndrome


Deok-Hee Kim-Dufor, Emmanuel Ferragne, Olivier Dufor, Corine Astésano and Jean-Luc Nespoulous, Laboratoire Jacques Lordat-OCTOGONE Université de Toulouse II Le Mirail

The present study investigated language outcomes in children with Landau-Kleffner syndrome compared with 7 to 8 year-old healthy children and healthy adults. We examined their capacity of understanding simple sentences using linguistic and affective prosodic cues and perceiving them. A battery of prosodic tests was elaborated and used for this study. Results revealed certain delayed language development or a different pattern of performance in participants with Landau-Kleffner syndrome. With more subjects tested in the future results from our battery of prosodic tests would allow us to better understand language development in child and it would be helpful for speech-language therapies.