In recent decades, advances in medical research brought major changes in the understanding and management of mental retardation. Children with mental retardation may associate many somatic and psychiatric disturbances and also hearing impairment in 10% of cases. However, for children with mental retardation, a delay in speech will be noted. Many children have dyslalic speech and a reduced vocabulary. They understand basic speech, but they are not always accessible to more complex verbal expressions. Comorbidity with hearing loss will result in a more difficult language development in these children, requiring a collaborative team with psychiatrist, ENT specialist, psychologist, speech therapeut, with the earliest detection of sensory impairment and, as much as possible, adjusting it to allow the development to the maximum capacity of these children. It is necessary to apply early intervention, to stimulate individual available capacity by using specific psycho-pedagogical measures and appropriate treatments for correcting auditory difficulties.
PLOS Science Wednesday: Hi reddit, my name is Dr. Nina Kraus and I found preschoolers’ auditory language processing parallels early language development, which would allow for early intervention for language disorders – Ask Me Anything!