THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SPEECH RETARDED CHIRDREN

We studied the natural history of children who were suspected to be delayed in speech by mail questionnaire. We received answers for 155 cases out of which the boys outnum-bered the girls by 3 to 1. Out of the 155 cases, 69 % visited our clinic only once, 78% of the cases who visited were under three years old. At the time of study, seven children had hearing loss, and in 45 cases speech delay disappeared at a mean age of four years and nine months of age. Perinatal complications were more apparent in the speech re-tarded children than in the normal children who participated in the study. Key words: speech delay, prognosis. Although many children who appear to have delayed speech have visited our pediat-ric clinic in Hokkaido University Hospital, most of them have in time stopped coming to the clinic for observation. Naturally, a complete evaluation of speech delay involves screen-ing such children for neurological, otological, emotional and social problems on a more long term basis. Another drawback to our making a more comprehensive study of these children are the fact that at present there is no speech pathologist employed in the clinic. Thus to obtain more data on these children we studied the natural history of speech retard-ed children using the method of the mail questionnaire. MATERIALS AND METHODS The study group was comprised of 648 children who visited our clinic from 1968 to 1979 for diagnostic evaluation and treatment of delayed speech. Mailed to the children's parents, the questionnaire probed such questions as the existence of speech delay, the nor-malized age of improved children, the complications and the present diagnosis