Acquired epileptic aphasia (AEA, or Landau-Kleffner syndrome) is a unique condition in which children can lose oral language (OL) comprehension and expression for a prolonged period. These children can benefit from visual forms of language, mainly sign language (SL), but the quality of SL has never been analyzed. The case is reported here of a boy with AEA who lost speech comprehension and expression from 3 years 6 months to 7 years and was educated in SL from the age of 6 years. His SL was evaluated at the age of 13 years and 6 months and compared with a control child with congenital sensorineural deafness. It was found that: (1) our patient achieved the same proficiency in SL as the control child with deafness; (2) SL learning did not compete with, but perhaps even hastened, the recovery of OL. Intact ability to learn a new linguistic code such as SL suggests that higher-order language areas were preserved and received input from a separate visual route, as shown by neuropsychological and functional imaging research in deaf and hearing signers.
Reflection focuses on the role of the speech therapist in charge of deaf children in a blingual education. Our hypothesis is that, if the deaf child can develop linguistics skills in a first accessible language, he’ll reach more easily the second language (in this text to written French). Our article is based on our experience and on different studies to analyse which are the abilities required to develop written language. Our argument is also based on the observation that speech therapy and more generaly education of the deaf child is rarely truly bilingual. Subsequent questions are to define which are or should be the place and role of sign language in the deaf child’s education and what are the tools professionals (and more specifically speech therapists) can use to develop this first language’s skills.
Acquired epileptic aphasia (AEA, or Landau‐Kleffner syndrome) is a unique condition in which children can lose oral language (OL) comprehension and expression for a prolonged period. These children can benefit from visual forms of language, mainly sign language (SL), but the quality of SL has never been analyzed. The case is reported here of a boy with AEA who lost speech comprehension and expression from 3 years 6 months to 7 years and was educated in SL from the age of 6 years. His SL was evaluated at the age of 13 years and 6 months and compared with a control child with congenital sensorineural deafness. It was found that: (1) our patient achieved the same proficiency in SL as the control child with deafness; (2) SL learning did not compete with, but perhaps even hastened, the recovery of OL. Intact ability to learn a new linguistic code such as SL suggests that higher‐order language areas were preserved and received input from a separate visual route, as shown by neuropsychological and functional imaging research in deaf and hearing signers.
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