Evoked Auditory Potentials and Developmental Speech Disorders

Overview

The author analyses the role of auditory perception of children suffering fromdevelopmental speech disorders (developmental language disorder - DLD) by using auditory evokedpotentials to clarify the relationship between disorder of speech comprehension and temporalprocessing. Diagnostic categories of interest are DLD, more commonly known in our country asdevelopmental dysphasia and dysarthria. Children with country as developmental dysphasia havemaximum difficulties in processing of the speech signal - auditory decoding deficit. This deficit inphonological processing has been suggested to be one of the basic underlying problems. Childrenwith developmental dysarthria have specific articulation disorders without a cognitive deficit.Results: BAEP (brain stem auditory evoked potential) - a statistically significant difference betweenthe values of latencies of wave V was found in children with dysarthria, in comparison of right a andleft stimulated ears. In these children we assume a lesion in the subcortical region while in childrenwith developmental dysphasia we suppose a more central localization of the time delay, i.e. in thecortical region. LAEP (long latency auditory evoked potential) were studied in children withdevelopmental dysphasia. When comparing the results after tonal and verbal stimulation at the left sidea statistically significant difference was found: the latencies of wave P3 to verbal stimuli were longer onthe left side compared to tonal stimuli and to control. Latency differences may be related to a commontiming deficit in developmental speech disorders. These results confirm disorders of temporal processing.

Key words:
developmental speech disorder, temporal processing, auditory evoked potentials.