
the speech and language abilities of
emotionally disturbed children
the speech and language disorders of
these severely disturbed children can be
divided into two categories which relate
to the type of psychiatric disturbance.
the autistic-schizophrenic children used
bizarre forms of language or did not use
communicative language at all.  the non-
autistic-schizophrenic, the neurotic, the
primary behaviour disorder, and the
minimally brain-damaged children as a
group, had similar speech and language
problems to normal children but of a
more severe and frequent nature.  their
problems were predominantly in the
areas of speech and language develop-
ment, articulation, rate of speech and
fluency.  the children with primary be-
haviour disorders had the more severe
speech and language problems.
