A longitudinal linguistic analysis of aphasic disorder in a 15-year-old boy affected
by Landau-Kleffner syndrome followed since the age of 6 is reported. The phonological,
morphosyntactic and lexical levels of verbal deficits have been evaluated by means
of collected samples of spontaneous language and a battery of linguistic tests. The
clinical course has fluctuated with improvement and worsening of aphasia and epilepsy;
at the end of the follow-up the boy was seizure-free and a medium-degree disturbance
in language production and comprehension was present. The results of the linguistic
evaluation suggest that the aphasic disturbance was related to a deficiency in phonological
decoding which leads to phonological, morphosyntactic and lexical disturbances. A
temporal relationship between the electroclinical picture and the aphasia has been
observed: the persistent improvement in linguistic performances took place only after
the disappearance of the seizures and of the EEG epileptic anomalies during sleep.
Landau-Kleffner syndrome - Acquired aphasia - Linguistic assessment - Phonological
decoding
