[Auditory processing in specific language disorder]. / Procesamiento auditivo en el trastorno especifico del lenguaje.

INTRODUCTION: Specific language impairment (SLI) is diagnosed when a child has difficulty in producing or understanding spoken language for no apparent reason. The diagnosis in made when language development is out of keeping with other aspects of development, and possible explanatory causes have been excluded. DEVELOPMENT: During the last years neurosciences have approached to the study of SLI. The ability to process two or more rapidly presented, successive, auditory stimuli is believed to underlie successful language acquisition. It has been proposed that SLI is the consequence of low-level abnormalities in auditory perception. Too, children with SLI show a specific deficit in automatic discrimination of syllables. Electrophysiological methods may reveal underlying immaturity or other abnormality of auditory processing even when behavioural thresholds look normal. CONCLUSIONS: There is much controversy about the role of such deficits in causing their language problems, and it has been difficult to establish solid, replicable findings in this area because of the heterogeneity in the population and because insufficient attention has been paid to maturational aspects of auditory processing.

Procesamiento auditivo en el trastorno específico del lenguaje / Auditory processing in specific language disorder

Introducción. El trastorno específico del lenguaje (TEL) se diagnostica cuando un niño manifiesta dificultades para producir o entender el lenguaje hablado sin motivo aparente. El diagnóstico se establece cuando el desarrollo del lenguaje no sigue la pauta de los demás aspectos del desarrollo, y han quedado excluidas otras posibles causas. Desarrollo. Durante los últimos años, las neurociencias se han aproximado al estudio del TEL. Se cree que la clave para una adquisición correcta del lenguaje es la capacidad de procesar dos o más estímulos auditivos que se presentan en una sucesión rápida. Una hipótesis que se ha planteado es que el TEL es una consecuencia de unas anomalías de bajo nivel en la percepción auditiva. Además, los niños con TEL manifiestan un déficit específico en la discriminación automática de las sílabas. Es posible que los métodos electrofisiológicos revelen una inmadurez u otra anomalía subyacente del procesamiento auditivo, incluso cuando los umbrales conductuales parecen normales. Conclusiones. Hay mucha polémica sobre el papel de dichos déficit en la etiología de las dificultades lingüísticas, y ha sido difícil establecer unos resultados consistentes y repetibles en esta área debido a la heterogeneidad de la población y también porque no se ha prestado suficiente atención a los aspectos relacionados con la maduración del procesamiento auditivo (AU)

Introduction. Specific language impairment (SLI) is diagnosed when a child has difficulty in producing or understanding spoken language for no apparent reason. The diagnosis in made when language development is out of keeping with other aspects of development, and possible explanatory causes have been excluded. Development. During the last years neurosciences have approached to the study of SLI. The ability to process two or more rapidly presented, successive, auditory stimuli is believed to underlie successful language acquisition. It has been proposed that SLI is the consequence of low-level abnormalities in auditory perception. Too, children with SLI show a specific deficit in automatic discrimination of syllables. Electrophysiological methods may reveal underlying immaturity or other abnormality of auditory processing even when behavioural thresholds look normal. Conclusions. There is much controversy about the role of such deficits in causing their language problems, and it has been difficult to establish solid, replicable findings in this area because of the heterogeneity in the population and because insufficient attention has been paid to maturational aspects of auditory processing (AU)