Article

This study aimed at investigating the long-term effects of the
combination of severity of injury and time of injury in a 6-year-old bilingual
Arabic-Italian child who sustained a severe left traumatic brain injury at the
age of 7 months.
METHODS : Standard neurological, cognitive and
neuropsychological assessments were administered at 40 days after surgery and
again at 18, 31, 62 and 73 months. RESULTS: The child presented
with developmental arrest at 18 and 31 months. Later on, right hemiparetic and
oculomotor signs gradually improved to a significant extent, as well as
dysexecutive, visuospatial and praxic deficits. At present, persistent language
disorders in a fluent speech characterize the child's profile to a similar extent
and type in both languages, suggesting common underlying learning strategies
which are ineffective for procedurally acquiring language. CONCLUSIONS: This case
confirms that children who sustain severe left hemisphere traumatic brain injury
in infancy present with increased vulnerability to linguistic deficits. Left frontotemporal, cortical-subcortical lesions which occur during very early
language development may permanently disrupt the procedural language acquisition
network required for first language acquisition.

Langue : ANGLAIS