Classification of acquired language disorders in childhood: the next step?

This paper is part of a longitudinal study of the recovery of 34 children with acquired aphasias. Lees (1993) reported that two classification systems currently used in clinical practice failed to account for the language disorder subtypes seen in at least half of these children. This paper takes another look at children whose language deficits could not be classified according to either the Rapin and Allen (1987) or the Goodglass and Kaplan (1972) models. It takes up the point made by Lees (1993) that ‘our understanding of acquired childhood aphasia would proceed better if we respected the need to describe it carefully’ and seeks to do just that.