The Adelaide preschool language unit: Results of follow‐up

Objectives: To determine educational, social and behavioural functioning of children who had been involved in a preschool language intervention programme between 1982 and 1990. Methodology Fifty children who attended the Unit were available for follow-up. The children were divided into three groups: (i) language disorder; (ii) speech disorder; and (iii) mixed speech and language disorder. A psychologist administered educational, cognitive and social behavioural tests. Speech, language and articulation were assessed by a speech pathologist. Results Cognitively, the ‘mixed’ speech and language group obtained lower scores than the speech and language disorder children; results on educational tests were also generally lower. All three groups were significantly underachieving in areas of language, reading, spelling and arithmetic relative to their performance IQ. No socialization problems were found. Conclusions Severe speech and language disorders in young children, even after periods of intensive intervention, have a significant effect on later educational achievement even when children appear to be ‘coping’ in their educational settings.