Vulnerable language skill development in galactosaemia

Not all children with Galactosaemia (GAL) experience language impairments. Currently there is no means by which infants at risk of language deficits can be identified early. Pre-linguistic communication skills of infancy underpin oral language development and may be a means by which at-risk children can be identified early to facilitate the provision of timely intervention during the critically-formative period of language development. We report on the pre-linguistic communication skills of two 18-month old infants with GAL (one of each gender). Performance scores from the two infants were analysed using modified t-tests where comparison was undertaken for each infant to a small (n = 3) individual control group. Additionally, direct descriptive comparison of performance was undertaken between the two infants with GAL using a criterion level of > ± 1.5 test