Speech & Language Disorders

Clinical reference for 15 disorders — diagnostic criteria, prevalence, clinical presentation, and how language sample analysis supports assessment.

Pediatric

PediatricDLD

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)

Developmental language disorder is a persistent language impairment that is not explained by another medical condition and affects roughly 1 in 14 children.

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Pediatric

Expressive Language Delay

Expressive language delay describes children whose spoken output lags behind age expectations while their receptive skills remain within the typical range.

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Pediatric

Receptive Language Disorder

Receptive language disorder is a persistent impairment in understanding spoken language that is not better explained by hearing loss or another medical condition.

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Pediatric

Mixed Receptive-Expressive Language Disorder

A mixed profile describes children whose comprehension and production are both impaired — the most common presentation under the DLD umbrella.

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PediatricSLI

Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

Specific language impairment is the older diagnostic label, now largely replaced by Developmental Language Disorder but still present in research literature.

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Pediatric

Phonological Disorder

Phonological disorder is characterised by rule-based speech sound error patterns — entire classes of sounds affected in predictable ways — rather than isolated mis-articulations.

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Pediatric

Articulation Disorder

An articulation disorder involves isolated difficulty producing specific speech sounds correctly, typically with intact phonological representation.

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PediatricCAS

Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS)

Childhood apraxia of speech is a rare motor planning disorder characterised by inconsistent error patterns, disrupted prosody, and lengthened coarticulatory transitions.

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Pediatric

Selective Mutism

Selective mutism is an anxiety-based disorder in which a child consistently fails to speak in specific social situations despite speaking in others.

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Pediatric

Social (Pragmatic) Communication Disorder

Social communication disorder is a persistent impairment in the social use of verbal and nonverbal communication that is not better explained by autism.

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