Precocity of the acquisition of language and type II spinal muscular atrophy in 3-4-year-old children:: a study of 12 cases

We studied the development of language in 3-4-year-old children with type II spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) (10 boys and two girls), aged 36-47 months (mean age 39.83 +/- 4.68 months) and compared our findings to a control group of 26 healthy children (mean age 40.00 +/- 4.43 months, 22 boys and four girls). We carried out a lexicogrammatical analysis of the data and we observed significant differences in the 'vocabulary', 'nouns', 'verbs', 'words' and 'adverbs' variables between the children with SMA and the controls. Three- to four-year-old children suffering from type II spinal muscular atrophy, an autosomal genetic disease causing severe physical handicap (motor, functional, respiratory), presented a higher level of lexical and semantic development than the controls, demonstrating the precocity of development of morphosyntax in these children. (c) 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of European Paediatric Neurology Society.