Verbal Ability and Language Outcome Following Traumatic Brain Injury in Early Childhood

A study in Australia investigated how traumatic brain injury (TBI) affects the language ability of preschool-aged children.

Researchers studied children between the ages of four and six admitted to Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne; these children sustained mild or moderate/severe TBI before they were three years old. The children took a scale of intelligence test to measure Verbal IQ and two other tests to measure language skills.

Compared to children in a control group that had not sustained TBI, children with mild TBI performed similarly in the intelligence and language skills tests while children with moderate/severe TBI performed poorly.

The results imply caretakers must consider language abilities when assessing how children recover from TBI.

Crowe L M, Anderson V, et al. Verbal Ability and Language Outcome Following Traumatic Brain Injury in Early Childhood. The Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation. (July 2013).