Language disturbances in a group of participants suffering from Duchenne muscular dystrophy: a pilot study

Results from several studies suggest that the process of language acquisition may be altered in patients suffering from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). In this study, a group of eight male DMD participants (mean age: 16; SD 4.7) underwent an extensive neuropsychological and language assessment. Furthermore, they performed a discourse production task. Results evidenced mild mental retardation associated with a specific deficit in Verbal rather than Performance IQ. At the linguistic assessment, seven out of eight participants showed moderate to severe difficulties on oral language processing with particularly impaired morphosyntactic competence.