Speech development in young institutionalized retarded children under an early intervention procedure.

The author describes the speech development in 43 young institutionalized retarded children under a therapeutic-rehabilitative procedure which lasted two years. Retarded children not following the special rehabilitation program and normally developing children from the same institution were used as control groups. The development of speech in the rehabilitation group was significantly better than that of the retarded group, but not as good as that of the control group of normally developing children.