Fluent and nonfluent types of aphasia in adults and children are noted. The value of assessing psycholinguistic differences (e.g., syntactic skills and ability to produce connected discourse) is examined. Treatment implications for enhancing residual linguistic skills are addressed. (CL)

This paper examines the validity of diagnostic categories frequently used to classify children with severe language disorders by determining the relationship of the categories to independently derived developmental, psychological, and medical variables. It is argued that the classification systems currently available too often fail to achieve the…