Starting to Talk at Age 10 Years: Lessons About the Acquisition of English Speech Sounds in a Rare Case of Severe Congenital But Remediated Motor Disease of Genetic Origin

What is it about?

We describe an extremely rare case of a girl who was born with a severe motor disease. When she was 10 years old, a genetic mutation was discovered and she received experimental medication that was so successful that she began speaking within three months. Her speech development followed the same trajectory as that of many children at much younger ages, with sounds made in the back of the mouth acquired after age 12 and the l and r sounds not yet acquired at age 15. This is consistent with an invariant pattern of speech development regardless of the child's age, where mastery of complex speech sounds depends on mastery of precursor speech sounds.

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