Disorders of higher cerebral function in children: New investigative techniques

Abstract

Samuel T. Orton, a neuropathologist and neuropsychiatrist, broke new ground when he undertook, in 1925, to study children with developmental disorders of language, reading and writing (Orton 1966, p. 17). He compared their deficits to those of adults with acquired aphasias, alexias and apraxias, assuming these would shed light on the children's disorders. Since the children did not have the neurologic signs regularly observed in adults in whom autopsy would later disclose circumscribed left brain lesions, he hypothesized that the children's difficulties might be due to delay in the establishment of dominance of the left hemisphere for language, reading and skilled movement (Orton 1937, p. 66). He stressed that children with these specific deficits are neither mentally retarded nor behaviorally disturbed and, most importantly for them, he showed that individualized remedial education can help them circumvent their deficits.