Follow-up study of a right- and a left-hemispherectomized child: implications for localization and impairment of language in children.

Two hemispherectomized girls, one operated on the right, the other on the left, were followed from time of surgery until 9 and 10 years of age and compared with respect to course of language acquisition following surgery. At conclusion of follow-up, receptive and expressive language, phoneme perception and production, and sentence processing of the two hemispherectomized children were compared with those of two control groups of similar age, one developing language normally, the other language-impaired. The left-hemispherectomized child's abilities were similar to those of the language-impaired children; the right-hemispherectomized child's abilities resembled those of the language-normal children. Implications for localization of developmental anomalies in language-impaired children are discussed.