Forming of linguistic and communicative competences in twins with delayed speech development at the age 0 to 4

The proper forming of speech behaviour depends on the pre-natal and post-natal development optimum the brain structure and potential social and cultural factors affecting language acquisition in children. Any anomalies and disorders related to perinatal period may significantly affect any abnormal speech development and delayed speech development. Pre-term birth and extreme prematurity predisposes to developmental disorders connected with the shaping of communicative and linguistic competency in later years. The example of a pair of prematurely born twins highlights the impact of the perinatal period on the delayed speed development and the impact of extremely low birth weight and damage to cortex structure on the differences between the qualitative and quantitative language acquisition parameters of the brothers. The first symptoms of neurodevelopmental disorders are manifested as difficulties in food ingestion, execution of motoric movement of tongue, lips and jaw, as well as sensory reception of stimuli coming from the consistency of ingested food. The primary and pre-lingual skills predict the quality of children’s linguistic behaviour. Neurological speech and language therapy started at an early age is able to mitigate the consequences of neurological damage and results in the improvement of development in terms of speech.