Receptive and expressive language characteristics of school‐aged children with non‐syndromic cleft lip and/or palate

Abstract

This study is the first formally to examine language skills alongside non-verbal IQ in school-aged children with clefts compared with a large matched non-cleft population. Results suggest that health professionals should evaluate each child as they present and not assume that a child with non-syndromic CLP or CP will also have co-occurring language difficulties. Where language falls in the average range, these skills can be harnessed to support areas of difficulty often associated with orofacial clefting, such as speech.