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while 3 children were untestable. In Heston 21
children were found to have some difficulty of
which 9 were bilateral and 12 unilateral. There
were difficulties in testing one child, but on
a second visit testing was successful and
hearing normal. (Table 2).
Language
Figure 4 shows the percentage distribution of
children in Chiswick and Heston with average
or above average language scores, poor language
scores or scores with a marked disparity
between understanding and production of speech.
It can be seen that the great majority of children
in both areas showed average or above average
language development. However, apart from the
small percentages of children with poor or
disparate language scores, there are small
groups of children who are possibly more
vulnerable and may need help. These include
the children speaking a foreign language at
home - about 11% of the sample in Chiswick
and 6% of the sample in Heston and the children
who had immature or defective speech - 8% in
Chiswick and 4% in Heston. Again, the children
who were difficult to test some particularly
shy or unco-operative - may have had slower
language development also and therefore ought
to be included in the groups who were possibly
in need of some help. 25% of the total group
in Chiswick, and 14% in Heston come into this
category of children whose language development
should be kept under review, so that if special
help is required it can be given sooner rather
than later, because of the need to support the
more sophisticated language skills of reading
and writing, as children progress through school.
One final figure, Figure 5, shows the
relationship between pre-school experience
and language scores for both areas. These percentages
are on the main groups of children
only, and exclude those who spoke a foreign
language at home, were difficult to test or had
articulation problems It is noteworthy that the
proportion of children with high or good average
language scores is in both areas greater for
children with pre-school experience of some
kind In Chiswick fewer children with pre-school
experience had average or below average scores
whereas in Heston there are more children
with pre-school experience in all these
groups, but with the difficulties in proportion
becoming less at each drop in language
ability It has been regularly established in
research on language development that
socio-economic factors also account for
difficulties in growth of language complexity
and vocabulary and therefore without more
information and a finer analysis it is not
valid to draw firm conclusions but nevertheless
the finding was of interest
Motor
The medical examination was altered slightly
dropping some items that appeared to show
little discrimination at this age A more
rigorous classification of pencil grasp was
used, and also an adaptation of an adult
test of colour blindness for young children
(a) Handedness
Of the main sample of 205 Heston children,
174 used their right hands for drawing and 20
their left hands (see Table 3) and the rest
alternated hands This is a slightly lower
proportion of left handed choice than Chiswick,
but it has been shown in studies on hand
preference that there is a slight shift towards
right handedness with increasing age among
those children who are not strongly right
handed possibly due to convenience and social
pressure (shaking hands using a knife and
fork etc) Among the children with articulation
problems there were more children using the
left hand than the main sample of this population
as at Chiswick
(b) Colour Blindness
Two boys were found with colour blindness
(and one father of a child!),
(c) Responses to other questions about pregnancy
and birth and early medical history of the child
have been analysed but would be out of place in
this report. It is proposed to submit two papers
to specialised journals dealing with child
development and speech on some of the findings
in this large group of predominantly four to five
year old chiIdren
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