People with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities present significant challenges to those who care for them, and those who commission and manage the services they receive. Childhood disabilities are a cause of major concern causing significant handicap to the affected children. At least one in ten children are born with or acquire a physical, mental or sensory impairment. In normal development, distributional cues (input patterns) are linked to language acquisition processes. In children with intellectual disabilities, much less is known about the extent to which distributional cues are exploited in language learning mechanisms.

Intellectual disability, Global developmental delay, Language disorder, Early intervention, Multidisciplinary care