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Purpose: to evaluate the social skills and pragmatic communication in children with Specific Language Impairment. Method: this study involved 18 children between seven and nine year old, with half (n = 9) being the Experimental Group (EG) and the other half (n = 9) the Control Group CG. Both groups were comprised of three girls and six boys. Children were evaluated as for pragmatic abilities through a spontaneous speech footage. Then, recorded in structured situations of interaction with an unfamiliar adult female. Responses were classified in categories and grouped in Adequate Response (AR) and Inadequate Responses (IR), always according to the communicative context established. Results: it was observed that the greater is the limitation in pragmatic abilities, initiative and performance are worst in interpersonal relationships. There was a significant difference between EG and CG, indicating that the EG had underperformed the CG in both pragmatic and social skills. Conclusion: we stress out the importance of developing methods regarding intervention that seek to improve the aspects of speech, language, and interpersonal relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: to check the influence of age on the lexical and grammatical performance, and investigate the correlation between the number of usual verbal description in expressive vocabulary test and measures for mean length of utterance in children with Specific Language Impairment. Method: thirty children with Specific Language Impairment between 4:0 and 6:11 year-old took part in the study, and ten were selected from each age range that had the Expressive Vocabulary Test (ABFW) and Mean Length of Utterance Test, independent gender or education. The study was retrospective, based on filming and recordings of those tests as for the data collection. Results: no statistical difference was found in the grammatical performance among ages, but positive correlation was observed among the usual verbal description and parameters MG-2 and EME-P for Mean Length of Utterance Test (p< 0.05). Conclusion: age alone is not enough to predict improvement of vocabulary and grammar; however the expansion of nouns in vocabulary promotes the increase in the length of produced utterances and the use of grammar function words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To characterize and to compare the performance of students with dyslexia, learning disabilities, and students with good academic performance in the reading processes. Methods: Participants were 60 students of both genders attending first to fourth grades of public elementary schools, who were divided into three groups: GI -- 20 students with interdisciplinary diagnosis of dyslexia; GII -- 20 students with interdisciplinary diagnosis of learning disabilities; and GIII -- 20 students with good academic performance, paired according to gender, age and schooling to GI and GII. Students were submitted to the application of the Brazilian adaptation of the Assessment of Reading Processes (PROLEC), which is composed by four blocks of processes: identification of letters, lexical, syntactic and semantic processes. Results: Students from GIII showed superior performance in the tasks, compared to the students from GI and GII. Differences were found in tasks of punctuation and clause and text comprehension, in which GII presented lower performance when compared to GI. Regarding the classification of the results, most GI students had normal performance on the identification of letters and great difficulty on the lexical process tasks, which impaired the other processes; GII showed great difficulty in all processes. Conclusion: Students with dyslexia and learning disabilities have lower performance in the reading processes tasks. Students with dyslexia present difficulties in the performance of lexical, syntactic and semantic processes, and students with learning disabilities show difficulties in all processes evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to review relevant studies about language comprehension deficits observed in children and adolescents with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Comprehensive databases were accessed in order to obtain relevant papers published in the last two decades. Literature shows that this clinical group may present important oral comprehension difficulties, which may be explained by either lack of linguistic knowledge or inefficient higher-order linguistic processing operations. As children with SLI develop, they improve comprehension abilities. However, deficits are still verified during adolescence. Therefore, early diagnosis of comprehension deficits is essential for effective intervention. Extensive literature reveals the effectiveness of many speech-language therapy techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To verify and compare the occurrence of repair strategies used in the fricative consonants of Brazilian Portuguese, and to analyze the strategies applied for each fricative according to the severity of phonological disorders. Methods: Participants were 87 subjects of both genders, with ages between 4 years and 8 years and 11 months. All children used repair strategies involving at least one of the fricative consonants (/f/, /v/, /s/, /z/, /∫/, /Ʒ/), with minimal occurrence of 40%. Data are from the phonological assessments conducted before phonological therapy, and the severity of phonological disorders was determined by the Percentage of Consonants Correct - Revised. Data were statistically analyzed. Results: There was progression in the use of repair strategies according to the production complexity of the phoneme. Repair strategies were found in all severities of phonological disorders, and the strategies that most affect speech intelligibility were found in more severe degrees. Conclusion: The more complex the fricative, the more repair strategies are used, and the more severe the phonological disorder, the more occurrences these strategies have. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: to check the articulatory awareness skills of children with speech disorders, comparing them to children with normal phonological development. Method: the study involved sixty children, thirty from the control group with normal phonological development and thirty from the study group with speech disorders. All subjects underwent assessment of articulatory awareness and we compared the performance of both groups. Results: data show a statistically significant difference between control and study group in the tasks concerning articulatory awareness, with higher scores for the control group. Conclusion: children with speech disorders have more difficulty in articulatory awareness skills when comparing their performance to that of children with normal phonological development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies state that the incidence of autism spectrum disorders is 1% of the infantile population. It implies the need of urgent identification of efficient intervention proposals as well as of the factors that may intervene in these processes. The aim of this study is to describe three years of language therapy processes of three children diagnosed within the autism spectrum with different developmental characteristics and different responses to the therapeutic process. All the children were attending a specialized ambulatory program once a week. The language therapists were post-graduate students in the field and the therapeutic intervention started approximately six months prior to the beginning of the study. The children presented evidence of the diversity of the autism phenotype. Although it was not the purpose of this study, the reference to the three different features of the autism spectrum is clear. This way, the intervention processes received subtle adjustments to each child's specific needs and possibilities. All children had significant progress in their manifestations. The longitudinal individual analysis of therapeutic intervention processes allows the identification of associate process that might be determinant to the results and that demand consistent approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: to check the connection between feeding disorders and speech language disorders in children. Thus, we tried to characterize the type of disorder in association with the child's speech and language performance, as well as the kind of interaction among mothers and their children. MethodS: the subjects in this research were 24 children (between one and eight year old) diagnosed with feeding disorders, and their mothers. Children were video-recorded while eating and were also evaluated in regard to their speech and language status. Mothers were interviewed about their attitude towards children concerning eating habits. Results: out of the researched children, 46% manifested speech disturbs, 25% had speech and language disorders and 29% showed no changes. Therefore, 71% of those children proved to have some sort of alteration in phonological acquisition or production and/or in language. Conclusions: it was possible to identify a close relation among feeding disorders and parafunctional habits, which makes easy for an articulation disorder to take place, mainly with a change in tongue-tip and teeth-ridge phonemes. As for the language, the children showed a language delay of around one year when compared to those of the same age group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: phonologic intervention for children with Specific Language Impairment, within a Psycholinguistic Model. Procedures: this study involved four pre-school children, aging between 48 to 83 months, that had not been previously submitted to intervention. The psycholinguistic assessment was carried pre and post-intervention, through several instruments that evaluate diverse levels of information processing: auditory-phonetic recognition, lexical access, phonological working memory, phonological awareness, articulation, phonological production. The intervention took 4 months. Results: preschool children showed difficulties in diverse evaluated processing information levels(preintervention), showing that the difficulties on phonological organization were related to problems in the receptive and expressive processing. To the end of the Program, all had presented improvement in the phonological performance. Conclusion: the use of evaluation instruments being suitable to diverse phonological processing levels propitiates the understanding on the nature of language impairments and the programming of more effective intervention strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purposes: to compare the findings of pre-test and post-test evaluation in students with developmental dyslexia and good readers submitted to phonological remediation program and to check the therapeutic effectiveness of phonological remediation program in students with developmental dyslexia. Methods: 40 students of the 2nd to 4th grades of public schools of Marília-SP, both genders, from to 8 to 12-year old took part in this study; distributed in GI: 20 students with the interdisciplinary diagnosis of developmental dyslexia and GII: 20 good readers paired according to gender, age and school level. All students were submitted to the Cognitive-Linguistic Performance Test in the collective and individual version, oral reading and text comprehension. Results: the results showed statistically significant differences indicating that the GI and GII students submitted to phonological remediation program showed higher performance in post-test when compared to pre-test in the most evaluated cognitive-linguistic skills, including reading and text comprehension. Conclusion: the phonological remediation program was effective for students with or without developmental dyslexia, suggesting that the sound-letter relation skill should be used in the classroom context in order to improve the reading skills for these students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: to investigate the pragmatic abilities and their influence on the communicative use in subjects with Down's syndrome. Methods: the pragmatic assessment (ABFW). The participants were 10 children and adolescents, male and female, from seven to 13-year old. The behavior patterns were analyzed by using the communicative functions, the communication means (vocal, gestural or verbal) and the communicative acts. Data collection was provided from a free play situation with a family member. The Kruskal Wallis test was used for statistic analysis (p < 0.05 Q1 = n/4 Q2 = n/2 Q3 =3n/4 (n = 10) First Quartile, Median, Third Quartile). Results: the median of the communicative acts was 2.88. The comment and narrative functions were the more frequent among the communicative functions and the verbal was the more frequent communicative mean. All the participants used the functions: comment, recognitions of the other and game shared functions. The children and adolescents were responsible for 90% of the direction of the communication. Conclusion: the verbal and gestural communication means and the comment and narrative functions were the most used among the participants; mothers were responsible for just 10% of the communication direction and it was carried out predominantly by the children and adolescents that took part in the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: to identify and characterize abilities of Joint Attention of non-verbal autistic children through the observation of communicative behaviors. Methods: the research involved 5 boys, between 5,9 and 8,6-year old, diagnosed as Autistic Disorder (DSM IV, 2002), recorded in two instances with a four months interval. Meanwhile, the children were submitted to a language therapy mediation based on Joint Attention stimulation. Each recording was 15 minutes long and involved one child or group of 2-3 children with the therapist within non-directed and semi-directed interaction situations, at school where they studied. We observed and registered behaviors regarding Joint Attention abilities. The used material involved percussion instruments. Data were analyzed in relation to time, interaction and interlocutor. Results: the gaze behavior showed the greatest growth in each subject. Data analysis revealed that the subjects showed qualitative trends for evolution of the Joint Attention ability revealing important clinical meaning although there was lack of statistical significance. Each subject showed characteristics and evolution of the communicative behaviors regarding Joint Attention in an individualized manner. After the period of language therapy intervention, we observed a quantitative behavioral growth in the 5 subjects, specifically under child-therapist interaction. Conclusions: the gaze behavior is an important step for the development of others behaviors toward Joint Attention. The adult-child interaction situation facilitates the appearance of communication behaviors and sharing. Language therapy with focus on the Joint Attention abilities seems to contribute positively for communication development of autistic children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: to check the relationship between the performance in the different phonological awareness skills and degree of phonological disorder and analyze the interference of gender and age in the performance of the subjects in the analyzed tasks. Methods: 32 children, with ages between 4:1 and 7:8 years, with phonological disorders, 12 female and 20 male, were evaluated. All subjects were assessed using the Child Phonological Evaluation proposed by Yavas et al. (1991). The severity of the disorder was determined by the Percentage of Correct Consonants, classifying the phonological disorder as severe, moderate-severe, mild-moderate and mild. After that, we applied the proof of phonological awareness, proposed by Capovilla and Capovilla (1998). Results: it was observed that there are no significant differences in the performance of phonological awareness considering the gender variable. In terms of age, there were significant differences for the phonemic synthesis, syllabic segmentation and transposition tasks between the groups of higher and younger than six years. The synthesis, manipulation and transposition tasks did not differentiate the subjects nor about the degree of phonological disorder or syllabic and phonemic dominion. Conclusion: the oldest children showed better performance in the phonological awareness-related tasks. Segmentation tasks showed a tendency for difference among the degrees of phonological disorder to be investigated in future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: to examine the relation between abilities in phonological awareness and awareness of the own speech impairment with different severity levels of phonological disorders. Methods: 14 children took part in this study, aged between 5:0 and 6:11, showing phonological disorder diagnosis. Phonological disorders were classified in two perspectives: quantitative and qualitative. According to the quantitative approach, the groups were classified in Medium, Medium-Moderate and Moderate-Severe deviation. According to the qualitative approach there were the group with Delayed characteristics and the group with Initial characteristics. In order to collect the data, the Test of Phonological Awareness and the assessment of the awareness regarding their own speech impairment were adopted. Data were analyzed based on Kruskal-Wallis statistic test. Results: statistically significant differences were observed in the tasks of nominal realism and syllable detection among the groups classified according to the qualitative approach. For the groups classified according to the quantitative approach, there was not statistically significant difference in the Test of Phonological Awareness. However, considering the assessment, the awareness of their own speech impairment, just these last groups presented statistically significant differences among themselves. Conclusion: a possible relation was identified between the performance in the phonological awareness tasks and the different severity levels of phonological disorder, mainly in a qualitative approach. The awareness of their own speech impairment also seems to be influenced by the different severity levels of phonological disorder, mainly in a quantitative approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: providing evidence about the possible contribution of scripts to the narrative development of a group of children with Specific Language Impairment and narrative deficit. Methods: a program for script-based narrative development intervention is submitted. Twelve preschool children with Specific Language Impairment participated in the current study. They were divided at random in two groups. The intervention was developed in one of these groups and, the other was the control group (mean age of 4;5 for both groups). Results: all children in the experimental group significantly increased their narrative development. Including 50% of them that achieved a narrative level corresponding to their chronological age. No significant increase was noted in the control group. Conclusion: the present study shows that using scripts in children with Specific Language Impairment and narrative deficit may be successful in helping them to overcome their difficulties in narrative performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of the present study is an early screening of language and articulation in children that have just started the primary school. Seventy hundred and ninety five children without mental, motor, and/or sensory development problems and who did not enrol a speech therapy program were studied. Assessments were performed at several primary schools from 10 Portuguese districts. Two different tools - a language screening test (GOL-E; Kay & Santos, 2003) and a test of verbal articulation (TAV; Guimarães & Grilo, 1996) were used. Results show that 32% of the children have a sign of language disorders. Worst results were found for all linguistic areas (semantics, morpho-syntax and phonology) in children from lower social classes. A relationship with the geographic birth area was also found. No significant gender differences were found for language results. On the other hand, in verbal articulation there are more problems in boys, being these disorders less frequent (23 %) than language disorders. Although some hypothetical false positives can be considered the importance of the results at the present study should be taken into consideration. Therefore, prevention measures must be taken in order to avoid learning and social problems impact on these children's future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: to investigate the knowledge, attitudes and practices of pediatricians regarding the development of oral communication in children. Methods: a total of 79 pediatricians answered a specific questionnaire. This questionnaire searched information about the professional, professional knowledge of the stages of the children communication development, the behavior before some complaint of communication disorders, referring and method used for evaluating these children. The questionnaires were delivered personally and answered manually by the doctors. Results: most interviewed pediatricians have knowledge, though basic, on some language disorders. However, many pediatricians are not aware on the role played by speech pathologists. Moreover, even though there is concern on the correct speech of children, pediatricians do not refer them at adequate time. Conclusion: this study shows the importance to publish the role of speech pathologists not only in academic, scientific or clinical environments attended by speech pathologists, but also in the working places of medical professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]