Linguagem de crianças com Síndrome de Down: relação com histórico clínico e adaptação parental ao filho

Abstract

This dissertation aimed to analyze the development of language based on the speech and language evaluation of children with Down syndrome and its relationship with the type of therapeutic approach and the parental adaptation to the child's disability. It was a transversal research of the quantitative type, with descriptive and statistical analysis of the data. Twenty-nine children aged 3 to 6 years and their mothers participated in the study, evaluated in three clinical institutions that serve this population in Santa Maria and region. In the data collection, a language evaluation was performed through the Language Development Assessment (ADL) test with the children, through which the linguistic age of each child was identified. Parents responded to the Parental Scale for Adapting to the Child's Disability (PSACD). Socio-demographic data and the therapies performed by the children were also obtained from the parents and medical records of the institutions. Regarding the type of therapy, behavioral approaches with an exclusive focus in the grammatical field were classified as instrumental through strategies of stimulus-response-reinforcement type, and structural intervention, which approached the grammatical domain in enunciative scenes with valorization of the dialogue during the play. The results demonstrated that there was no statistical correlation between the type of therapy and the parental adaptation or even between the child's linguistic development and the parental adaptation. However, they showed a statistical correlation between speech therapy and language age. It was observed that there was no therapeutic work on the parental adaptation due to the absence of psychological support. The therapy that could impact on this process is centered on the family, but it wasn’t present in the investigated group. This fact evidenced that parents perform parental adaptation to the child's disability from their individual possibilities, without the proper support of the teams. The lack of difference between the two types of therapeutic approaches found, child-centered structural with family insertion in the session and child-centered instrumental without family participation, demonstrated that both types of approches are effective to promote grammatical domain in children language development.