Elaboração e validação preliminar de índices de aquisição da linguagem para crianças de 2 a 12 meses

Abstract

The present research aimed at developing and validating language acquisition indexes (IAL) through an enunciation perspective. The process relied on the help of judges in the preparation and in the validation and application stages in 94 mother-infant dyads in a cohort study. It was also investigated the correlation between the IAL and the IRDI and Denver II instruments applied to the same sample, which was analyzed according to age groups. In addition, it was examined whether the combination of lack of IAL items showed relation with obstetric and socioeconomic variables identified in the initial interview. The statistical analyses used computer applications STATISTICA 9.1 and PASW 17.0. From the results of the development and validation stages emerged two specific instruments for two age groups in which the first was denominated Phase1 (2-6 months) with 4 items and the second was denominated Phase2 (7-12 months) with two items whose absence differentiated groups in the factor analysis. In relation to the concordance of IAL, IRDI and Denver II, results suggest that IAL seem to analyze in a particular manner language acquisition if compared to other protocols, which differentiates this protocol from the others. The analysis of obstetric and socioeconomic variables in relation to IAL showed significant association in the absence of IAL items in dyads where mothers present lower levels of education. The development and validation of IAL allowed concluding that the indexes created for analyzing language acquisition in the first year of life constitute a promising instrument as an early risk detection strategy.