Cristina de Andrade Varanda

Consciência sintática: prováveis correlações com a coerência central e a inteligência não-verbal no autismo

OBJETIVO: Avaliar consciencia sintatica, coerencia central, inteligencia nao-verbal, desenvolvimento social e da comunicacao, comportamentos e interesses de criancas no espectro autistico e verificar suas provaveis correlacoes. METODOS: Participaram dez sujeitos diagnosticados dentro do espectro autistico, que utilizavam linguagem oral para a comunicacao, sendo oito do genero masculino e dois do genero feminino, com idades entre 4 anos e 9 meses e 13 anos e 4 meses (media de idade de 9 anos). Foram utilizadas as provas de: Consciencia Sintatica (Adaptada); Quebra-cabeca computadorizados com figura e fundo e somente com fundo; e Matrizes Progressivas Coloridas de Raven - Escala Especial. Os pais dos sujeitos responderam ao protocolo Autism Diagnostic Interview - Revised (ADI-R). RESULTADOS: As criancas com autismo apresentaram desempenho em consciencia sintatica similar ao de criancas de desenvolvimento tipico com 6 anos de idade. Do total, 60% das criancas apresentaram nivel de inteligencia nao-verbal medio ou superior. Nao houve correlacoes entre os desempenhos em consciencia sintatica e as outras variaveis testadas. CONCLUSAO: Nao houve relacao entre o desempenho em consciencia sintatica e os resultados referentes a coerencia central, inteligencia nao-verbal, falhas na interacao social, dificuldades de comunicacao e padroes restritos de interesses dos sujeitos com autismo. Os resultados fornecem indicacoes de que essas criancas parecem acompanhar o padrao de desenvolvimento em consciencia sintatica das criancas de desenvolvimento tipico de 6 anos de idade, porem com atraso.

Stimulation of Executive Functions as Part of the Language Intervention Process in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Aims: Identifying effective methods for stimulating language and communication of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is fundamental to the effective use of available resources to support these children. This pilot study was designed to explore the potential benefits of a program of stimulation of executive functions (SEF) on the functional aspects of language and communication through the assessment of the functional communicative profile and social-cognitive performance. Methods: Twenty children, aged 5–12 years, with a diagnosis of ASD participated in the study. Two stimulation programs were offered over a 10- to 12-week period as part of the regular services offered to these children through a University’s speech and language therapy outpatient clinic in São Paulo, Brazil. Children either received SEF intervention in their home implemented by their parent/s, with close monitoring by the speech-language pathologist (SLP) (group 1), or they received SEF by the SLP during regular speech-language therapy individual sessions (group 2). Results: The findings suggested that there were differences between the children’s pre- and posttest performance. Significantly different performances were observed in the areas of occupation of communication space, proportion of communicative interactivity, and social-cognitive performance. Conclusion: The inclusion of activities to stimulate executive function abilities in language intervention for children with ASD warrants further investigation.

Consciência sintática: correlações no espectro do autismo

Ten subjects on the autism spectrum (ages ranging from 5 years and 7 months and 14 years and 8 months) were evaluated with the aim of detecting the existence of syntactic awareness and the role it plays in the patterns of language of these subjects. The existence of different language profiles was found through the Syntactic Awareness Test (adapted version). Four subgroups were detected: (a) inferior performance in the correction of ungrammatical sentences and of ungrammatical and non-semantic sentences; (b) inferior performance in the correction of ungrammatical and non-semantic sentences; (c) average performance in all subtests and above average in grammatical judgment; and (d) superior performance in all four subtests. These results are not generalizable for subjects with autism, but reveal evidence of failures in abilities that are present on the autism spectrum with the abilities required for the accomplishment of the tasks.