La comunicación preverbal en niños con ausencia del lenguaje

Young children consulting due to an absence of language usually show deficits in the construction of preverbal communicative mechanisms, not necessarily a sign of broader developmental disorders.

Aim

To analyse the presence/absence of preverbal abilities in non-autistic children with language absence.

Population

A subset of 77 2-3.5 year-old children was analysed. These children attended consultation at the Speech-Language Pathology Service of the Hospital Universitario Austral and private consultation due to an absence of language.

Materials and methodology

The population of children under study went through an audiological evaluation to rule out hearing loss. Their parents were asked to answer the M-CHAT Questionnaire to rule out children with high and medium risk of autism; and an assessment of the general development parameters was made with the Vineland, VABS scale, seeking to identify the presence of specific delays in language acquisition and global developmental disorders. The preverbal abilities studied were: visual contact, joint attention, the ability to interact, simple imitation, and the use of protoimperative gestures.

Results

Children with global developmental delays showed more issues in the above mechanisms than the patients with specific language delays. The items that showed a higher level of impairment were the development of imitation and the use of protoimperative gestures related to development during the last quarter of the first year of life.