O desenvolvimento da consciência silábica em crianças autistas pré-escolares

Abstract

Research on how autistic students learn how to read is incipient, especially in relation to the influence of phonological awareness in this process, even though this is repeatedly described in national and international research as a strong predictor for the development of written language. In this idea, this study is an excerpt from the author's doctoral thesis that aims to present the data collected in a real teaching situation on how the development of syllabic awareness happens in children with autism spectrum disorder. It was developed in two private schools in Fortaleza, Brazil. This is a descriptive/explanatory research, of applied nature, experimental procedure and using a qualitative and quantitative approach at the same time. The sample included six children diagnosed with ASD, between 4:0 and 5:6 years old, organized into a single experimental group, who were submitted to a teaching program based on phonological awareness tasks. For data collection, the Confias Test was applied to assess the level of development of phonological awareness, performed before and after the teaching intervention and in a controlled manner, whose data were recorded and subsequently analyzed. The results indicate: a) the existence of a gradual order of complexity in the performance of syllable awareness tasks in the studied population: syllable synthesis < identification of initial syllables < syllable segmentation < identification of rhymes; and b) linguistic mediation applied in a systematic and regular way in children with autism contributes to the development of phonological awareness.