Deaf childrens communication skills assessment: the influence of bilingual examiners use of sign language and brazilian portuguese / Avaliação das habilidades comunicativas de crianças surdas: a influência do uso da língua de sinais e do português pelo examinador bilingüe

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2007

RESUMO

Brazilian Sign Language gains a new focus in the national scenery. Speech Pathology professional praxis points to new possibilities which may spread bilingual practices, by the equal status usage of Sign Language and Portuguese. The sign language mastery is important for this professional since it helps the development of more precise diagnosis. The aim of this study was to analyze deaf childrens communication modalities and pragmatic profile while interacting with a bilingual examiner. Participated in this study twelve subjects, aged seven to ten years old, with profound hearing loss, without other associated problems and born to hearing parents. Each child was assessed twice by the Protocolo de Avaliação das Habilidades Comunicativas e de Crianças Surdas - Reduzido: once in Brazilian Portuguese and once in Brazilian Sign Language. This protocol was modified to become its administration reduced and quicker. Results showed that Visual-Space-Modality occurrence was higher in both administrations, indicating deaf childrens preferential language modality. The higher use of linguistic code (language) occurred during the protocol sign language administration, suggesting that the language modality used by the examiner influences the child´s linguisitc complexity. The majority of the children was in the nonlinguistic stage when assessed in Brazilian Portuguese but in the multiple combinations stage when assessed in Brazilian Sign Language. The groups pragmatic profile showed more diverse communicative skills in Brazilian Portuguese administration, though less adaptative, or communicative skills from the initial language and communication acquisition period. Communicative skills of later acquisition occurred mainly in Sign Langage administration. Results showed statistical significance in the complexity of the code used to express communicative skills, with higher scores obtained in the Sign Language administration. The data suggests the importance of the mastery of sign language by examiners for precise diagnosis, because deaf children responses to language assessment tend to be linguistically more complexes when the examiner uses this language modality

ASSUNTO(S)

avaliação surdez linguagem multilingüismo evaluation multilingualism linguagem de sinais sign language deafness language

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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