Abstract
Background: In the developmental perspective, pre linguistic behaviors (smiling, crying) comes before the verbal competence of the child. The absence of them may indicate language delay. The pointing gesture, men cerebral evolution point, appears around the tenth month of life and can be understood as the child first word: pointing to a desired object, the child intentionally shares his needs with an adult. Prematurity and low birth weight have been associated with language delay.
Objective: Identify the presence of pointing gestures in12 month old ex-pre-terms.
Subjects and Methods: 36 children born less than 37 weeks, attended at the “Programa Multidisciplinar de Acompanhamento de Prematuros”, Neonatal Discipline at Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo, 20 (55,6%) were male and their medium average birth weight were 1550,2 g (± 376,6) and 16 (44,4%) were female, with a medium average birth weight of 1387,5 (± 445,4) with no differences between groups (p = .243). Children were evaluated with the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (Bayley, 1993) and from the Mental scale it was studied their performance on the behavior “Use gestures to make wants known”. Data were described and statistically treated with the SPSS (11.0) Program.
Results: Boys and girls did not vary much regarding their Mental development scores (p=.349). The medium score of Motor development was 12 points higher to boys (p=.038). 26 children had their neurological evaluation results in their file, being 46,16 % (12) with evaluation considered not normal. Only nine (25 %) of the children presented the gestures of pointing to indicate their needs, being five of them female. From them, seven presented scores on the normal variation (85 to 115) in Mental scale and six in Motor scale, and only four children presented normal scores in both scales. Ten children (38,46 %) with normal evaluation by the neurologist also didn′t present the referred behavior.
Conclusion: The pointing gesture, behavior of high complexity, occured in the minority of investigated population. It' is suggested the professionals attention in their work with pre-terms, related to the absence or lackness of pre-linguistic signals, which can be a language delay indicator.
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Guedes, D., Pedromônico, M., Goulart, A. et al. 18 The Pointing Gesture in 12 Month Old Infants Born Pre-Term. Pediatr Res 57, 923 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-200506000-00046
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-200506000-00046