Consciência fonológica na síndrome de down: avaliação e estimulação

Abstract

In this qualitative research aimed to create and adapt phonological awareness training activities specially designed to individuals with Down syndrome with ages around 9 and 34 years old. The methodology was the application of CONFIAS (MOOJEN, 2003) in two distinct moments: before and after the application of the training activities, to 24 attendees, 8 with Down syndrome; 8 typically developing children - experimental group and 8 typically development children - control group. The data analysis took into consideration the Representational Redescription model (RR model), by Karmiloff-Smith (1992), which aims to explain linguistic awareness by postulating different levels of mental representation. The data showed that people with Down syndrome present noticeable levels of phonological awareness after the development elaborated/adapted training activities, when taken into account the specificities that this syndrome presents. Both in the pre and in the post CONFIAS’ application, the participants with Down syndrome showed a better performance in the syllabic level, although they also had measurable levels in the phonetic level. A fact that must be stressed in the scores obtained by the attendees with Down syndrome is the good performance of these attendees, after the training activities, in rhyme production, which is considered one of the greatest difficulties for this population. When comparing results from the TD experimental group, the TD control group with those presented by individuals with Down syndrome, in pre-test, this last group presented the total score below the former ones. As to the scores obtained after the application of the phonological awareness training activities, the group with Down syndrome reached a performance not so different from the experimental group. From the results, we conclude that after training the phonological awareness abilities in individuals with Down syndrome, there is improvement in their development, and therefore there are possibilities to develop the skills of reading and writing, since phonological awareness is understood as a precursor of such skills.