ABSTRACT
Purpose
To characterize the pragmatic skills of preterm children and investigate whether it is correlated with gestational age, gender and age group.
Methods
42 low-birth-weight preterm infants of both genders, aged 2 to 4 years, were evaluated. The analysis of the communication profile was performed through the Pragmatics Protocol of the ABFW – child language test in the fields of phonology, vocabulary, fluency and pragmatics.
Results
regarding the communication initiative, there was a better performance of moderate and late preterm children. Regarding the communicative acts, the children did not reach the reference values proposed by the test. The verbal means were the most used, although there was a high occurrence of the gestural means. The most observed communicative functions were commenting, narrative, game and object request.
Conclusion
The preterm children had deviations in pragmatic skills in the age group investigated. The linguistic variables described in this study were not correlated with age and gender.
Keywords:
Language development; Child language; Child development; Language tests; Premature birth