These children have difficulty looking in the eye, asking for something or negotiating, identifying or expressing emotions, understanding humor or irony, or understanding common idioms (such as “I did it with one leg on my back”). These language and socialization difficulties increase the risk of emotional or behavioral problems and even bullying.
It was with these children in mind that a research team coordinated by Marisa Lousada, from CINTESIS@RISE/University of Aveiro, developed, validated, and tested a new program (PICP), which is already being applied in dozens of kindergartens in our country.
The researchers conducted an experimental study consisting of implementing this program in 20 preschool children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Developmental Language Disorder and learning and socialization problems.
The main objective was to promote the improvement of these children’s pragmatic skills, which include eye contact, answering questions, taking communicative initiative, and keeping the conversation on a topic, among many others, minimizing the impact of language difficulties in the future.
The sessions took place in 16 kindergartens in the district of Aveiro. Each child had 24 sessions, with a periodicity of two sessions per week. Each session lasted one hour.
The kindergarten teachers and the parents actively collaborated with speech therapist Tatiana Pereira (with an FCT doctoral fellowship) in identifying specific goals, with a view to “a personalized intervention. The other kindergarten children were also involved in some sessions.
The study results show “a significant improvement in different pragmatic skills”, namely in language. This improvement was observed both through the children’s evaluation and through the opinion of parents and kindergarten teachers.
According to Marisa Lousada, “this is the first experimental study carried out with this program in our country, so speech therapists can use it with other children for a clinical practice informed by scientific evidence.
The study “The Effects of the Pragmatic Intervention Programme in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Developmental Language Disorder”, published in the scientific journal Brain Sciences, is by Tatiana Pereira and Marisa Lousada, researchers at CINTESIS@RISE and the University of Aveiro, Margarida Ramalho (researcher at the Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa), among other researchers.
In response to requests from kindergarten teachers and speech therapists, the researchers have made an author’s edition that allows this new tool (which includes a manual with all activities and strategies and a set of 300 paper cards with colorful illustrations) to be made available to professionals, reaching children all over the country.