ICRA-N: EVALUATION OF PRAGMATIC VARIABLES OF DESCRIPTIVE LANGUAGE AT AN EARLY AGE IN TELEPRACTICE SERVICE. PRELIMINARY STUDY

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The analysis of descriptive language is essential as an initial instance of discursive evaluation allowing grammatical analysis as well as pragmatic variables.

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to outline the preliminary results of descriptive language from a pragmatic-linguistic approach while providing telepractice service to typically-developed-3-to-4.6-years-old children.

Another goal was to analyze the performance of linguistic-pragmatic variables and a potential pattern of developmental appearance and; last, to determine the feasibility of evaluating paralinguistic variables using telepractice.

METHOD AND MATERIAL: Descriptive cross-sectional study of prospective cohort. The study sample included typically-developed Spanish-monolingual children aged 3 to 4.6 years old. A formal test was administered (PLON-R & ICRA-N) together with supplementary recording resources (video camera-recording).

RESULTS:  All the children in the sample had standard and coherent performance in the paralinguistic, prelinguistic and linguistic results. Although it was observed that children aged 3 to 3.6 present elementary patterns in lexical recovery (enumerating) and in the morphosyntax organization, the whole sample displays adequate agreement, verb conjugation and correct syntactic order. In regard to the paralinguistic register done with videotaping, there was agreement in Cohen’s Kappa Coefficient (Kappa 0.7273; p= 0.0117).

CONCLUSION: The variables from Instrument 1 of the ICRA-N evaluation allowed us to identify a linguistic-pragmatic progression of the descriptive language found in early age along with frequent mistakes considering possible patterns from typical development children. The use of a video-recording proved to be efficient to register paralinguistic variables in telepractice service.