Effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on infants' development: analyzing the results of developmental assessments at ages 10-11 and 18-24 months.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on infant development. The study investigated the development of infants at 10-11 months of age between 2020 and 2023 by using the Kyoto Scale of Psychological Development-2020 (KSPD2020), an individualized developmental scale, and the Kinder Infant Developmental Scale (KIDS), a developmental questionnaire. We compared the results of the KSPD2020 with those of a pre-pandemic developmental research and compared the developmental age (DA) of KIDS with children's chronological age (CA). Moreover, the same developmental research was conducted again on the same children at 18-24 months of age. DA for receptive language and expressive language was lower in the KIDS compared to CA in the investigation at 10-11 months. However, in the investigation at 18-24 months, there were no areas where KIDS' DA was lower than CA, and DA in the areas of manipulation, receptive language, social relationship with adults, discipline, and eating was higher than CA. On the other hand, using the KSPD2020, there were no differences when compared to pre-pandemic data in the investigation at 10-11 months. Furthermore, the investigation at 18-24 months showed that developmental quotient (DQ) was lower in the Language-Social (L-S) areas than in the investigation at 10-11 months. The lower DQ of L-S in this study was also evident in comparison to the 18-24 months pre-pandemic data. These results suggested that to investigate the medium- and long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on children's development, it is necessary to use not only parent-filled questionnaires but also individualized developmental scales. In addition, the finding that results may differ depending on the method of developmental assessment is considered important not only for developmental researchers but also for professionals involved in supporting children's development.

Early development score as a prognostic factor in nonverbal/minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder: A matched case-control study in Cyprus.

Background and Aims: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) present with impairments in social interaction and stereotypic behaviors. About a third may exhibit delays in verbal expression beyond preschool age, potentially categorizing them as nonverbal/minimally verbal (NV/MV), a condition that can persist into adulthood and affect their quality of life. The risk and prognostic factors associated with this reduced verbal outcome remain uncertain. This study aims to identify such factors within children diagnosed with ASD in Cyprus. Methods: In this case-control study, 56 children aged 3-12 years, with an ASD diagnosis, participated. Among them, cases were 22 children classified as ASD-NV/MV, and controls were 34 children classified as verbal (ASD-V), matched by age group and gender. Retrospective information on familial, perinatal, and developmental risk and prognostic factors were collected to calculate the familial risk score (FRS), perinatal risk score (PRS), and developmental risk score (DRS). Early development information was collected for the Early Development Score (EDS) and Early Gesture Score (EGS), to measure the children's skill level as toddlers across milestones. A low EDS and/or low EGS reflected general developmental delays and decreased frequency of early gestures and were considered in the DRS. A parent report questionnaire was utilized to determine the current overall linguistic level and status of participants, distinguishing cases from controls. Results: Age group and gender-matched cases and controls were similar in socioeconomic status and demographic characteristics (p > .05). Among the various familial (e.g., sibling with ASD), perinatal (e.g., prematurity), and developmental (e.g., ASD regression) factors examined individually, as well as collectively as scores in a conditional logistic regression (CLR) model, only a high DRS (p = .03), due to low EDS (p = .04) was significantly associated with linguistic status. When considering all risk scores in a multivariate CLR model, children with a high DRS were more likely to belong to the cases than to the control group (p = .02). In a subsequent model with low EDS and low EGS, only the low EDS was significantly associated with the case group. Results showed that children with ASD and a low EDS, reflecting general delays in early development, were 4.5 times more likely to belong to the cases group than those with a high EDS (p = .02). Conclusions: Early developmental delays in developmental milestones across various domains like gesture, motor, play, linguistic, cognition, and joint attention, in toddlerhood, were associated with later decreased verbal outcomes. Children in the sample with such early delays (low EDS), had a higher likelihood of persistent language delays (ASD-NV/MV) even at late school age. Future studies are needed to duplicate findings and explore possible contributing factors affecting linguistic outcome in ASD through prospective studies exploring within ASD differences. Implications: These findings emphasized the importance of monitoring early development closely for children at risk for ASD, pre-diagnosis, to provide additional early support for those more likely to be ASD-NV/MV. Parents and specialists like pediatricians, educators, speech-language pathologists, among others, can track the EDS score of children at risk for ASD and refer to the appropriate specialists for early stimulation, intervention, and parent consultation promptly.

Behavioral observation and assessment protocol for language and social-emotional development study in children aged 0-6: the Chinese baby connectome project.

BACKGROUND: The global rise in developmental delays underscores the critical need for a thorough understanding and timely interventions during early childhood. Addressing this issue, the Chinese Baby Connectome Project (CBCP)'s behavior branch is dedicated to examining language acquisition, social-emotional development, and environmental factors affecting Chinese children. The research framework is built around three primary objectives: developing a 0-6 Child Development Assessment Toolkit, implementing an Intelligent Coding System, and investigating environmental influence. METHODS: Utilizing an accelerated longitudinal design, the CBCP aims to enlist a minimum of 1000 typically developing Chinese children aged 0-6. The data collected in this branch constitutes parental questionnaires, behavioral assessments, and observational experiments to capture their developmental milestones and environmental influences holistically. The parental questionnaires will gauge children's developmental levels in language and social-emotional domains, alongside parental mental well-being, life events, parenting stress, parenting styles, and family relationships. Behavioral assessments will involve neurofunctional developmental evaluations using tools such as the Griffiths Development Scales and Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence. Additionally, the assessments will encompass measuring children's executive functions (e.g., Head-Toe-Knee-Shoulder), social cognitive abilities (e.g., theory of mind), and language development (e.g., Early Chinese Vocabulary Test). A series of behavior observation. experiments will be conducted targeting children of different age groups, focusing primarily on aspects such as behavioral inhibition, compliance, self-control, and social-emotional regulation. To achieve the objectives, established international questionnaires will be adapted to suit local contexts and devise customized metrics for evaluating children's language and social-emotional development; deep learning algorithms will be developed in the observational experiments to enable automated behavioral analysis; and statistical models will be built to factor in various environmental variables to comprehensively outline developmental trajectories and relationships. DISCUSSION: This study's integration of diverse assessments and AI technology will offer a detailed analysis of early childhood development in China, particularly in the realms of language acquisition and social-emotional skills. The development of a comprehensive assessment toolkit and coding system will enhance our ability to understand and support the development of Chinese children, contributing significantly to the field of early childhood development research. TRIAL REGISTRATION: This study was registered with clinicaltrials.gov NCT05040542 on September 10, 2021.

Frequency of Hebrew word usage by children with intellectual and developmental disabilities: implications for AAC core vocabulary.

Appropriate vocabulary selection for augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) intervention is crucial to support communication and language development in children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Core vocabulary lists are commonly used to guide this process, and there is a need for language-specific consideration. This paper aimed to develop a wordlist for selecting the core vocabulary for AAC intervention for young Hebrew-speaking children with IDD. Five children (age 3;5-8;4) were audio-recorded in naturalistic interactions with an interviewer and family members. Using Levy's clinical corpus in the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) and Child Phonology Analyzer (CPA) tools and preestablished codes, wordlists with usage frequencies were extracted and coded for lexeme, lexical categories and functions or content. The percentages of the 20, 50, 100, and 200 most frequent lexemes were calculated for each child and for the five children combined. The top 200 most frequently used lexemes constituted 85% of the composite lexicon. A comparison was made between this study list and a previous list derived from language samples of typically developing (TD). Lexemes representing function words dominated, albeit with a slight preference for content words in children with IDD. Among the content words, children with IDD used more adverbs, while children with TD used more verbs. Implications for AAC core vocabulary are discussed.

Childhood language development and alexithymia in adolescence: an 8-year longitudinal study.

Alexithymia (difficulties identifying and describing feelings) predicts increased risks for psychopathology, especially during the transition from childhood to adolescence. However, little is known of the early contributors to alexithymia. The language hypothesis of alexithymia suggests that language deficits play a primary role in predisposing language-impaired groups to developing alexithymia; yet longitudinal data tracking prospective relationship between language function and alexithymia are scarce. Leveraging data from the Surrey Communication and Language in Education cohort (N = 229, mean age at time point 1 = 5.32 years, SD = 0.29, 51.1% female), we investigated the prospective link between childhood language development and alexithymic traits in adolescence. Results indicated that boys with low language function at ages 4-5 years, and those who later met the diagnostic criteria for language disorders at ages 5-6 years, reported elevated alexithymic traits when they reached adolescence. Parent-reported child syntax abilities at ages 5-6 years revealed a dimensional relationship with alexithymic traits, and this was consistent with behavioral assessments on related structural language abilities. Empirically derived language groups and latent language trajectories did not predict alexithymic traits in adolescence. While findings support the language hypothesis of alexithymia, greater specificity of the alexithymia construct in developmental populations is needed to guide clinical interventions.

Give some, keep some, put some: The language of sharing in children.

Sensitivity to linguistic cues, in theory, can change the interpretation of social and game theoretical behavior. We tested this in a pair of experiments with children aged 4 and 5 years. Children were asked to give some, keep some, or put some stickers for themselves or for another player (a puppet) after collaborative activities. We found that the direction of the verb did influence how selfish the younger children were. We also had children tidy up the toys after each activity to determine their interpretation of some. Children could derive the pragmatic scalar implicature linked to some (i.e., interpreting it as meaning not all), and they did so particularly when it affected them personally. These findings have important implications for the stability of other-regarding preferences and the importance of instructions in games.

Lateralization of activation within the superior temporal gyrus during speech perception in sleeping infants is associated with subsequent language skills in kindergarten: A passive listening task-fMRI study.

Brain asymmetries are hypothesized to reduce functional duplication and thus have evolutionary advantages. The goal of this study was to examine whether early brain lateralization contributes to skill development within the speech-language domain. To achieve this goal, 25 infants (2-13 months old) underwent behavioral language examination and fMRI during sleep while listening to forward and backward speech, and then were assessed on various language skills at 55-69 months old. We observed that infant functional lateralization of the superior temporal gyrus (STG) for forward > backward speech was associated with phonological, vocabulary, and expressive language skills 4 to 5 years later. However, we failed to observe that infant language skills or the anatomical lateralization of STG were related to subsequent language skills. Overall, our findings suggest that infant functional lateralization of STG for speech perception may scaffold subsequent language acquisition, supporting the hypothesis that functional hemisphere asymmetries are advantageous.

Central auditory system assessment in children and adolescents with cystic fibrosis: electrophysiology and central auditory processing.

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to evaluate the central auditory system of children and adolescents with cystic fibrosis through behavioral assessment of central auditory processing and electrophysiological tests to investigate short and long-latency auditory potentials, comparing them with the results obtained in the control group. METHODS: 117 from 7 to 21 years old patients were evaluated, 57 of them with cystic fibrosis and 60 of the control group, using behavioral evaluation of central auditory processing, auditory brainstem response and long latency auditory evoked potential. The comparison of the research groups was performed using ANOVA for Auditory Brain Response and P300 responses and Wilcoxon and Mann-Whitney tests for Central Auditory Processing responses. RESULTS: A statistically significant difference was found in the results of the GIN test between the groups and in the auditory brainstem response latency responses in waves I and V in the comparison between the groups with higher latencies in the study group. A difference was also found between latencies in the interpeak intervals I-III and III-V. The long latency auditory evoked potential analysis shows a statistically significant difference in the latency of the P300 potential, with higher latencies in the study group. CONCLUSION: Cystic fibrosis participants presented worse performance in the gaps-in-noise test compared to the control group in the evaluation of central auditory processing, which indicates impairment of temporal resolution auditory ability. They also showed increased latency in I and V waves of auditory brainstem response, as well as an increase P300 latency in long latency auditory evoked potential.

Continuing the conversation about echolalia and gestalt language development: A response to Haydock, Harrison, Baldwin, and Leadbitter.

LAY ABSTRACT: It was recently suggested that a set of ideas known as gestalt language development be embraced as a neurodiversity-affirmative practice. Neurodiversity refers to the idea that people interact with the world in many different ways and that there is not a single right way to do so. Some aspects of gestalt language development, such as embracing autistic communication, are consistent with neurodiversity. However, gestalt language development is also associated with numerous ideas, assertions, and clinical strategies that lack theoretical and empirical support. For this reason, we believe it is premature to embrace gestalt language development as a neurodiversity-affirmative practice. We propose that it is important to make sure we use language that differentiates between delayed echolalia and the broader set of ideas that comprise gestalt language development. We also suggest that it is important to discuss the relationship between neurodiversity-affirmative practices and practices supported by research evidence.

A cross-linguistic examination of young children's everyday language experiences.

We present an exploratory cross-linguistic analysis of the quantity of target-child-directed speech and adult-directed speech in North American English (US & Canadian), United Kingdom English, Argentinian Spanish, Tseltal (Tenejapa, Mayan), and Yélî Dnye (Rossel Island, Papuan), using annotations from 69 children aged 2-36 months. Using a novel methodological approach, our cross-linguistic and cross-cultural findings support prior work suggesting that target-child-directed speech quantities are stable across early development, while adult-directed speech decreases. A preponderance of speech from women was found to a similar degree across groups, with less target-child-directed speech from men and children in the North American samples than elsewhere. Consistently across groups, children also heard more adult-directed than target-child-directed speech. Finally, the numbers of talkers present in any given clip strongly impacted children's moment-to-moment input quantities. These findings illustrate how the structure of home life impacts patterns of early language exposure across diverse developmental contexts.

Music and reading activities in early childhood associated with improved language development in preterm infants at 2-3 years of age.

Introduction: Children born preterm are at increased risk for adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes. Music and reading activities in childhood could ameliorate these difficulties, as they have shown benefits on both neural and behavioral levels. However, only a few studies have assessed these potential benefits in preterm-born children. We investigated whether music and language activities in early childhood are associated with improved developmental outcomes of preterm-born children. Methods: The cognitive, language, and motor skills of 45 children, born between 24 and 34 gestational weeks, were tested at 23-38 months of corrected age with the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, Third Edition. Background information, including parental education, and the weekly amount of music and language-related activities was collected using parental questionnaires. Results: The amount of singing, playing musical instruments and reading aloud was associated with better language skills. Moreover, children who had participated in a music playschool had better language skills when compared to those children who had not participated in a music playschool. Maternal education was associated with music playschool participation and better language and motor skills in children attending music playschool. Discussion: Interactive music and language activities in early childhood may improve language skills in preterm-born children. Informing and guiding parents at an early stage to integrate these activities into their daily lives could be a one way of supporting the development of preterm-born children.

Heritage language development in Spanish-English-speaking preschoolers: Influences on growth and challenges in the first year of English-only instruction.

This study investigates the changes in the Spanish lexical and grammatical skills of 26 Spanish-English dual language learners during their first year of preschool. We also explore the impact of age, gender, and maternal cultural orientation on children's language outcomes over time. The results show that, despite one year of English-only instruction, the children's Spanish productions became more intelligible, lexically diverse, and grammatical between 3;7 and 4;7. However, Spanish productions were mostly limited to sentence fragments and contained errors in grammatical gender, verb morphology, object clitic pronouns, and prepositions. Girls had an advantage over boys, as attested by the higher lexical diversity, mean length of utterance, and grammaticality of their Spanish productions. Both maternal enculturation and acculturation predicted the grammaticality of children's utterances, suggesting that mothers with high levels of orientation to both Latinx and American culture may be the most successful at promoting Spanish in the United States.

Language and communication development and school readiness of children raised by grandparents or in multi-generational homes.

BACKGROUND: One in ten U.S. children lives with a grandparent, and more foster children are being placed in kinship care. OBJECTIVES: Our objective was to compare early language and communication development and school readiness among children raised by grandparents (alone or in multigenerational households) to children raised by parents. METHODS: We included in this cross-sectional study children ages 1-5 years from the 2016-2020 National Survey of Children's Health to examine healthy and ready to learn school readiness outcomes and binary language and communication development (2018-2020 data only) by caregiver type (parent, multigenerational, and grandparent-only) with survey-weighted log-binomial regression adjusted for confounders. We stratified by survey years pre-COVID-19 pandemic versus during. RESULTS: Among 33,342 children, 86.0% (SE = 0.51) of children were 'On-Track' for language and communication development; only 37.2% (SE = 0.68) were 'On-Track' overall for school readiness. Children raised by grandparents or in multigenerational households were more often 'On-Track' for school readiness than children raised by parents, but only upon adjustment for covariates (adjusted prevalence ratio (aPR) for grandparent-only 1.13, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.11, 1.15; aPR for multigenerational 1.13, CI 1.12, 1.15). Smaller and less consistent differences in prevalence were observed for the other outcomes (language and communication development, school readiness domains of early learning skills, social-emotional development, self-regulation development and physical well-being and motor development). A disparity in school readiness may have emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic; children in grandparent-only households had a lower prevalence of being 'On-Track' for school readiness (aPR 0.71, 95% CI 0.69, 0.73) compared to children in parent households, whereas children in multigenerational households continued to be more often school-ready than children in parent households. CONCLUSION: Large proportions of children across caregiver types were not fully prepared for school. Consideration of key covariates is important because socio-economic disadvantage may mask other advantages grandparent-led and multigenerational households offer children's early development.

Associations between shared book reading, daily screen time and infants' vocabulary size.

In the current pre-registered study, we examined the associations between shared book reading, daily screen time, and vocabulary size in 1,442 12- and 24-month-old Norwegian infants. Our results demonstrate a positive association between shared reading and vocabulary in both age groups, and a negative association between screen time and vocabulary in 24-month-olds. Exploratory analyses revealed that the positive relationship between shared reading and expressive vocabulary in 12-month-olds was stronger in lower SES groups, suggesting that shared reading may act as a compensatory mechanism attenuating potentially impoverished learning environment and parent-infant interactions in low-SES families.

Predictors of language and reading outcomes in 12-year-old children born very preterm.

AIM: To investigate predictors of language and reading outcomes in 12-year-old Swedish children born very preterm (<32 gestational weeks) in 2004-2007. METHOD: Children born very preterm (n = 78, 43 girls), and term-born controls (n = 50, 32 girls), were examined on verbal IQ, semantic and phonemic fluency, sentence recall, reading fluency, word and phonological decoding at 12 years of age. The results were related to neonatal characteristics, language development, measured with Bayley-III, at 2.5 years corrected age, and concurrent non-verbal IQ. RESULTS: Preterm children showed language and reading difficulties that were not completely accounted for by level of concurrent non-verbal IQ. Extremely preterm born children (<28 gestational weeks) demonstrated specific linguistic weaknesses. Administration of antenatal steroids, retinopathy of prematurity and persistent ductus arteriosus explained unique variance in language and reading outcomes. Language assessments at 2.5 years had low predictive value for language and reading outcomes at age 12. CONCLUSION: Language and reading difficulties in 12-year-old children born preterm were not fully explained by concurrent non-verbal IQ, and were not reliably predicted by language assessments at 2.5 years. Renewed language assessments at school age are warranted for identifying children with persisting linguistic difficulties.

Auditory Risk Factors at Birth and Language Development at 2 Years of Age: A Longitudinal Analysis.

Aim. To analyze the relationship between auditory risk factors at birth and subsequent language development in toddlerhood. Methods. Participants are 136 children from a longitudinal birth cohort follow-up at age 2 years. They were divided into 2 groups: One comprising 105 children without hearing risk factors at birth and another comprising 31 children with auditory risk factors at birth but normal hearing. Results. In children with and without risk factors, the combination of socio-emotional, socio-economic, and auditory risk factors at birth significantly predicted language development at age 2 years. Family socio-economic status had a significant impact on overall child development, even after controlling for socio-emotional development and the presence of risk factors. Conclusions. The study was conducted in an upper-middle income country with a socialized health care system. It underscores the importance of a holistic approach to early childhood language development, taking into account biological, socioeconomic, and emotional factors.

Language development in children's natural environments: People, places, and things.

Our goal in this chapter is to describe young children's experiences with language by examining three domains-people, places, and things-that define and influence their language input. We highlight how features of each of these three domains could provide useful learning opportunities, as well as how differences in infants' and toddlers' experiences may affect their long-term language skills. However, we ultimately suggest that a full understanding of early environments must move beyond a focus on individual experiences and include the broader systems that shape young children's lives, including both tangible aspects of the environment, such as physical resources or locations, and more hidden factors, such as cultural considerations, community health, or economic constraints.

[The LittlEARS® Auditory Questionnaire : An analysis of multicentre data of children after early bilateral cochlear implant placement]. / Der LittlEARS® Hörfragebogen : Auswertung multizentrischer Daten von Kindern nach früher bilateraler Cochleaimplantatversorgung.

BACKGROUND: In order to optimise the support of children with cochlear implants (CI), it is very important to detect slow developmental processes as early as possible. Data from the LittlEARS® Auditory Questionnaire (LEAQ) from children with early bilateral CI are evaluated and presented in relation to age and hearing age and compared with language development data recorded later. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This retrospective multicentre study included data from a total of 554 children for whom at least one LEAQ was completed during the course of CI rehabilitation. Children without additional disabilities who received bilateral simultaneous or sequential CI treatment were included. RESULTS: As expected, there are high correlations between hearing age (HA) and the overall LEAQ total score. When analysed according to chronological age (CA), development runs roughly parallel to the development of children with normal hearing, albeit at a lower level. Children implanted early up to an age of ≤ 12 months consistently achieve approximately 7-8 raw points more. Only the LEAQ results of the later test times (from the age of 18 months) correlate with some areas of the speech development test for children (SETK; areas 3-5). CONCLUSION: The earliest possible detection of critical developmental processes in children with CI is extremely important. In the case of very early CI fitting, the CA should be used as a reference measure in diagnostics. The LEAQ values determined for the group of children with CI are suitable to a limited extent as generally valid reference values for children with early bilateral CI. Further studies should continue to work out the correlations between early preverbal development and later speech development.

Do early meanings of negation map onto a fully-fledged negation concept in infancy?

Young children acquire an amazing knowledge base, rapidly learning from, and even going beyond the observable evidence. They arrive at forming abstract concepts and generalizations and recruit logical operations. The question whether young infants can already rely on abstract logical operations, such as disjunction or negation, or whether these operations emerge gradually over development has recently become a central topic of interest. Here we target this question by focusing on infants' early understanding of negation. According to one view, negation comprehension is initially restricted to a narrow range of meanings (such as rejection or non-existence) and only much later infants develop a broader understanding that maps onto a fully-fledged negation concept. Alternatively, however, infants may rely on a fully-fledged negation concept from early on, but some forms of negation may pose more mapping and processing difficulties than others. Here we tested infants' understanding of two syntactically and semantically different forms of negation, existential negation and propositional denial in a language (Hungarian) that has a separate negative particle for each, and thus the two negation forms can be directly compared. We engaged 15- and 18-month-old infants in a search task where they had to find a toy in one out of two locations based on verbal utterances referring to the object at one of the locations involving existential negation (Nincsen - not.be.3SG) or propositional denial (Nem itt van - not here be.3SG). In Experiments 1-3 we found a parallel development for these two kinds of negation. 18-month-olds successfully comprehended both, while 15-month-olds were at chance for both. In Experiment 4 we excluded the possibility that 15-month-olds' chance performance is explained by task-related difficulties, as they succeeded in a similar, but nonverbal task. Thus, 15-month-olds likely still have not solved the mapping for the two negation forms. The parallel performance of the two age groups with the two negation types (failing or succeeding on both) is consistent with the hypothesis that different forms of negation rely on similar conceptual underpinnings already in early development.

Características Fonoaudiológicas de Pacientes Atendidos por um Serviço de Genética Clínica / Speech-language Pathology Characteristics of Patients Assisted by a Clinical Genetics Service / Características de patología del habla y lenguaje de Pacientes Atendidos por un Servicio de Genética Clínica

Introdução: O trabalho conjunto da genética médica e da fonoaudiologia é essencial, contribuindo para o desenvolvimento de procedimentos que auxiliam no tratamento de pacientes com distúrbios da comunicação. Objetivo: Analisar as características fonoaudiológicas de pacientes pediátricos atendidos por um serviço de genética clínica. Método: Estudo transversal observacional, realizado com pacientes atendidos pelo serviço de genética de um hospital em Porto Alegre. Para a coleta de dados, aplicou-se um questionário relacionado as áreas de audição, deglutição, motricidade orofacial, voz e linguagem. Resultados: A amostra foi constituída por 54 participantes com idades entre 8 meses e 17 anos (média de idade 6 anos e 5 meses). 24,07% (n=13) dos pacientes apresentaram diagnóstico de síndrome, e 59,26% (n=32) tinham atraso no desenvolvimento neuropsicomotor. Com relação ao perfil fonoaudiológico, 81,48% (n=44) apresentaram algum hábito oral deletério durante a infância. 16,67% (n=9) percebiam alguma dificuldade para ouvir e 29,62% (n=16) para deglutir. 85,19% (n=46) dos participantes manifestaram a linguagem oral desenvolvida e, destes, 71,74% (n=33) apresentavam trocas na fala. 33,33% (n=18) já estavam em atendimento fonoaudiológico, e outros 24,07% (n=13) estavam na fila de espera para este atendimento. Conclusões: Uma parte significativa dos pacientes apresentou queixas e/ou manifestações nas áreas da comunicação humana, principalmente em relação à linguagem, à fala e aos hábitos orais deletérios. Esses dados destacam a importância do encaminhamento para a equipe de fonoaudiologia. (AU)

Introduction: The collaborative efforts of medical genetics and speech therapy are essential, contributing to the development of procedures that assist in treating patients with communication disorders. Objective: To analyze the speech therapy characteristics of pediatric patients seen by a clinical genetics service. Methods: Observational cross-sectional study conducted with patients seen at the genetics service of a hospital in Porto Alegre. A questionnaire related to hearing, swallowing, orofacial motricity, voice, and language areas was used for data collection. Results: The sample consisted of 54 participants aged between 8 months and 17 years, with an average age of 6 years and 5 months. 24.07% (n=13) of the patients had a diagnosis of syndrome, and 59.26% (n=32) had delayed neuropsychomotor development. Regarding the speech therapy profile, 81.48% (n=44) had some harmful oral habit during childhood. 16.67% (n=9) reported some difficulty in hearing, and 29.62% (n=16) in swallowing. 85.19% (n=46) of the participants showed developed oral language, and of these, 71.74% (n=33) made speech substitutions. 33.33% (n=18) of the patients were already undergoing speech therapy, and another 24.07% (n=13) were on the waiting list for this treatment. Conclusions: A significant portion of the patients presented complaints and/or manifestations in the areas of human communication, especially regarding language, speech, and harmful oral habits. These data highlight the importance of referral to the speech therapy team. (AU)

Introducción: La colaboración entre genética médica y foniatría es esencial para desarrollar procedimientos que ayuden en el tratamiento de pacientes con trastornos de la comunicación. Objetivo:Analizar las características de patología del habla y lenguaje de pacientes pediátricos atendidos por un servicio de genética clínica. Método: Estudio transversal observacional con pacientes atendidos por el servicio de genética de un hospital en Porto Alegre. Se aplicó un cuestionario sobre audición, deglución, motricidad orofacial, voz y lenguaje. Resultados: La muestra consistió en 54 participantes con edades comprendidas entre 8 meses y 17 años (media: 6 años y 5 meses). El 24,07% (n=13) de los pacientes tenían un diagnóstico de síndrome, y el 59,26% (n=32) presentaron retraso en el desarrollo neuropsicomotor. En cuanto al perfil foniatra, el 81,48% (n=44) presentaron algún hábito oral perjudicial durante la infancia. El 16,67% (n=9) reportaron dificultades para oír, y el 29,62% (n=16) para tragar. El 85,19% (n=46) manifestaron lenguaje oral desarrollado y, de ellos, el 71,74% (n=33) realizaban intercambios en el habla. El 33,33% (n=18) de los pacientes ya estaban en tratamiento foniatra y el 24,07% (n=13) estaban en lista de espera para este tratamiento. Conclusiones: Una parte significativa de los pacientes presentó quejas y/o manifestaciones en las áreas de la comunicación humana, especialmente en relación con el lenguaje, el habla y los hábitos orales perjudiciales, enfatizando la importancia de la derivación al equipo de foniatría. (AU)