Desempenho de pré-escolares potiguares em tarefas de vocabulário expressivo e narrativa

Abstract

Purpose: Characterize maternal schooling and the performance of potiguar preschoolers in tasks of expressive vocabulary and narrative, and verify possible relations between then. Methods: The study included 25 children aged 4 to 6 years-old, of both genders, with no complaints about language development. The mothers answered a questionnaire of socioeconomic classification, while for evaluation of the vocabulary the ABFW Vocabulary Test was used and to elicit the child's oral narrative the book "Frog, where are you?" was used. The data collected were submitted to descriptive and inferential statistical analysis. Results: The majority of mothers completed higher education or master's degree and 92% of the children presented usual verbal designation (UVD) total suitable for the age group.The semantic fields with the highest UVD were "food", "shapes and colors", "toys and musical instruments" and the few ones were "local", "professions" and "clothing".The predominant type of narrative was causal. There was no correlation between UVD and word use in the narratives, but there was a positive correlation between the total and the number of different words. Conclusion: Mothers had a high level of schooling and the majority of the children obtained adequate performance in the expressive vocabulary test and used predominantly causal oral narratives.There was no correlation between the vocabulary and the use of words in the narrative, but children who used more words in their narratives also had a greater lexical variety.