Purpose
to verify the prevalence of oral language disorders in children from four to six years old and its association with variables age, gender, orofacial motor skills impairments and auditory processing disorders.
Methods
three evaluation protocols were used: stomatognathic system protocol adapted from the Myofunctional Evaluation Guidelines, the Phonology task of the ABFW – Child Language Test and a simplified auditory processing evaluation. Data were statistically analyzed using the chi-square test to compare proportions and analysis of variance to compare means and 5% (p<0.05) was considered as a threshold of statistical significance.
Results
242 children from 4 years to 6 years and 11 months old were assed. The prevalence of 36.0% (n=87) of oral language disorders and an association with age group with statistical significance (p=0.009) were found. We observed a statistically significant association between phonological deviation and age (p<0.001); between the presence of phonetic deviation and orofacial motor skills impairments (p<0.001) and the presence of phonological deviation and auditory processing disorders (p<0.001).
Conclusion
the high prevalence of deviations observed shows the need for developing actions in primary health care in order to prevent the onset of these disorders, improve access to intervention and enable prevention of more serious problems in school. The highest occurrence of oral language disorders at the age group of four to five years old suggests that this is a good stage for the identification and prevention of these deviations.
Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences; Child Health; Child Development; Primary Health Care; Child Language; Speech Disorders