INTERVENTION IN PHONOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND VOCABULARY IN LOW-INCOME CHILDREN IN LITERACY PHASE.
infant language, reading, learning, vocabulary, early educational intervention, social class.
Introduction: children from low socioeconomic levels are more likely to present difficulties in reading and response to intervention programs (RTI) may contribute positively to the development of this skill. Objective: to verify the effectiveness of an intervention in phonological awareness and expressive vocabulary in low-income children at the beginning of literacy. Method: an interventional, longitudinal, retrospective and documental study, carried out by collecting a database of children in the 1st year of elementary school. Participants were 127 children of both sexes, aged 6 and 7 years old, distributed into two groups: intervention group (GI): 40 children that underwent intervention in phonological awareness and vocabulary; and control group (GC): 87 children that were not exposed to intervention. The comparative pre- and post-intervention evaluations analyzed phonological awareness, rapid automatic naming, phonological operational memory, letter identification and expressive vocabulary. The Mann-Whitney test was used for intragroup comparison, and the Wilcoxon test for intragroup comparison. Results: Intragroup analysis showed statistically significant performance after the intervention; there were improvements in phonological awareness (syllabic, phonemic and total), digit and letter RAN, phonological operational memory in direct and reverse digit order, and letter identification. In the GC, there was improvement in all phonological processing skills and expressive vocabulary in the semantic categories clothing, food, animals, transportation, places, and toys. Comparing the groups pre-intervention there was a statistically significant difference in syllabic awareness, and post-intervention there was no difference between groups, showing improvement in phonological awareness in the GI. Conclusion: the intervention was effective in developing phonological processing skills in GI.