Avaliação e intervenções psicopedagógicas em crianças com indícios de discalculia

Abstract

This study is linked to the Project Evaluation of Children at Risk of Learning Disorders - ACERTA, which begun in 2013, supported by Coordination of Improvement of Higher Level Personnal - CAPES, at Brain Institute of Rio Grande do Sul - INSCER / PUCRS. It aims to “Analyze the evolution of the development of mathematical skills involved in Dyscalculia of childrens presenting indications of this disorder, after performing pedagogical interventions”. The research was performed in three stages. The first consisted of the psychopedagogal evaluation of 29 participant children between 9 and 12 years old, by means of the Transcodification Test (MOURA; MADEIRA; CHAGAS; LONNEMANN; KRINZINGER; WILLMES; HAASE, 2013) and the Arithmetic’s Subtest (STEIN, 1994), of which 15 were selected to participate in the interventions, six children composing the control group and nine children the experimental group. As a threshold for the selection, children were submitted to the Wechler Abreviated Scale of Inteligence - WASI (2014), being necessary, according to the bibliography regarding the subject, IQ equal to or greater than 85 and its responsibles responded to anamnese, allowing the exclusion of children which already presented other kinds of neurological problems. In the second stage, the psychopedacogical interventions were elaborated, distributed in five 2 hours classrooms for the control group and 10 1 hour sessions to the experimental group. For the control group, group activities were carried out following a planning that was closer to that done in class. For the experimental group, the interventions were planned including differentiated games for each children, taking into account their lagging mathematical skills and the skills that needed to be recovered, considering each one of the subcategories of Dyscalculia defined by Kosc (1974). In the third stage, the tests that were done in the first stage were repeated, with the intention to do the reevaluation of the children, from both groups, after the intervention period. To the control group, the same interventions done with the experimental group were provided aiming a second reevaluation. To analyze the results, procedures indicated by the literature for each test were followed, based on the score for the corrections. The study presents a quantitativequalitative meticulous analysis of each children, priorizing individual performance, emphasizing the mathematical skills that were potencialized, verifying advances and modifications that occurred in their performance. To statistically validate the results, Test t of Student was performed to the same variancies and to paired samples, aiming to verify if there were significant differencies at the children’s performance in both groups. From the numerical results, graphs and tables were constructed with the intention to illustrate the performance’s variations regarding each children’s skills. After the analysis, it is seen that, overall, children presented significative improvement in their cognitive skills, after theindividual psychopedagogal intervention. It is evident that the games played during the treatments were effective to the treatment of children presenting indications of Dyscalculia, contributing to come to conclusion that lagged mathematical skills can be recovered, enhancing the existing.