NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF PRESCHOOL CHILDREN WITH SUSPECTED AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER (ASD)
Autism Spcetrum Disorder; Congitive; Language.
Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can manifest itself from the first weeks of the child's life, and is characterized by impairments in social engagement capacity, language and commonly in cognitive abilities that directly impact the daily life functions of the subjects. Despite being present at a young age, the diagnosis usually occurs after 3 years, which makes the intervention process and the prognosis of the infants difficult. In this sense, the present study aims to investigate the association between cognition and the language of preschool children with ASD. For this, it was divided into two parts. The first one consists of a systematic review of the literature, comprising the period of 10 years (2008-2018) based on the PRISMA methodology. 16 empirical studies were accepted. Despite the different methodologies used, it was observed that children with better social interactions, cognitive and shared care indexes also had higher linguistic performance. Considering the findings, the second stage of the research aims to map in an empirical study, with a quasi-experimental design, through multiple cases the profile of language development and cognition of children from 2 to 4 years of age, with diagnosis or suspicion of autism. Evaluations will be performed from the Bayley-III Scales - Infant and Toddler Scales (Third Edition) and Neuropsychological Instruments Considered as a Reference in Child Assessment.