The Relation between Play and Language in Development Risk Children

Objectives: This work aims to analyze the play of 16 infants with development/psychic risk in development in the age group between 21 and 26 months.

Methods: Sixteen infants were assessed for 1 to 18 months with development risk indices inventory to the development and detected up to 21 to 26 months as babies in psychic risk. Between 21 and 26 months, they were filmed in playful interaction with their mothers for 30 minutes through the provision of age-appropriate toys. The recordings were analyzed through behavioral observation protocol (PROC) for cognitive categories and the Graña (2008) inventory for object relations dimension. The analysis included clinical observation, descriptive statistics, and comparison of the standard deviation to the reference values of the PROC test.

Results: We observed 14 subjects with transitional object relationship and two subjects with fetish object relationship. Four of the 16 subjects had language disorders, and these were contained in the two subjects with impaired object relations fetish type. Also in this group of four children were the worst results in the cognitive dimension of play.

Conclusion: There was a significant relationship between the change of play in cognitive and psycho-affective dimension and presence of language disorder.