Marques Suelen Fernanda, Limongi Suelly Cecilia Olivan
Curso de Fonoaudiologia do Departamento de Fisioterapia, Fonoaudiologia e Terapia Ocupacional da Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo – USP – São Paulo (SP), Brasil.
J Soc Bras Fonoaudiol. 2011;23(2):152-7. doi: 10.1590/s2179-64912011000200012.
To characterize the mean length utterance in morphemes (MLU-m) and words (MLU-w) produced by children with Down syndrome (DS), and to verify the effectiveness of using EME-w as a measure of general language development of children with DS.
Participants were 15 children with ages between 5 and 12 years, who were submitted to a free interaction situation. They were divided into three groups, according to chronological and mental age, as established by the results of the Primary Test of Nonverbal Intelligence. The first 100 utterances were analyzed considering: number of grammatical morphemes (GM) for articles, nouns and verbs (GM-1), and pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions (GM-2); mean length utterance for morphemes (MLU-m) and words (MLU-w).
The between-groups comparison showed that the MLU averages were higher for older groups, and differences were found for all variables, except for GM-2. The same results were obtained in the within-group comparison, for all variables. There was a strong correlation between MLU-m and MLU-w.
MLU-w can be used as an identification measure of general linguistic development. However, it is emphasized that the use of all MLU variables provides more efficacy in the characterization of linguistic development and the analysis of language impairments.
描述唐氏综合征（DS）患儿产出的语素平均长度（MLU-m）和单词平均长度（MLU-w），并验证使用单词平均长度（EME-w）作为DS患儿一般语言发展测量指标的有效性。
研究对象为15名年龄在5至12岁之间的儿童，他们被置于自由互动情境中。根据非言语智力初步测试结果确定的实际年龄和心理年龄，将他们分为三组。对前100个话语进行分析，考虑：冠词、名词和动词的语法语素数量（GM-1），以及代词、介词和连词的语法语素数量（GM-2）；语素平均长度（MLU-m）和单词平均长度（MLU-w）。
组间比较显示，年龄较大组的MLU平均值较高，除GM-2外，所有变量均存在差异。在组内比较中，所有变量均得到相同结果。MLU-m和MLU-w之间存在强相关性。
MLU-w可作为一般语言发展的识别指标。然而，需要强调的是，使用所有MLU变量在描述语言发展和分析语言障碍方面具有更高的有效性。
