IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL ISOLATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON CHILDREN'S COMMUNICATION

Abstract

Introduction: With the COVID-19 pandemic, several countries adopted social distancing as a preventive measure, which caused the social isolation of families, consequently, children who were in the course of communication and language development had these processes delayed or not started. Objective: To analyze the impacts of social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic on children's communication in São Luís - MA. Methods: A retrospective longitudinal observational study was adopted, evaluating the speech-language pathology records, on the communicative behavior, of 15 children treated at a speech-language pathology clinic, considering the last and the first assessment before and after social isolation, respectively. The answers were analyzed in percentage and for statistical analysis, a non- parametric chi-square test was used. Results: It is observed that there were significant differences (P < 0.05) in the results obtained by the evaluations of the medical records regarding the language aspects of the children assisted after social isolation, the children began not to obey orders and auditory and visual commands after isolation. , where an increase of 14% is observed and it differed significantly (P < 0.05) before social isolation. There was a significant change (P < 0.05) in the ratio of children who were sometimes able to communicate by forming sentences of 2 or 3 words correctly in order not to communicate after social isolation, with a

decrease from 36% to 14% of children who were able to communicate and an increase from 14% to 36% in the number of children who cannot. Conclusion: Social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic negatively influenced the communication of children in São Luís - MA.