SPERIMENTAZIONE DEL QUESTIONARIO MACARTHUR NELLA VERSIONE ESTESA A TIPI DI SEGNALAZIONE MULTIMODALE

The questionnaire MacArthur in the Italian version, "The Vocabulary of the First Child" - PVB (Caselli, Casadio, 1995) is the instrument of data collection and assessment of communicative and linguistic development. This study saw the design and construction of a first extension of the PVB Italian form of the questionnaire, called Extended MacArthur. It adds to the usual data collection areas of verbal comprehension and production of the questionnaire (MacArthur "Gestures and Words" 8-17 months and MacAthur "Words and Phrases" 18-36 months) other areas where values can be annotated related to comprehension and production implemented by message types that are multimodal (partition according to author L. Watson et al., 1997): Motor-body (MOT), Object (OGG), Gesture (GES) and Iconic (IMG). This expansion makes the best instrument in particular, but not limited to use for evaluation and screening individuals with autism spectrum and in any case where there is a need to record the use of different signal forms from verbal sound. It is also devised a system of data calculation and visualization of results through tables and graphs on Excel spreadsheet. This is intended as a tool to 'show' to the parents what they do and what the child, and to allow a greater awareness by parents of what is the communicative act of the child, a good tool to 'view 'what are the areas where you can lexical groped to make an increase of stimulation and, finally, make available to the pathologist a computerized assessment tool allowing to obtain a more objective study, and complete statement of the case.