Semantic Disorders and Adaptation Problems in Children in Residential Care

This research analyses the semantic disorders and the level of personal, social and school adaptation in children in residential care between 6 and 18 years of age. The research is carried out in the Residential Childcare Homes of Extremadura (Spain). The study shows that there are important difficulties affecting the semantic organisation of the children’s narrative and conversational discourse, lexical recuperation problems in spontaneous language, and scarce ability to store or represent the semantic meanings of words. Similarly, with respect to the children’s degree of personal, social and school adaptation, we conclude that there is a relationship between the level of semantic dominion and the degree of adaptation. The scarce semantic competence leads to a bad adaptation of the children to their environment and to behavioral and emotional disorders. In this work, a proposal is made for activities aimed at improving children’s semantic competence, and the need to set up socio-educational intervention programmes to encourage the development of linguistic skills in minors in care is stressed.