Jogos e brincadeiras no desenvolvimento da atenção e da memória em alunos com deficiência intelectual

This paper discusses the contributions of games and play to the attention and memory development process within children with intellectual deficiency in the first stage of the second cycle of Basic Education. An action research was conducted with the following structure: at first, pre-intervention activities were undertaken to verify the attention ad memory of the research participants; subsequently, they worked with games and play that contributed towards the development of the higher psychological functions; and, finally, a post-intervention activity was applied in order to observe whether there were significant alterations in the investigated abilities. The research was undertaken in a school in the northwestern region of the state of Paraná, Brazil, which attends Special Education students. Eight children, aged 6 years old, identified with intellectual deficiency, participated in the intervention. The results showed that the games and play proved to have effective contents in the pedagogical work with regard to memory and, in particular, attention