Subjective Well-Being of Adolescents in Luxembourg, Germany, and Brazil During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

PURPOSE: This study explores adolescent well-being during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in two high-income countries from Europe and one middle-income country from South America. The aim is to investigate the correlates of different dimensions of subjective well-being in 10- to 16-year-olds from different cultural contexts. METHODS: An online, self-report questionnaire was completed by 1,613 adolescents in Luxembourg, Germany, and Brazil between May and July 2020. The outcome variables were measures of life satisfaction and emotional well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study included a range of sociodemographic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal covariates. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and latent variable structural equational modeling. RESULTS: A two-factor model of subjective well-being, consisting of life satisfaction and emotional well-being latent constructs, fitted well with this sample data for Luxembourg, Germany, and Brazil. Results showed that gender, socioeconomic status, intrapersonal factors, quantity and type of schoolwork, and relationships with adults were important common predictors of individual differences in subjective well-being during COVID-19. Fear of illness emerged as the strongest correlate of emotional well-being across the three countries. CONCLUSIONS: This study indicates that girls and adolescents from low-income homes may be especially vulnerable to negative secondary impacts of COVID-19 that can affect mental health. It identified several common correlates of subjective well-being in adolescents from different cultural settings, including factors that may be changeable, such as the following: the way adults listen to adolescents, schoolwork during distant learning, and fear of illness. Findings can inform the development of quality interventions for promoting the well-being of adolescents during a global pandemic.

Rapid Automatized Naming and Explicit Phonological Processing in Children With Developmental Dyslexia: A Study With Portuguese-Speaking Children in Brazil.

Many studies have shown that children with reading difficulties present deficits in rapid automatized naming (RAN) and phonological awareness skills. The aim of this study was to examine RAN and explicit phonological processing in Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children with developmental dyslexia and to explore the ability of RAN to discriminate between children with and without dyslexia. Participants were 30 children with a clinical diagnosis of dyslexia established by the Brazilian Dyslexia Association and 30 children with typical development. Children were aged between 7 and 12, and groups were matched for chronological age and sex. They completed a battery of tests that are commonly used in Brazil for diagnosing dyslexia, consisting of the Wechsler Intelligence Test for Children (WISC-IV) as well as tests of single word and non-word reading, RAN, and the profile of phonological abilities test. Results indicate that the cognitive profile of this group of children, with a clinical diagnosis of dyslexia, showed preserved skills in the four subscales of the WISC-IV (verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, and processing speed) and on the profile of phonological abilities test. Groups significantly differed on the reading tests (word and non-word) and RAN measures, with medium to large effect sizes for RAN. Classification and regression tree analysis revealed that RAN was a good predictor for dyslexia diagnosis, with an overall classification accuracy rate of 88.33%.

Executive functioning and reading achievement in school: a study of Brazilian children assessed by their teachers as "poor readers".

This study examined executive functioning and reading achievement in 106 6- to 8-year-old Brazilian children from a range of social backgrounds of whom approximately half lived below the poverty line. A particular focus was to explore the executive function profile of children whose classroom reading performance was judged below standard by their teachers and who were matched to controls on chronological age, sex, school type (private or public), domicile (Salvador/BA or São Paulo/SP) and socioeconomic status. Children completed a battery of 12 executive function tasks that were conceptual tapping cognitive flexibility, working memory, inhibition and selective attention. Each executive function domain was assessed by several tasks. Principal component analysis extracted four factors that were labeled "Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility," "Interference Suppression," "Selective Attention," and "Response Inhibition." Individual differences in executive functioning components made differential contributions to early reading achievement. The Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility factor emerged as the best predictor of reading. Group comparisons on computed factor scores showed that struggling readers displayed limitations in Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility, but not in other executive function components, compared to more skilled readers. These results validate the account that working memory capacity provides a crucial building block for the development of early literacy skills and extends it to a population of early readers of Portuguese from Brazil. The study suggests that deficits in working memory/cognitive flexibility might represent one contributing factor to reading difficulties in early readers. This might have important implications for how educators might intervene with children at risk of academic under achievement.

Working memory screening, school context, and socioeconomic status: an analysis of the effectiveness of the working memory rating scale in Brazil.

OBJECTIVE: The study explores the psychometric properties of the Brazilian-Portuguese version of the Working Memory Rating Scale (WMRS-Br) in a population of 355 young children from diverse socioeconomic status and schooling backgrounds. METHOD: Public and private school teachers completed the WMRS-Br and children were assessed on a range of objective cognitive measures of fluid intelligence, working memory, and attention. RESULTS: Reliability and validity of the WMRS-Br were excellent across the public and private school sample. The WMRS-Br manifested substantial links with objective measures of working memory and medium links with selective attention, switching, and interference suppression. Confirmatory factor analyses suggest that a shorter version of the scale provides an adequate fit to the data. CONCLUSION: The WMRS-Br represents a valid screening tool in a Latin American context that has the potential to improve the early detection of working memory deficits in children growing up in poverty.

Effects of impoverished environmental conditions on working memory performance.

This cross-cultural study investigates the impact of background experience on four verbal and visuo-spatial working memory (WM) tasks. A total of 84 children from low-income families were recruited from the following groups: (1) Portuguese immigrant children from Luxembourg impoverished in terms of language experience; (2) Brazilian children deprived in terms of scholastic background; (3) Portuguese children from Portugal with no disadvantage in either scholastic or language background. Children were matched on age, gender, fluid intelligence, and socioeconomic status and completed four simple and complex span tasks of WM and a vocabulary measure. Results indicate that, despite large differences in their backgrounds and language abilities, the groups exhibited comparable performance on the visuo-spatial tasks dot matrix and odd-one-out and on the verbal simple span task digit recall. Group differences emerged on the verbal complex span task counting recall with children from Luxembourg and Portugal outperforming children from disadvantaged schools in Brazil. The study suggests that whereas contributions of prior knowledge to digit span, dot matrix, and odd-one-out are likely to be minimal, background experience can affect performance on counting recall. Implications for testing WM capacity in children growing up in poverty are discussed.

Trichothecenes and zearalenone production by Fusarium equiseti and Fusarium semitectum species isolated from Argentinean soybean.

Fusarium equiseti and Fusarium semitectum represent the most abundant species in the Fusarium complex isolated from flowers, soybean pods and seeds in Argentina. The aim of the present study was to assess the production of major type A and type B trichothecenes (diacetoxyscirpenol, neosolaniol, T-2 toxin and HT-2 toxin, nivalenol, deoxynivalenol) and zearalenone by 40 F. equiseti and 22 F. semitectum isolates on rice culture. Mycotoxins were determined by HPLC with fluorescence detection after derivatisation with 1-anthronylnitrile for type A trichothecenes (i.e. diacetoxyscirpenol, neosolaniol, T-2 toxin and HT-2 toxin), by HPLC with UV detection for type B trichothecenes (i.e. nivalenol and deoxynivalenol), and by TLC for zearalenone. A total of 22 of 40 F. equiseti isolates produced diacetoxyscirpenol, nivalenol and ZEA alone or in combination, whereas only two of 20 F. semitectum isolates were nivalenol and ZEA producers. Both Fusarium species did not produce any deoxynivalenol, neosolaniol, T-2 toxin and HT-2 toxin. The variable retention in toxigenicity displayed by both fungal species suggests that these species have a saprophytic lifestyle in the soybean agroecosystem in Argentina.

Fumonisin production on irradiated corn kernels: effect of inoculum size.

Production of fumonisins B1, B2, and B3 by Fusarium moniliforme was evaluated on irradiated corn kernels inoculated with different spore concentrations (10, 10(2), 10(3), 10(5), and 10(6)), a water activity of 0.97, and a temperature of 25 degrees C. There was a direct relationship between the level of toxin produced and inoculum size. The highest levels of total fumonisin produced after 35 days of incubation were 5,028 and 9,063 ng/g at 10(5) and 10(6) spores per ml, respectively. The pattern of fumonisin production (FB1 > FB2 > FB3) in cultures growing from different inocula was not affected during the 35 days of incubation. The ratio between FB2 and FB1 varied from 0.15 to 0.42, whereas the ratio between FB3 and FB1 varied from 0.34 to 0.87.

Natural occurrence of fumonisins and their correlation to Fusarium contamination in commercial corn hybrids growth in Argentina.

Fifty commercial corn hybrids with different endosperm characteristics, vegetative cycle length and cross class grown in the same geographical area (Cordoba Province, Argentina) were analysed for fumonisin accumulation. All hybrids analysed showed fumonisin B(1) and B(2) contamination ranging from 185 to 27,050 ng/g for FB(1) and from 40 to 9950 ng/g for FB(2). Although most of the hybrids analysed had flint-type endosperm, two hybrids with dent-type endosperm (e.g. Prozea 10 and AX 746) showed the highest level of fumonisin (37,000 ng/g) and more FB(2) than FB(1) (FB(2)/FB(1) ratio 2.42), respectively. There was no correlation between fumonisin concentration and length of the vegetative cycle. Among 18 hybrids examined for Fusarium species contamination there was also no correlation between fumonisin contamination and the level of infection with Fusarium species (Section Liseola). Eighteen hybrids showed fumonisin levels lower than 1000 ng/g. This result suggests that there is some possibility of selecting hybrids resistant or less susceptible to fumonisin and Fusarium contamination.