How Word/Non-Word Length Influence Reading Acquisition in a Transparent Language: Implications for Children's Literacy and Development.

Decoding skills are crucial for literacy development and they tend to be acquired early in transparent languages, such as Brazilian Portuguese. It is essential to better understand which variables may affect the decoding process. In this study, we investigated the processes of decoding as a function of age of children who are exposed to a transparent language. To this end, we examined the effects of grade, stimulus type and stimulus extension on the decoding accuracy of children between the ages of six and 10 years who are monolingual speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. The study included 250 children, enrolled from the first to the fifth grade. A list of words and pseudowords of variable length was created, based on Brazilian Portuguese structure. Children assessment was conducted using the computer program E-prime® which was used to present the stimuli. The stimuli were programmed to appear on the screen in a random order and children were instructed to read them. The results indicate two important moments for decoding: the acquisition and the mastery of decoding skills. Additionally, the results highlight an important effect of the extent and type of stimuli and how it interacts with the school progress. Moreover, data indicate the multifactorial nature of decoding acquisition and the different interactions between variables that can influence this process. We discuss medium- and long-term implications of it, and possible individual and collective actions which can improve this process.

Dysphagia and associated clinical markers in neurologically intact children with respiratory disease.

OBJECTIVE: The identification of oropharyngeal aspiration is paramount since it can have negative consequences on a compromised respiratory status. Our hypothesis was that dysphagia in neurologically intact children with respiratory disease is associated to specific clinical markers. STUDY DESIGN: Using the medical files we conducted a retrospective, observational cohort study on children admitted to the pediatric hospital unit due to respiratory disease. We collected data on specific parameters of a clinical swallowing assessment and dysphagia was classified according to the Dysphagia Management Staging Scale. We also included the following clinical markers: age, days of hospitalization, need for orotracheal intubation (OTI), duration of orotracheal intubation (in hours), number of previous hospital admissions due to respiratory disease, number of previous hospital admissions due to other causes, and previous orotracheal intubations. RESULTS: The final study sample consisted of 102 patients (mean age of 5.88 months). For the purposes of statistical analysis, the patients were grouped according to the classification of dysphagia (ie, no dysphagia, mild dysphagia, and moderate-severe dysphagia). Data analysis indicated that the clinical markers of orotracheal intubation (P = 0.042), duration of orotracheal intubation (P = 0.025), and days of hospitalization (P = 0.037) were significant in children with moderate-severe dysphagia. CONCLUSIONS: Our data indicate that neurologically intact children with respiratory disease who were submitted to prolonged OTI (ie, over 48 h) should be prioritized for receiving a detailed swallowing assessment.

Association between audiological profile and primary language impairment in children.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of the present study was to characterize the Brazilian Portuguese speaking children seen at the Speech-Language Pathology Service of a Health Center, between 1985 and 2009, diagnosed with primary language impairments (PLI): language development impairment (LDI), phonological disorder (PD) and reading and writing impairment (RWI) regarding demographic and audiological profile; as well as investigate the association between PLI and demographic variables, and the association between PLI and hearing disorders. METHODS: A survey of medical records was carried out, collecting audiological and language impairment diagnostic data, totaling 2424 individuals in the study group. In addition, audiological evaluation data of 186 children without language disorders complaints were collected so that they constituted the control group. RESULTS: From the study group,1524 children (62.87%) had PLI. Considering the PLIs, the following occurrences were observed: PD=58.84%, LDI=30.75% and RWI=10.41%, with a predominance of males (64.19%) and age range up to 6 years (67.15%). For the audiological profile, there was a predominance of normal hearing thresholds (81.34%), followed by conductive hearing loss (15.47%). Tympanogram type A was more prevalent (56.24%), followed by B and C types (21.84% and 18.16%). Acoustic reflexes were present in the majority of subjects (51.7%). There was a significant association between belonging to the 7-12 years-old group and presenting with PD, belonging to the group up to 6 years and having LDI, and belonging to the older group and presenting with RWI. There was a significant association between males and presenting with LDI. There was statistically significant association between PLI and abnormal audiological profile. Individuals with abnormal audiological profile were 63% more likely to have PLI than those who had normal audiological profile. CONCLUSIONS: It is suggested that having an abnormal audiological profile would be a risk factor for PLI. Hence, these findings can serve as a basis for children hearing and speech-language monitoring, and as an important tool for the planning of health promotion and prevention actions, as well as the development and implementation of intervention programs.

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.

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.

Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects on verbal working memory and vocabulary: testing language-minority children with an immigrant background.

PURPOSE: In this study, the authors explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and working memory performance in multilingual language-minority children. METHOD: Twenty 7-year-old Portuguese-speaking immigrant children living in Luxembourg completed several assessments of first (L1)- and second-language (L2) vocabulary (comprehension and production), executive-loaded working memory (counting recall and backward digit recall), and verbal short-term memory (digit recall and nonword repetition). Cross-linguistic task performance was compared within individuals. The language-minority children were also compared with multilingual language-majority children from Luxembourg and Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Brazil without an immigrant background matched on age, sex, socioeconomic status, and nonverbal reasoning. RESULTS: Results showed that (a) verbal working memory measures involving numerical memoranda were relatively independent of test language and cultural status; (b) language status had an impact on the repetition of high- but not on low-wordlike L2 nonwords; (c) large cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects emerged for productive vocabulary; (d) cross-cultural effects were less pronounced for vocabulary comprehension with no differences between groups if only L1 words relevant to the home context were considered. CONCLUSION: The study indicates that linguistic and cognitive assessments for language-minority children require careful choice among measures to ensure valid results. Implications for testing culturally and linguistically diverse children are discussed.

Investigation of auditory processing disorder and language impairment using the speech-evoked auditory brainstem response.

This study investigated whether there are differences in the Speech-Evoked Auditory Brainstem Response among children with Typical Development (TD), (Central) Auditory Processing Disorder (C)APD, and Language Impairment (LI). The speech-evoked Auditory Brainstem Response was tested in 57 children (ages 6-12). The children were placed into three groups: TD (n = 18), (C)APD (n = 18) and LI (n = 21). Speech-evoked ABR were elicited using the five-formant syllable/da/. Three dimensions were defined for analysis, including timing, harmonics, and pitch. A comparative analysis of the responses between the typical development children and children with (C)APD and LI revealed abnormal encoding of the speech acoustic features that are characteristics of speech perception in children with (C)APD and LI, although the two groups differed in their abnormalities. While the children with (C)APD might had a greater difficulty distinguishing stimuli based on timing cues, the children with LI had the additional difficulty of distinguishing speech harmonics, which are important to the identification of speech sounds. These data suggested that an inefficient representation of crucial components of speech sounds may contribute to the difficulties with language processing found in children with LI. Furthermore, these findings may indicate that the neural processes mediated by the auditory brainstem differ among children with auditory processing and speech-language disorders.

Syntactic structural assignment in Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children with specific language impairment.

PURPOSE: In this study, the authors examined the comprehension of sentences with predicates and reflexives that are linked to a nonadjacent noun as a test of the hierarchical ordering deficit (HOD) hypothesis. That hypothesis and more modern versions posit that children with specific language impairment (SLI) have difficulty in establishing nonadjacent (hierarchical) relations among elements of a sentence. The authors also tested whether additional working memory demands in constructions containing reflexives affected the extent to which children with SLI incorrectly structure sentences as indicated by their picture-pointing comprehension responses. METHOD: Sixteen Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children (8;4-10;6 [years;months]) with SLI and 16 children with typical language development (TLD) matched for age (± 3 months), gender, and socioeconomic status participated in 2 experiments (predicate and reflexive interpretation). In the reflexive experiment, the authors also manipulated working memory demands. Each experiment involved a 4-choice picture selection sentence comprehension task. RESULTS: Children with SLI were significantly less accurate on all conditions. Both groups made more hierarchical syntactic construction errors in the long working memory condition than in the short working memory condition. CONCLUSION: The HOD hypothesis was not confirmed. For both groups, syntactic factors (structural assignment) were more vulnerable than lexical factors (prepositions) to working memory effects in sentence miscomprehension.

Emerging issues concerning the education of speech and language pathologists and audiologists in Brazil and South America.

Diversity is one of the major characteristics of Brazil and all South America. This paper presents an overview of the current situation of the education of speech and language pathologists (SLP) and audiologists in Brazil and in several other countries of South America. This paper also discusses the main challenges shared by these countries. The discussion is focused on the mutual interferences between education and the areas of professional practice, cultural diversity and continued education. There are many emerging issues about the education of SLP and audiologists in South America. The suggested conclusion is that, despite the many differences, the South American SLP and audiologists' education would benefit from joint efforts and collaborative experiences.