Larissa Assunção Rodrigues

Letter name knowledge and the ability to learn to read by processing letter–phoneme relations in words: Evidence from Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children

Previous studies [Scott & Ehri (1990) Journal of Reading Behavior22: 149–166; de Abreu & Cardoso-Martins (1998) Reading and Writing:An Interdisciplinary Journal 10: 85–104] have shown thatprereaders who know the names of the lettersuse a visual–phonological strategy to learn toread words in which the names of one or moreletters can be clearly detected in thepronunciation of the words. The present resultsextend these findings by showing that BrazilianPortuguese-speaking prereaders who know thenames of the letters can process letter–soundrelations to learn to read spellings in whichthe letters correspond to phonemes, not toletter names. Following Ehri & Wilcesprocedure [(1985) Reading Research Quarterly 20:163–179], Brazilian preschool childrenlearned to read two types of simplifiedspellings: phonetic spellings, that is,spellings in which the letters corresponded tophonemes in the pronunciation of the words(e.g., SPT for sapato), and visualspellings, that is, spellings in which theletters did not correspond to sounds in thepronunciation of the words, but which werevisually more salient (e.g., VST for pijama). The children learned to read thephonetic spellings more easily than the visualspellings, suggesting that they recognized theletter–phoneme relations in learning to readthe phonetic spellings. This interpretation isbolstered by the results of correlationalanalyses between knowledge of letter sounds andperformance on the two word-learning tasks.While knowledge of letter–phonemecorrespondences did not correlate withperformance on the word-learning task with thevisual spellings, it correlated significantlyand positively with the childrens ability tolearn to read the phonetic spellings.

Socioeconomic environment effect on inferential reasoning of Latin American students

Introduction. Inferential reasoning (IR) is a major component of intelligence, which comprises many different cognitive processes such as perception, memory, and logic. Many studies have proposed that socioeconomic status (SES) has a negligible association with IR, but more recent findings suggest that they may have a higher association when evaluating group instead of individual SES. Objective. The aim of this study is to test the effects of both individual (students) and group (schools) socioeconomic status on IR, comparing different countries of Latin America. Method. The sample was composed of 2 358 students aged 14 and 15 years from 52 different schools (44% public) of five Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Peru). Participants took part in an inferential reasoning test and answered a socioeconomic questionnaire. Results. SES student showed a small positive correlation with IR ( r = .10, p F [2, 1944] = 74.68, p p 2 = .07), with higher IR at schools with higher SES. A significant difference of IR between countries ( F [4, 1976] = 20.68, p p 2 = .04), was also found with Peru showing the highest mean. Peru was the country with the higher percentage of private schools in the present study. A multilevel model was fitted using individual and group SES as predictors. Discussion and conclusion. Our findings showed that group SES have a higher predictive value of IR when compared to individual SES. This result suggests that individuals with low SES can benefit from studying on higher SES schools. Future research and the importance of public policies are discussed.

Informação geral e atual e sua relação com a inteligência e a personalidade em crianças escolares

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between intelligence, personality and the extent of general and current information of students in the state of Minas Gerais. Two sample groups participated. The first was composed of students from three socially vulnerable levels from the city of Belo Horizonte (n=600), and the second group came from public schools in the city of Perdoes (n=215). The Ravens Progressive Matrices Test and a General Information Questionnaire were applied for both samples. In addition, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and the WISC-III Information test were applied to the second sample. The results indicated a consistent relationship between intelligence and General Information Questionnaire, even after smoothing the effect of the social vulnerability of the schools (r=0.431). A path analysis showed an independent effect of intelligence (r=0.430) and of the Psychoticism dimension (-0.18) on the General Information Questionnaire, even after the smoothing of age and covariance between predictors. It may be concluded that intelligence explains General Information Questionnaire differences twice as much as does personality.