Luciane da Rosa Piccolo

Variáveis psicossociais e desempenho em leitura de crianças de baixo nível socioeconômico

This longitudinal study investigated the impact of psychosocial factors on reading performance of children with low socioeconomic status. Fifty nine mothers and their children at 4 months, 2, 5-6 and 9-11 years of age participated. The childrens reading performance was correlated with psychosocial variables. Negative correlations were found between maternal psychiatric morbidity in early childhood and reading of irregular words, and between the number of family members living with the child at 2 and 5-6 years and word reading performance. Family income at 2 years correlated positively with reading comprehension. However, only the number of family members who lived with the child was a predictor of reading performance. The results indicate that reading performance is related to psychosocial factors.

Normas de Desempenho em Compreensão de Leitura Textual para Crianças de 1º Ano a 6ª Série

This study presents the performance standards for an assessment tool, constituted by two different tasks, elaborated to evaluate reading comprehension of narrative texts. Retelling and a questionnaire based on the story “The Thing” permitted the evaluation of children from the 1st to 3rd grades, whereas the same tasks based on the story “The Rabbit and the Dog” assessed children from the 4th to 6th grade. The study included 176 children (51.7% girls) between seven and 12 years old, from the first to sixth grade of elementary school, from public and private schools in Porto Alegre-RS. Normative scores for children from the 1st to 6th grades were divided by years of education and type of school. Descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and comparison of the scores on the reading comprehension tasks were carried out using years of education and type of school (public and private) of children (Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis). Compared to younger children from initial grades, older children from advanced grades showed a better performance in reading comprehension. Students from private schools performed better when compared to students from public schools. The assessment tool seems to be useful to distinguish performances of children from different years of education and type of schools and it is easily applied. Clinicians, researchers and professionals in the school environment can use the instrument.

Influences of developmental contexts and gender differences on school performance of children and adolescents

This study investigated children and adolescents’ school performance over time focusing on two variables that may influence it: developmental context and gender. The sample comprised 627 participants (Mage = 11.13, SD = 1.8), 51% of them female, from grade one to eight, living either with family (n = 474) or in care institutions (n = 153). Participants answered individually the Teste de Desempenho Escolar (School Performance Test) and the Structured PRONEX Interview. Findings indicated a main effect of time on school performance (i.e., writing, reading and arithmetic). Furthermore this main effect was further qualified by a time and developmental context interaction and by a time and gender interaction. Interactions revealed that the participants from care institutions attained more significant increases in writing and reading than participants living within a family context; and that girls attained more significant increases in writing than boys. Therefore, school performance progress appears as affected by developmental contexts and gender. The findings reveal how school performance needs to be observed as a multidimensional variable, affected by individual characteristics but also by external ones.