Marina Leite Puglisi

Perfil comunicativo de crianças com alterações específicas no desenvolvimento da linguagem: caracterização longitudinal das habilidades pragmáticas

OBJETIVO: Analisar o desempenho longitudinal de criancas com Alteracoes Especificas no Desenvolvimento da Linguagem (AEDL) em uma prova de Pragmatica a fim de observar o desenvolvimento da competencia comunicativa ao longo do processo terapeutico. METODOS: Participaram desta pesquisa 56 criancas de ambos os sexos, com idades entre 1;10 (anos;meses) a 5;11 na primeira avaliacao. Todos os sujeitos foram diagnosticados com AEDL e estavam/estiveram em terapia fonoaudiologica por pelo menos dois anos ou receberam alta antes deste periodo. As provas de Pragmatica que faziam parte das avaliacoes anuais dos pacientes foram analisadas e pontuadas de 0 a 4 (pior ao melhor desempenho, respectivamente) com base em criterios de gravidade. Os resultados foram tratados estatisticamente (pd0,05; ANOVA, Tukey-T, Pearson). RESULTADOS: A idade das criancas com AEDL no momento do ingresso no servico nao foi uma variavel relevante para determinar seus desempenhos na primeira avaliacao de Pragmatica, exceto para a idade de um ano (p=0,02), nem para predizer o tempo de terapia necessario para que eles normalizassem suas habilidades pragmaticas (p=0,72). As criancas que atingiram os criterios de normalidade para a prova (64,3%) apresentaram um desempenho inicial melhor do que os sujeitos que nao normalizaram seus desempenhos ate o momento da coleta (p=0,01). Finalmente, enquanto o meio comunicativo foi o parâmetro que mais melhorou apos terapia fonoaudiologica, o numero de atos por minuto foi a variavel cujo prejuizo mostrou-se mais persistente. CONCLUSAO: O desempenho inicial das criancas com AEDL foi a variavel que melhor predisse a normalizacao das habilidades pragmaticas dos sujeitos (64,3%), apos terapia fonoaudiologica.

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.

Utilização e compreensão de preposições por crianças com distúrbio específico de linguagem

Background: the ability of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) to use and comprehend closed-class words. Aim: acknowledging the increasing search for the characterization of linguistic performance of this population in different languages, as well as the findings of international literature that stress the difficulty of these children in using closed-class grammatical morphemes, the aim of this study was to analyze the performance of children with SLI in tests of production and comprehension of prepositions. The purpose of this research was also to compare the performance of these children to that of their typical language developing peers, in terms of the overall index of correct answers and the most frequent types of errors in both groups. Method: an objective test was developed in order to analyze production and comprehension of four types of prepositions that are used to establish the following semantic relations: with (company relation); by (way relation); in, on or at (place/position relations); and to (destination relation). This test was carried out with 19 SLI children and 29 typically developing children (CG - control group), one year younger than the research group. Results: SLI children presented the same pattern of results, although delayed, of children in the CG in the comprehension test. In the task involving production, however, the performance of SLI children was quantitatively and qualitatively inferior to their typical developing controls. This performance was mainly characterized by the omission of prepositions. Conclusion: the findings corroborate the view that grammatical words constitute a challenge for SLI children, since they presented many errors that suggest difficulties in the domain of prepositions. The results also emphasized, for the SLI group,

É possível predizer o tempo de terapia das alterações específicas no desenvolvimento da linguagem

PURPOSEnTo explore which measures could predict the persistency of developmental language impairment (DLI) based on the association between the initial language assessment and the therapeutic prognosis of the child.nnnMETHODSnIn this retrospective study, the records of 42 children with diagnosis of DLI were analyzed. Participants age varied from 21 to 63 months at the first language assessment, which included vocabulary, phonology, pragmatics and fluency tests. The performance of subjects in each test was scored from 0 to 4, based on the severity of the deficits, and the maximum score corresponded to age-adequate performance. As prognostic measure, we accounted the length of therapy (in sessions) of patients who were discharged, were referred to another service (because the deficits had become very mild), or remained in therapy (persistent language difficulties).nnnRESULTSnThere was association between initial assessment (normal or mild alterations for vocabulary and pragmatics abilities) and prognosis (<135 therapeutic sessions). Vocabulary was the only variable able to predict the length of therapy. Being classified as severe in this measure caused the estimate of treatment to increase, in average, 112 sessions.nnnCONCLUSIONnThe first vocabulary assessment can contribute to predict the childs therapeutic prognosis. This finding is clinically and scientifically relevant to Speech-Language Pathology, since it offers an auxiliary resource to the prognosis and therapeutic planning in cases of DLI.

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.

Aquisição do morfema de número em crianças em desenvolvimento normal de linguagem

BACKGROUNDnstudies about Brazilian Portuguese number morpheme acquisition and its productive usage have indicated controversial results.nnnAIMnto verify the comprehension and production of singular and plural markers in children within normal language development.nnnMETHODnparticipants were 64 children ranging in age from 3:0 to 6:11 years. In the comprehension test, children were encouraged to point to the correctly inflected noun picture, among three foils. In the production test, they had to name each picture with the correctly inflected article and noun.nnnRESULTSnthere was an increase of correct answers with age. The production of the plural form received the lower scores, but presented a significant enhancement from 3:0 to 5:0 years.nnnCONCLUSIONnthis ability improved with development and was considered productive after 5:0.

Specific language impairment in language minority children from low-income families

The heart is a pump for blood circulation in the animal body. Since proper cardiac contractile/diastolic function is critically necessary for the development, growth, and survival of various animals including humans, heart diseases cause serious disorder to this function. Cardiac diseases including myocardial ischemia and heart failure are a common cause of death in the world. For a long time, numerous investigators have undertaken physiological, pathological, pharmacological, and biochemical studies to understand better cardiac structure and function. These studies have provided very interesting findings such as “ischemic preconditioning,” “cardiac energy metabolism,” and “cardiac remodeling,” which processes promote and enhance the progression of other scientific fields such as neurochemical, hepatic, and renal sciences. Recently, the heart has been focused on as a target organ for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, because it is believed that cardiomyocytes do not reproduce after birth. Numerous investigators have sought to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the genesis and development of cardiac diseases, and their findings have enhanced pharmacological research directed toward therapy for cardiac diseases. Various drugs have been developed for treatment of cardiac patients and have improved to various degrees the quality of life for such patients. However, there are many patients with cardiac diseases; who do not benefit from drug therapy. Especially, the development of new drugs for cardiac arrhythmia and heart failure is required as soon as possible, because these conditions directly affect patient survival. To enhance the development of new drugs for these diseases, further pathophysiological and pharmacological research in cardiology is necessary. As regards the topics for this research, four basic studies concerning myocardial pathophysiology and pharmacology are covered in this issue of the Biological and Pharmaceutical Bulletin. The first two studies are focused on arrhythmia. In the first, T-type Ca2+ channels in the pulmonary vein are described as new possible targets for atrial fibrillation. It is expected that blockers of these channels will become a novel new antiarrhythmic agent. In the second, gender differences in the induction of arrhythmia are addressed, as it is unclear what role they play. The authors review how cardiac re polarization is regulated by sex hormones via a non-genomic pathway. The latter two studies examine heart failure. In the third study, cardiac p300/GATA4 pathway is suggested as a new possible target of drugs for the treatment of heart failure and the effects of curcumin on the development of heart failure are also introduced. The final study addressed dilated cardiomyopathy, which is the most prevalent of cardio myopathies and the most common reason for cardiac transplantation in patients with heart failure. The relationship between genetic and sporadic mutations of cardiac proteins and the genesis of dilated cardiomyopathy is discussed. It is expected that these four reviews enhance the understanding of researchers in cardiology with respect to the pathogenesis and development of arrhythmia and heart failure.

Redação científica e a qualidade dos artigos: em busca de maior impacto

Given the latent concern of scientists and editors on the quality of scientific writing, the aim of this paper was to present topics on the recommended structure of peer-reviewed papers. We described the key points of common sections of original papers and proposed two additional materials that may be useful for scientific writing: one particular guide to help the organization of the main ideas of the paper; and a table with examples of non desirable and desirable structures in scientific writing.

Compreensão de sentenças em crianças com desenvolvimento normal de linguagem e com distúrbio específico de linguagem

Rev Soc Bras Fonoaudiol. 2010;15(2):312 Tese apresentada à Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo para obtenção do título de Doutor em Ciências, sob orientação da Profa. Dra. Debora Maria Befi-Lopes. (1) Doutora, Pesquisadora colaboradora do Laboratório de Investigação Fonoaudiológica em Desenvolvimento da Linguagem e suas Alterações do Departamento de Fisioterapia, Fonoaudiologia e Terapia Ocupacional da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo – USP – São Paulo (SP), Brasil. Endereço para correspondência: Marina Leite Puglisi. R. João Alexandre Rochadel, 76, Brooklin, São Paulo (SP), Brasil, CEP: 04565-010. E-mail: marinapuglisi@uol.com.br Compreensão de sentenças em crianças com desenvolvimento normal de linguagem e com distúrbio específico de linguagem