Natália Becker

Genetic and environmental risk factors for developmental dyslexia in children: systematic review of the last decade

ABSTRACT Despite advances in the characterization of developmental dyslexia (DD), several questions regarding the interplay between DD-susceptibility genes and environmental risk factors remain open. This systematic review aimed at answering the following questions: What has been the impact of new resources on the knowledge about DD? Which questions remain open? What is the investigative agenda for the short term? Forty-six studies were analyzed. Despite the growing literature on DD candidate genes, most studies have not been replicated. We found large effects on causative genes and smaller environmental contributions, involving maternal smoking during pregnancy, SES and the DYX1C1-1259C/G marker. Implications are discussed.

Estratégias de evocação lexical com critério semântico em adultos após acidente vascular cerebral no hemisfério direito

Tarefas de fluencia verbal semântica (FVS) avaliam a capacidade de gerar palavras a partir de um determinado criterio e em um tempo especifico, permitindo investigar habilidades como linguagem, memoria e funcoes executivas. O objetivo deste estudo foi analisar o desempenho de adultos que sofreram acidente vascular cerebral no hemisferio direito (HD) em uma tarefa de FVS. Foram avaliados 11 adultos com lesao no HD e 11 neurologicamente saudaveis, emparelhados por sexo, idade e escolaridade. Os participantes responderam uma tarefa de FVS (roupas e vestimentas), sendo mensurados o numero total de palavras evocadas, variaveis de clustering e switching e a conformacao de redes semânticas, por meio de analise computacional. Houve diferencas estatisticamente significativas apenas no numero de palavras verbalizadas (escore Z). As analises topograficas de grafos demonstraram tendencia a redes semânticas menores no grupo com lesao no HD, em relacao aos controles. Analises de serie de casos indicaram quatro individuos com escores deficitarios no numero de palavras e na variavel switching . Esses participantes apresentavam lesoes subcorticais e predominantemente frontais, sugerindo que a localizacao especifica da lesao tem interferencia na utilizacao de estrategias de evocacao lexical. Destaca-se o carater pioneiro deste estudo no contexto brasileiro e a importância da utilizacao de comparacoes entre grupos e serie de casos em investigacoes na neuropsicologia cognitiva.

Methodological Criteria for Scoring Clustering and Switching in Verbal Fluency Tasks

Abstract The objective of this study was to describe an adaptation to Brazilian Portuguese of the methodological criteria for analysis of clustering and switching in semantic verbal fluency (SVF) and phonemic verbal fluency (PVF) tasks. The adaptation process consisted of six steps, including the selection of the clustering and switching variables based on data from a sample of 419 children and the analysis of inter-rater reliability (six raters). The following variables were scored: the total number of words generated the raw number of clusters , the mean cluster size, and the raw number of switches . There was a significant associa-tion between raters (intra-class correlation coefficients between 0.95 and 0.99), showing that the analytical method was reliable. Our study provides an evaluation of SVF and PVF tasks that goes beyond the overall score, making it possible to investigate the cognitive processes underlying this neuropsychological function. Keywords: semantic verbal fluency, phonemic verbal fluency, clustering, switching

Attention, memory, visuoconstructive, and executive task performance in adolescents with anxiety disorders: a case-control community study

Objective: The aim of the present study was to assess children and adolescents with mild and severe anxiety disorders for their performance in attention, verbal episodic memory, working memory, visuoconstructive skills, executive functions, and cognitive global functioning and conduct comparative analyses with the performance of children free from anxiety disorders. Methods: Our sample comprised 68 children and adolescents aged 10 to 17 years (41 with current diagnoses of anxiety disorders and 27 controls) selected from a larger cross-sectional community sample of adolescents. Children and adolescents with anxiety disorders were categorized into two groups on the basis of anxiety severity (mild or severe). All participants underwent a neuropsychological assessment battery to evaluate attention, verbal episodic memory, working memory, visuoconstructive skills, and executive and cognitive functions. Results: No differences were found in any neuropsychological tests, with the single exception that the group with mild anxiety had better performance on the Digit Span backward test compared to subjects with severe anxiety and to controls (p = 0.041; η2 = 0.11). Conclusions: Not only might anxiety disorders spare main cognitive functions during adolescence, they may even enhance certain working memory processes.