RESUMO
The analysis of cognitive processes underpinning reading and writing skills may help to distinguish different reading ability profiles. The present study used a Brazilian reading and writing battery to compare performance of students with dyslexia with two individually matched control groups: one contrasting on reading competence but not age and the other group contrasting on age but not reading competence. Participants were 28 individuals with dyslexia (19 boys) with a mean age of 9.82 (SD ± 1.44) drawn from public and private schools. These were matched to: (1) an age control group (AC) of 26 good readers with a mean age of 9.77 (SD ± 1.44) matched by age, sex, years of schooling, and type of school; (2) reading control group (RC) of 28 younger controls with a mean age of 7.82 (SD ± 1.06) matched by sex, type of school, and reading level. All groups were tested on four tasks from the Brazilian Reading and Writing Assessment battery ("BALE"): Written Sentence Comprehension Test (WSCT); Spoken Sentence Comprehension Test (OSCT); Picture-Print Writing Test (PPWT 1.1-Writing); and the Reading Competence Test (RCT). These tasks evaluate reading and listening comprehension for sentences, spelling, and reading isolated words and pseudowords (non-words). The dyslexia group scored lower and took longer to complete tasks than the AC group. Compared with the RC group, there were no differences in total scores on reading or oral comprehension tasks. However, dyslexics presented slower reading speeds, longer completion times, and lower scores on spelling tasks, even compared with younger controls. Analysis of types of errors on word and pseudoword reading items showed students with dyslexia scoring lower for pseudoword reading than the other two groups. These findings suggest that the dyslexics overall scores were similar to those of younger readers. However, specific phonological and visual decoding deficits showed that the two groups differ in terms of underpinning reading strategies.
RESUMO
The aim of this study was to identify the neuropsychological characteristics of dyslexic children. Seventy-three children underwent neuropsychological assessment and were divided into two groups: a group with dyslexia (DG; n=39) and a control group (CG; n= 34). A general linear model showed a significant difference between the groups regarding the following abilities: reading, writing and mathematics; forward and backward digit span tasks; semantic and phonological fluency; number of completed categories and total number of cards in the Wisconsin Cards Sorting Test; as well as right and left discrimination on self and on other. These results suggest impairment in executive functions, phonological working memory and semantic memory among dyslexic children, rather than impairment of just phonological abilities, as suggested in previous studies. (AU)
O objetivo deste trabalho foi identificar as características neuropsicológicas de crianças com dislexia. Foram incluídas 73 crianças divididas em dois grupos: um grupo composto por crianças disléxicas (GD; n=39), e um grupo controle (GC; n= 34). A análise de modelo linear geral mostrou diferença significativa entre os grupos nas habilidades de leitura, escrita, matemática, dígitos ordem direta, dígitos ordem inversa, fluência semântica e fonológica, número de categorias e total de cartas do Teste de Classificação de Cartas de Wisconsin, discriminação direita e esquerda em si e no outro. Esses resultados demonstram que podem existir déficits nas funções executivas, memória operacional fonológica e memória semântica e não apenas nas habilidades fonológicas. (AU)
