Pro-fono : revista de atualizacao cientifica最新文献

Background: the working memory is a cognitive skill that contributes to adequate development of language and to the acquisition of reading and writing. A consistent evaluation of the working memory in pre-school and basic school children demonstrates to be important for the early identification of possible learning impairments.

Aim: to evaluate the development of working memory along the first school grades of basic education and to verify the applicability of the Brown-Peterson Task in the assessment of this function in children.

Method: 103 children, 63 males, with the mean age of 9.75, recruited from 1st to 6th grades of basic school participated in the study. The children were assessed with the Brown-Peterson Task, the Digit Span forward and the Digit Span Backward. The results were compared for the variables of gender, age and grade.

Results: the score on the Brown-Peterson Task increased along the school grades and age groups. A linear decrease in scoring was observed in longer interference intervals. A positive correlation was found between the Brown-Peterson Task and the Digit Span, yet the Brown-Peterson Task proved to better differentiate school grades.

Conclusion: the study confirmed that working memory development continues during the basic education years, indicating late maturation of related brain areas. The Brown-Peterson Task proved to be an adequate tool for the assessment of working memory in children.

Background: the decrease of facial movements in peripheral facial paralysis and the resulting aesthetical sequels may have important emotional repercussions as a consequence to the functional deficit, and depending on the intensity of the clinical condition. Orofacial rehabilitation has as a purpose to favor the recovery of orofacial movements and to adequate and/or adapt orofacial functions and facial mimic. However, quantifying therapeutic results in an attempt to measure the muscle tonus is a challenge. Generally, the used forms of measurement are general and subjective.

Aim: to propose the labial commissure angle as an anthropometric marker and to evaluate its reliability as an objective tool to evaluate the modification of the facial muscle tonus after rehabilitation.

Method: participants of the study were 20 patients presenting peripheral facial paralysis - level IV. The study was conducted using images from the photographical documentation taken fifteen days to one year post-onset of facial paralysis. The angle was measured by tracings determined by pre-established anthropometric facial points, such as the line between the glabella and the gnation and the crossing with the left and right chelion points determining an angle manually measured with a protractor on the photography.

Results: The average Labial Commissure Angle before treatment was of 101.70 and after rehabilitation of 93.80 (standard deviation, SD = 4.3). The statistical analysis indicated a significant difference (p < 0.001).

Conclusion: the results obtained suggest that the Labial Commissure Angle allows the objective evaluation of facial muscle tonus modification.

Background: training of Community Health Agents on hearing health through videoconference.

Aim: to verify the effectiveness of a training program for community health agents, through videoconference, on child hearing health.

Method: participants of the study were 50 professionals who were randomly divided in two groups: 31 community health agents were physically present in the training program and 19 participated via videoconference. Training was provided in eight hours, through classes and using specific material adapted from the Primary ear and hearing care training resource - basic, intermediate and advanced levels for both groups, simultaneously. Training was organized and evaluated according to a previous study.

Results: both groups presented a statistically significant difference when comparing pre and post training performances. However, for the group of community health agents who were physically present during the training program, this difference was higher not only when considering the final total scores but also when looking at the individual topics.

Conclusion: videoconference was effective as a learning tool for the training of community health agents on child hearing health. However, this instrument should be used as a complementary material to the traditional form of training.

Background: children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) show lexical deficits as the first noticeable sign of such disorder, characterized as difficulties in lexical access during naming and speech tests. Studies that compare picture naming and drawings seem perfect to clarify lexical deficits.

Aim: to compare the performance of children with normal language development (NLD) to that of children with SLI in naming, drawing and definition tasks, aiming to explore the the quality of semantic representation of the lexicon.

Method: Two groups were involved in this study: the Control Group (CG), with no language disorders, composed by 40 subjects, and the Research Group (RG), with 20 subjects, all diagnosed with SLI, aging from five to seven years. Tasks of naming, picture drawing and definition were performed, using 20 different pictures. In the naming task, the types of errors were analyzed and sorted as follows: semantic, phonological, none specified and others. The analysis of the drawing and definition tasks was based only on the correct answers, semantic and none specified errors.

Results: children of the RG presented a greater number of semantic errors in the picture naming task when compared to the CG. Besides that, definitions presented by the RG seemed more simple and incomplete even when the child was capable of naming the picture correctly. Drawings of correctly named objects were better than those that were named incorrectly.

Conclusions: it was possible to discriminate within SLI children those that present greater lexical deficits. It was also possible to explore the possible reasons for failures in naming tasks.

Background: intelligibility measures are limited to providing information on the severity level of clinical cases. A key limitation is that such measures are sensitive to changes in performance only in subjects with a determined severity level of speech disturbance.

Aim: to investigate the influence of stimuli type and transcription analysis on intelligibility measures of speakers with no communication disorders.

Method: an experimental study with no intervention procedures was developed. Two groups of subjects with no communication disorders took part in the research. The group of speakers was composed by 30 adults. Speech samples were recorded by repeating three lists of stimuli (sentences, words and non-words) equally distributed according to parameters of frequency of phonemes, syllabic structures and word length. The group of listeners was composed by 60 young adults who orthographically transcribed the speech samples. Two transcription intelligibility measures were obtained for each list of stimuli: percentage of correct answers per syllable unit and per item (for each sentence, word and non-word).

Results: intelligibility scores were statistically higher for syllable units than for the other items. Regarding intelligibility scores per syllables, a statistical difference was observed amongst scores for sentences, words and non-words.

Conclusion: both transcription analysis and stimulus type influenced the intelligibility scores of the studied population, especially when non-words were used as speech material. The handling of these variables can help to improve intelligibility tests.

Background: the Phonological and Reading Remediation Program in learning disabilities.

Aim: to verify therapeutic effectiveness of the Phonological and Reading Remediation Program in students with learning disabilities.

Method: participants of this study were 40 students who were divided in the following groups: GI, subdivided in: GIE (10 students without learning disabilities submitted to the Phonological and Reading Remediation Program), GIC (10 students without learning disabilities who were not submitted to the Phonological and Reading Remediation Program); and GII, subdivided in: GIIE (10 students with learning disabilities submitted to the Phonological and Reading Remediation Program), GIIC (10 students with learning disabilities who were not submitted to the Phonological and Reading Remediation Program). As a procedure, in pre and post testing situations, the Cognitive-Linguistic Performance Test was applied.

Results: the results showed statistically significant differences between GIE and GIC and between GIIE and GIIC, indicating that students who were submitted to the Program presented better performances in the post testing condition when compared to the pre-testing condition.

Conclusion: this study showed that the Phonological and Reading Remediation Program was effective. The use of the Program improved perception, production and manipulation of sounds and syllables, interfering directly on the reading skills and comprehension of students with learning disabilities.

Background: auditory evoked potentials (AEP) assess the neuroelectric activity on the auditory pathway -from the auditory nerve to the cerebral cortex - in response to an acoustic stimulus or event. Studies have demonstrated electrophysiological abnormalities in individuals with HIV/AIDS.

Aim: to characterize the hearing electrophysiological manifestations in adults with HIV/AIDS by comparing the results obtained in the group exposed to antiretroviral therapy with those obtained in the group not exposed to such treatment.

Method: electrophysiological evaluation of hearing (Auditory Brainstem Response - ABR, Auditory Middle Latency Response - AMLR and P300) was conducted in 56 individuals with HIV/AIDS: 24 participants composed group I (not exposed to antiretroviral treatment) and 32 participants composed group II (exposed to treatment).

Results: alterations in every AEP were observed in individuals with HIV/ AIDS, especially in the ABR. Indeed, the group exposed to antiretroviral treatment presented more alterations.

Conclusion: individuals with HIV/AIDS may present alterations on the central and peripheral auditory nervous system. The group exposed to antiretroviral therapy presents more alterations on the brainstem auditory pathway.

Background: expressive vocabulary of children with normal and deviant phonological development.

Aim: to determine whether alterations presented by children with phonological disorders occur only at the phonological level or if there are any impacts on lexical acquisition; to compare the vocabulary performance of children with phonological disorders to reference values presented by the used test.

Method: participants of the study were 36 children of both genders, 14 with phonological disorders (Study group) and 22 with typical language development (Control Group). The ABFW - Vocabulary Test (Befi-Lopes, 2000) was used for assessing the expressive vocabulary of children and later to compare the performance of both groups.

Results: the performance of children with phonological disorder in the expressive vocabulary test is similar to that of children with normal phonological development. Most of the children of both groups reached the benchmarks proposed by the test for the different semantic fields. The semantic field Places demonstrated to be the most complex for both groups.

Conclusion: the alterations presented by children with phonological disorder area limited to the phonological level, having no impact on the lexical aspect of language.

Background: hearing impairment has a negative impact on communication. This impact can be minimized by hearing aids fitting and auditory training.

Aim: to verify the effectiveness of auditory training in elderly individuals, new users of hearing aids, regarding the benefit in fitting.

Method: forty-two individuals with mild to moderate neurosensorial hearing loss, ranging in age from 60 to 90 years, were selected. Individuals were new users of bilateral hearing aids and were divided in two groups: Experimental Group (EG) and Sham Group (SG). The EG was submitted to training in an acoustic cabin during six sessions. Both groups were assessed through the following tests: Speech in Noise, Dichotic Digits and the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit Aphab self-assessment questionnaire, without the hearing aids, four and eight weeks after they were fitted.

Results: there was a statistically significant difference between the groups in both of the used tests, and for the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit Aphab in the second and third assessments in the sub-scales of: Communication Easiness, Reverberation and Environmental Noise.

Conclusion: auditory training favored the improvement in the auditory processing abilities and benefited the hearing aid fitting process.