The results suggest that this Brazilian version of the BICAMS will be a valid and reliable measure once complete normative data become available.

The present study aims to find empirical evidence of deficits in linguistic pragmatic skills and theory of mind (ToM) in children with dyslexia with associated language difficulties or nonverbal learning disabilities (NLD), when compared with a group of typically developing (TD) children matched for age and gender. Our results indicate that children with dyslexia perform less well than TD children in most of the tasks measuring pragmatics of language, and in one of the tasks measuring ToM. In contrast, children with NLD generally performed better than the dyslexia group, and performed significantly worse than the TD children only in a metaphors task based on visual stimuli. A discriminant function analysis confirmed the crucial role of the metaphors subtest and the verbal ToM task in distinguishing between the groups. We concluded that, contrary to a generally-held assumption, children with dyslexia and associated language difficulties may be weaker than children with NLD in linguistic pragmatics and ToM, especially when language is crucially involved. The educational and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE: Mouth breathing syndrome is very common among school-age children, and it is possibly related to learning difficulties and low academic achievement. In this study, we investigated working memory, reading comprehension and arithmetic skills in children with nasal and mouth breathing. DESIGN AND SETTING: Analytical cross-sectional study with control group conducted in a public university hospital. METHODS: 42 children (mean age = 8.7 years) who had been identified as mouth breathers were compared with a control group (mean age = 8.4 years) matched for age and schooling. All the participants underwent a clinical interview, tone audiometry, otorhinolaryngological evaluation and cognitive assessment of phonological working memory (numbers and pseudowords), reading comprehension and arithmetic skills. RESULTS: Children with mouth breathing had poorer performance than controls, regarding reading comprehension (P = 0.006), arithmetic (P = 0.025) and working memory for pseudowords (P = 0.002), but not for numbers (P = 0.76). CONCLUSION: Children with mouth breathing have low academic achievement and poorer phonological working memory than controls. Teachers and healthcare professionals should be aware of the association of mouth breathing with children's physical and cognitive health. RESUMO CONTEXTO E OBJETIVO:A síndrome da respiração oral é muito comum em crianças em idade escolar, e está possivelmente relacionada a dificuldades de aprendizagem e baixo rendimento escolar. Neste estudo, investigamos memória operacional, compreensão de leitura e habilidades aritméticas em crianças com respiração nasal e oral. TIPO DE ESTUDO E LOCAL: Estudo transversal analítico com grupo controle realizado em hospital universitário público. MÉTODOS: 42 crianças (média = 8,7 anos) identificadas com respiração oral foram comparadas a um grupo controle (média = 8,4 anos) e pareadas por idade e escolaridade. Todos os participantes foram submetidos a entrevista clínica, audiometria tonal, avaliação otorrinolaringológica e avaliação cognitiva da memória operacional fonológica (números e pseudopalavras), compreensão de leitura e aritmética. RESULTADOS: Crianças com respiração oral tiveram desempenho significativamente inferior ao de respiradores nasais em compreensão de leitura (P = 0,006), aritmética (P = 0,025) e memória operacional para pseudopalavras (P = 0,002), mas não para números (P = 0,76). CONCLUSÕES: Crianças com respiração oral apresentam baixo rendimento escolar e menor memória operacional fonológica em comparação ao grupo controle. Professores e profissionais da saúde devem atentar para a associação da respiração oral com a saúde física e cognitiva das crianças.

This study examined forward and backward recall of locations and colours and the binding of locations and colours, comparing typically developing children - aged between 8 and 10 years - with two different groups of children of the same age with learning disabilities (dyslexia in one group, non-verbal learning disability [NLD] in the other). Results showed that groups with learning disabilities had different visuospatial working memory problems and that children with NLD had particular difficulties in the backward recall of locations. The differences between the groups disappeared, however, when locations and colours were bound together. It was concluded that specific processes may be involved in children in the binding and backward recall of different types of information, as they are not simply the resultant of combining the single processes needed to recall single features.

Learning to read involves cross-modal binding processes, that is, the association between visual and phonological information in the mapping of written forms (graphemes) to phonological codes. The present study examined visual-phonological binding in a memory binding task, comparing a group of children with dyslexia with a control group of typical readers, matched for age, grade, and sex. Children were required to memorize the association between 8 shapes and nonwords presented in association for 4 times, placed either in fixed or variable spatial locations across trials. The results showed that children with dyslexia have deficits in cross-modal memory binding and are not able to use spatial location as an effective cue to bind information, as it was observed for control children. In addition, children with dyslexia made more phonological errors and binding errors than the control group. A purely phonological deficit in dyslexia does not explain the overall pattern of results, and dyslexia may involve deficits in 1 or more types of processes, including the capacity to bind visual to phonological information. Thus, assessment of binding processes may have implications both for diagnosis and treatment.

Objectives It has been challenging to identify cognitive markers to differentiate healthy brain aging from neurodegeneration due to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) that are not affected by age and education. The Short-Term Memory Binding (STMB) showed not to be affected by age or education when using the change detection paradigm. However, no previous study has tested the effect of age and education using the free recall paradigm of the STMB. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate age and education effects on the free recall version of the STMB test under different memory loads. Methods 126 healthy volunteers completed the free recall STMB test. The sample was divided into five age bands and into five education bands for comparisons. The STMB test assessed free recall of two (or three) common objects and two (or three) primary colors presented as individual features (unbound) or integrated into unified objects (bound). Results The binding condition and the larger set size generated lower free recall scores. Performance was lower in older and less educated participants. Critically, neither age nor education modified these effects when compared across experimental conditions (unbound v. bound features). Conclusions Binding in short-term memory carries a cost in performance. Age and education do not affect such a binding cost within a memory recall paradigm. These findings suggest that this paradigm is a suitable cognitive marker to differentiate healthy brain aging from age-related disease such as AD.

Neste estudo avaliamos a memória de trabalho fonológica, a atenção visual e a habilidade de leitura em 37 escolares (16 meninas e 21 meninos) de 5ª série (média de 11,3 anos) e de 6ª série (média de 12,2 anos). Os participantes passaram pelo subteste de leitura do Teste de Desempenho Escolar, por um teste de atenção visual (paradigma de Posner) e por três testes de memória de trabalho fonológica (palavras, pseudopalavras e dígitos). Crianças de ambas as séries apresentaram desempenho semelhante nas tarefas de leitura e memorização de dígitos. As crianças de 6ª série foram mais rápidas no teste de atenção visual e recordaram mais palavras e pseudopalavras que as crianças de 5ª série. Os resultados indicam o aumento na velocidade de processamento e maturação da memória de trabalho dos 11 aos 13 anos, mas o teste de memória para dígitos não detectou essa diferença.Palavras-chave: memória operacional; memória de curto prazo; memória verbal; atenção visual; leitura.

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