Purpose: to identify the cognitive-linguistic skills necessary for children with cleft lip and palate, in order to learn how to read and write. Methods: 120 children, with 5 and 6 years old, attending Kindergarten II and 1st grade of primary school, were divided into two groups: G1, consisting of 60 children with cleft lip and palate, and G2, with 60 children without developmental alterations. The Raven Colored Progressive Matrices, the Phonological Skills Profile and the Boston Naming Test were employed. Results: comparing the performances of the groups, there was statistical difference in intellectual functions, indicating loss in cognitive abilities of G1 (p = 0.019). The cognitive-linguistic skills were classified as "Under Attention" for both groups, and discrepancy in G1 was more representative, with 66.7%. Conclusion: the language skills necessary for reading and writing acquisition proved to be deficient in the cleft lip and palate population, presenting levels of cognitive performance lower than expected for the age and education in most of the modalities evaluated. Limiting environmental factors and low socio-cultural status of the sample were suggestive of additional interference to the acquisition of cognitive-linguistic pre-skills necessary for satisfactory performance of the academic tasks, such as reading and writing. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the cognitivelinguistic skills necessary for children with cleft lip and palate to learn how to read and write.
METHODSInitially, ethical research procedures were adopted according to the National Council of Health CNS466 / 2012, approval n° 517168 by the Ethics Committee on Human Research of the Craniofacial Anomalies Rehabilitation Hospital HRAC / USP, and subsequent signature of the Informed Consent by the participants of the study.The sample consisted of 120 participants, both genders, aged between 5 years and 6 years and 11 months, attending kindergarten II and the 1st grade of elementary public schools in a town in the interior of São Paulo State, forming two groups: G1, comprising 60 participants with cleft lip and palate, 23, with pre-foramen type, 13, post-foramen and 24, transforamen; and G2, comprising 60 participants without craniofacial abnormalities or other alterations in development, as the comparison group. For inclusion criteria, participants of G1 had to be enrolled in the rehabilitation hospital where the research was conducted; and G2, had to be enrolled in the public school. Both groups should be aged as required and should have signed the consent for spontaneous participation in the research. Children diagnosed with neurological, psychiatric, sensory or syndrome alterations, limited to instrumentation, were excluded of the study.For intellectual resources evaluation, the psychometric standardized test Raven´s Colored Progressive Matrices -Especial Scale 15 was employed, consisting of three sets of 12 items: A, Ab and B, arranged in an ascending degree of difficulty. The interpretation of results followed the norma...