Formal language assessment in low-educated healthy subjects

Abstract

Although many studies have shown the influence of education on cognition, the impact of low education on the various cognitive functions appears to differ. The hypothesis of the present study is that, with regards to language, the use of parameters derived from populations with 5-8 years of education leads to false-positive results.Objective:to determine the influence of low education on the language tasks assessed by the MTL-Brazil BatteryMethods:30 healthy adults with 2-4 years of education were submitted to the MTL-Br Battery, comprising 22 subtests. The data were submitted to descriptive statistical analysis for each subtest and Z-scores were then calculated based on the parameters of a population with 5-8 years of education. All participants would be considered impaired if the Battery had been applied according to published normative criteria for a population with 5-8 years of education.Results:Separate analysis revealed that published scores for 17 out of the 22 Battery tasks were inappropriate for a population with 2-4 years of education.Conclusion:Education was found to effect performance for each of the language abilities differently. In addition, the study results can be applied to language assessments of individuals with 1-4 years of education using the MTL-Br battery, since this is the only language test for adults available in Brazil, and for which there are no normative data for low-educated subjects.

Relationship between cognitive processing, language and verbal fluency among elderly individuals

“…Because language and verbal fluency are cognitive skills directly dependent on attention and working memory, this study hypothesis was that there is a correlation between cognitive potential - P300 and language and verbal fluency. This hypothesis is supported by authors25 who believe that the production of language involves planning and monitoring. As such, language production is not a totally automatic task, because it requires cognitive processing.…”

“…The limitations of this study involve the method used to collect data, which was via a cognitive screening instrument, as opposed to a specific battery for assessing language composed of multiple tasks providing greater precision in the assessment of each language skill 25. The screening instrument was used because the present study was part of a larger investigation conducted in the homes of elderly individuals.…”

Language skills differences between adults without formal education and low formal education

“…These factors likely promoted the similar performance in carrying out the task (Medeiros & Ortiz, 2021). In addition, results of a previous study (Akashi & Ortiz, 2018) revealed the presence of a ceiling effect on this task among healthy individuals with low educational level. In turn, the absence of differences between groups in automatic speech and non-verbal praxis tasks were expected.…”

“…In addition, greater demand is placed on working memory to process sentences with non-canonic structure, such as those with passive structures and center-embedded clauses, since the phrase must be first stored, then organized and syntactically decoded, for final comprehension of the information and selection of the correct drawing (Eom & Sung, 2016;Ortiz & Bertolucci, 2005). Previous studies have found differences in oral comprehension of sentences when groups with 1-4 years of formal education and 5-8 years of formal education were compared (Akashi & Ortiz, 2018) and even in comparison of 5-8 years of education to 8-12 years of education (Pagliarin et al, 2014) and, in this case, it can also be influenced by reading and writing habits (Pagliarin et al, 2015). Finally, the oral of text requires comprehension, retention and retrieval of the information presented in the text, recruiting working memory and components of executive functions.…”

Influence of age and schooling in written discourse of healthy adults

“…In fact, tasks involving graphic stimuli (written comprehension, dictation, reading, written naming, number dictation, reading of numbers, written narrative, and written text comprehension) tend to be more sensitive to the influence of education (Ortiz, & Costa, 2011). The impact of schooling on written narratives could also be found even when comparing low educational level with a very low educational level (Akashi, & Ortiz, 2018).…”