Relationship between the Brazilian version of the Montreal-Toulouse language assessment battery and education, age and reading and writing characteristics. A cross-sectional study

Abstract

The results suggested that the number of years of education, age and FRWH seem to influence performance in the MTL-BR, especially education. These data are important for making diagnoses of greater precision among patients suffering from brain injuries, with the aim of avoiding false positives.

Formal language assessment in low-educated healthy subjects

“…18 This information was collected by applying a questionnaire. In order to better characterize the study participants and given that reading and writing habits can affect cognitive performance, 12 the questionnaire responses for these habits were analyzed. Participants indicated the frequency of reading and writing for different materials, with scores attributed as follows: 4 points - “every day”, 3 points - “several days per week”, 2 points - “once per week”, 1 point - “rarely” and 0 points - “never”.…”

“…Although many studies demonstrate the influence of education on cognitive development, 1 - 4 , 8 , 9 , 12 , 13 the impact of low education on the various cognitive functions appears to differ. In a previous study assessing several cognitive domains of individuals with 0-22 years of formal education, the authors noted that the education effect was non-linear: significant differences were evident between groups with 0-3 versus 10-22 years of formal education, whereas the same was not observed between groups with 4-9 and 10-22 years of formal education.…”

“…Previous studies involving specific language tests have shown the influence of education on performance of neurologically healthy individuals in many language tasks, 2 , 8 , 9 , 12 including both written and oral ones.…”

“… 1 , 3 , 4 , 13 The same effect can be observed on language tests, although tasks that are highly dependent on the lexical buffer, such as oral and written naming and verbal fluency tests, appear to differ. 2 , 12 …”

“… 14 This data is very important since it suggests that formal education does not impact all the cognitive domains in the same way. A number of studies investigating different cognitive functions reveal statistically significant disparities between groups with different levels of education on linguistic tasks such as oral comprehension, reading, graphical comprehension, naming, lexical availability, dictation and written naming of actions, 2 , 8 , 12 as well as on language tasks involving semantic knowledge, judgement of traits and naming, besides tasks of calculus, 3 memory 1 and orofacial praxis. 15 Depending on the tasks or tests employed, some studies have found differences only between illiterate subjects and educated individuals, irrespective of level of education, 13 whereas others have reported disparities across all 3 or some educational levels.…”