TITLE:
Attentional and Executive Deficits in Brazilian Children with Developmental Dyslexia
AUTHORS:
Ricardo Franco de Lima, Cíntia Alves Salgado Azoni, Sylvia Maria Ciasca
KEYWORDS:
Neuropsychology; Dyslexia; Attention; Executive Function
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.4 No.10A,
October
11,
2013
ABSTRACT: The present study aims to compare the
performance between Brazilian children with Developmental Dyslexia (DD) and
children without learning difficulties on tests of attention and Executive
Functions. The study sample consists
of study group (20 subjects) attending the Learning Disability clinic of Univesity
Hospital and control group (20 subjects) from public school in Campinas-SP. The
instruments utilized were: WISC-III factor indexes and subtests, cancellation
test, Trail Making Test, Stroop Color Word Test, Tower of London, Wisconsin
Card Sorting Test and verbal fluency test. The results revealed differences
between groups in scores of different instruments. The findings suggest that
children with dyslexia have difficulties in performing visuospatial and
auditive attention tasks, as well as tasks involving different components of
executive functions, such as flexibility, inhibitory control, strategy use,
working memory and verbal fluency. Such changes may be part of dyslexia and
accompany the core deficit in the phonological component of language.