Objective: To establish the relation between the executive functions and the academic performance in five subject areas (Mathematics, Geostatistics, English, Social Studies and Spanish) in a private school in the city of Tunja. Materials and methods: A descriptive correlational study was carried out with 139 six to twelve years old students (M=9.20; Ds=2.02), 65 boys and 74 girls, using the ENFEN test and the average of the subject areas selected in grades 5th to 7th to evaluate academic performance obtained in the first semester which went from February to July 2015, moment in which the executive functions were also evaluated. Results: Data were analyzed with the Rho de Spearman test to determine correlation. The descriptive results show improvement in the performance in neuropsychological tests with increase in the medians as age increases. Correlations between executive functions and the academic performance that change for each range of age were identified, considering strong and significant correlations in the ages 6 and 9 with selective-sustained attention processes, working memory, fluency (phonological and semantic), memory, mental planning and flexibility with all the subject areas for 10 years old students between inhibition tests in tasks that require the use of another language and moderated correlations in the ages of 7, 8 and 12 years between attention processes, memory, planning and inhibition with different subject areas for each age. Conclusions: The results show the importance of executive functions in learning processes. Research of this type is recommended with different sample group

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Relación entre funciones ejecutivas y rendimiento académico por asignaturas en escolares de 6 a 12 años

Reading comprehension is a complex skill, which involves different cognitive processes such as monitoring, working memory, interference suppression and resolution inferences. The aim of this work is to evaluate the discriminative ability of these processes, to differentiate levels of reading comprehension, in children between 8 and 9 years of age (N = 89) of public, and private, schools, in the city of Mar del Plata, Argentina. For this, specific tests were administered to each of these processes. The results distinguished two discriminant functions; the first one was the only that distinguished between individuals with good or bad comprehension abilities. A good level of reading comprehension implied to be efficient in the use of language skills (monitoring, inference, vocabulary), and, also, having abilities of processing (working memory). In contrast, the failure in general processing skills, such as phonological working memory or deficit in the ability to relate concepts (vocabulary), appeared to be characteristic of individuals with bad comprehension skills.

https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/5134716.pdf

Predictores cognitivos de niveles de comprensión lectora mediante análisis discriminante

Title: Cognitive profile of children with low performance in reading com- prehension Abstract: Mostly of children with difficulties in reading comprehension possess low performances in a set of cognitive processes. The aim of the present study is to establish a cognitive profile associated with the low per- formance in reading comprehension in relation to the skill of reading monitoring, production of inferences, vocabulary, working memory and, inhibitory capacity in spanish-speaking children. For it several tasks were applied in children by high and low performances in reading comprehen- sion. The results showed that though the children with bad comprehension present low performances in these skills, a consistent profile cannot be es- tablished since there are children with problems in comprehension that they present normal or top performance in some of these cognitive skills.

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Perfil cognitivo de niños con rendimientos bajos en comprensión lectora

Introduction: The Hayling Test assesses the components of initiation, inhibition, cognitive flexibility and verbal speed by means of a sentence completion task. This study presents the process of developing the Brazilian version of the Child Hayling Test (CHT) and reports evidence of its content validity. Methods: 139 people took part in the study. The adaptation was performed by seven translators and 12 specialist judges. An initial sample of 92 healthy children was recruited to test a selection of sentences adapted from previous adult and pediatric versions of the instrument, and a sample of 28 healthy children was recruited for pilot testing of the final version. The instrument was developed in seven stages: 1) translation, 2) back-translation, 3) comparison of translated versions, 4) preparation of new stimuli, 5) data collection with healthy children to analyze comprehension of the stimuli and analyses by the authors against the psycholinguistic criteria adopted, 6) analyses conducted by judges who are specialists in neuropsychology or linguistics, and 7) the pilot study. Results: Twenty-four of the 72 sentences constructed were selected on the basis of 70-100% agreement between judges evaluating what they assessed and level of comprehensibility. The pilot study revealed better performance by older children, providing evidence of the instrument's sensitivity to developmental factors. Conclusions: Future studies employing this version of CHT with clinical pediatric populations who have frontal lesions and dysfunctions and in related areas are needed to test functional and differential diagnoses of preserved or impaired executive functions.

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Development of the Brazilian version of the Child Hayling Test.

El presente articulo examina algunos factores cognitivos asociados a las dificultades de comprension lectora de un grupo de estudiantes de tercero y quinto grados del municipio Marianao, provincia La Habana, Cuba en el ano 2013. Participaron 108 estudiantes, 54 del sexo femenino y 54 del sexo masculino, con edades comprendidas entre los 8 y 10 anos. Fueron evaluadas la comprension lectora, la memoria de trabajo verbal, la fluidez y el vocabulario. Los principales resultados muestran que la memoria de trabajo verbal, la fluidez y el vocabulario se correlacionan positiva y significativamente con la comprension lectora, por lo que pueden considerarse buenos predictores del desempeno en relacion con este proceso. En relacion con cada una de estas variables se observa un mejor rendimiento de los estudiantes de quinto grado, con respecto a los de tercer grado.

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Comprensión lectora, memoria de trabajo, fluidez y vocabulario en escolares cubanos

A cognitive perspective in the study of text comprehension Working memory and, particularly, the mechanism of inhibition have a crucial role in text comprehension. The aim of this research was to study the relation between the ability of reading comprehension and working memory (WM). We test the hypothesis that difficulty in inhibiting information can influence comprehension. In the first experiment, 153 children aged 9 and 12 years were evaluated with a test of reading comprehension and a WM task. In the second experiment 24 children were evaluated with the Hayling Test that asses the ability to inhibit verbal responses. The results evidence a correlation between WM and text comprehension ability. Children with difficulties in text comprehension obtained a significantly lower performance in memory and inhibition tests, suggesting that the relation between reading understanding and WM could depend on the skills to inhibit irrelevant information.

Una perspectiva cognitiva en el estudio de la comprensión de textos

Text comprehension is a complex task that requires and involves multiple cognitive abilities. Deficits in one or several abilities can cause difficulties in understanding the textual level. Evaluating these impairments therefore requires a multicomponential perspective. The incipient development of the textual dimension of the learning difficulties in   education as well as in clinic, elicits the need for an instrument of this nature for Spanish-speaking populations. With this objective, a Spanish version of a test (/Nuova guida alla comprensione del testo/, De Beni et al., 2003) was designed for evaluating text comprehension. Normative data for children of 9 to 12 years of age were obtained. The Leer para Comprender Test (Abu- samra et al., in press) is based on a global model composed by eleven factors: basic text scheme, facts and sequences, lexical semantics, syntactic structure, textual cohesion, inferences, text sensibility, text hierarchy, mental models, flexibility, and errors and inconsistencies. This instrument is sensitive to the specificity of the processes implied in text comprehension. An approach from a multicomponential perspective not only allows   operating specifically with the different aspects of comprehension, but it is also advantageous to intervene in a focused manner in the implied processes and abilities.

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La comprensión de textos desde un enfoque multicomponencial: El test “Leer para Comprender”

La comprension de textos es una de las competencias fundamentales para el desarrollo social y educativo de los seres humanos y constituye un tema esencial en la agenda educativa. Sin embargo, el estudio y la sistematizacion de los efectos de programas que buscan mejorar la comprension lectora, sobre todo en el caso de alumnos pertenecientes a entornos sociales desfavorecidos, son todavia escasos. Se presentan los resultados de una intervencion realizada en un grupo de alumnos de primero y segundo ano de nivel medio y de contexto desfavorecido de una escuela de gestion social de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (Argentina). Dicha intervencion estuvo basada en la habilidad metacognitiva de detectar errores e incongruencias, fundamental para el proceso de comprension de un texto. Inicialmente fueron evaluados 50 adolescentes con un test de eficacia lectora, una prueba estandarizada de comprension de textos y una prueba especifica que evalua la habilidad de detectar errores e incongruencias. Se conformo un grupo control con 23 participantes y un grupo experimental con los 27 restantes. El entrenamiento se llevo a cabo durante tres meses, con una frecuencia de una hora semanal y una vez finalizado, ambos grupos fueron reevaluados. Los resultados muestran un efecto positivo de la intervencion sobre el grupo experimental, que alcanzo una diferencia estadisticamente significativa entre la cantidad de respuestas correctas de la evaluacion inicial y de la evaluacion final.

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Comprensión de textos en contextos desfavorecidos: El efecto de un programa de intervención en la habilidad para detectar errores e incongruencias en textos escritos

El objetivo de este trabajo fue evaluar el rendimiento diferencial de buenos y malos comprendedores en tareas que examinan memoria de trabajo e inhibicion y supresion de informacion verbal y no verbal. Para esto se selecciono una muestra de alumnos de entre 9 y 13 anos a partir de una prueba de eficacia lectora y de las respuestas a dos textos que permitieron identificar dos grupos con diferente nivel de comprension: buenos (n=53) y malos (n=51) comprendedores. Luego, a esos dos subgrupos se les suministro de modo individual una version adaptada del Listening Span Test (LST), para evaluar memoria de trabajo, una version infantil del Hayling Test, el Stroop Test, para evaluar inhibicion verbal y la version infantil del Trail Making Test para evaluar inhibicion no verbal. Los resultados mostraron que los malos comprendedores rindieron significativamente peor que los buenos en el procesamiento de oraciones, el recuerdo total de palabras y la cantidad de errores de intrusion en el LST, pero no hubo diferencias entre buenos y malos comprendedores en la tarea de span ni en la de recuerdo de palabras en orden. Respecto de las pruebas que evaluan inhibicion verbal, los malos comprendedores rindieron significativamente peor que los buenos comprendedores en todos los indices. Finalmente, no hubo diferencia estadisticamente significativa entre el rendimiento de buenos y malos comprendedores en tarea de inhibicion no verbal. Estos resultados son convergentes con aquellos que plantean que la debilidad en la supresion de informacion especifica de dominio verbal de la memoria de trabajo provocaria las dificultades que los malos comprendedores plantean cuando llevan a cabo el procesamiento del nivel textual. 
Palabras clave: comprension de textos; ninos; control inhibitorio; habilidades de supresion; dominio verbal.

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Romina Verónica Cartoceti

Papers

Una perspectiva cognitiva en el estudio de la comprensión de textos

La comprensión de textos desde un enfoque multicomponencial: El test “Leer para Comprender”

Comprensión de textos en contextos desfavorecidos: El efecto de un programa de intervención en la habilidad para detectar errores e incongruencias en textos escritos

Control inhibitorio y comprensión de textos: evidencias de dominio específico verbal

Evaluación de las alteraciones de la comprensión de textos en diferentes tipos de lesión cerebral