Early undernutrition as a cause of changes in phonological processing skills

• Published in: Revista CEFAC 2019-05, Vol.21 (3)
• Main Authors: Zuanetti, Patricia Aparecida, Laus, Maria Fernanda, Almeida, Sebastiao de Sousa, Fukuda, Marisa Tomoe Hebihara
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1516-1846
• DOI: 10.1590/1982-0216-201921319018

Purpose: to determine whether undernutrition in the first years of life affects the phonological awareness skills, the phonological working memory and the school performance of children. Methods: the participants were children with a history of moderate/severe undernutrition during their first years of life (G1) who achieved nutritional recovery (n = 15). The performance of G1 in different cognitive tasks (phonological awareness at the syllable and phoneme level, phonological working memory--repetition of digits and pseudowords, and reading, writing and arithmetic activities) was compared to that of children with school difficulties (G2) (n = 15) and without school difficulties (G3) (n = 15), all eutrophic ones. Results: the performance of G1 was worse than that of the other two groups in all tasks evaluated (mean score of G1, G2 and G3 and p-values: phonological awareness: 31, 41, 57--0.01; repetition of direct order digits: 18, 23, 28--0.001; writing: 4, 10, 22--0.001; reading: 26, 45, 65-0.001; arithmetic: 4, 7, 11- 0.001). Conclusion: the results demonstrate that undernutrition affected the cognitive development, causing changes in important cognitive skills for the development of written language. Keywords: Malnutrition; Child Language; Memory, Short-Term; Learning; Cognition