Habilidades auditivas, processamento fonológico, inteligência e suas relações com a leitura de escolares

Abstract

This studys purpose was to assess how skills of auditory temporal processing (ATP), phonological processing (PP) and amplitude rise time (ART) perception interact between themselves and with the reading skills of Portuguese-speaking school children, as well as to verify whether the intelligence of such population presents a correlation with reading skills. The methods used involved the application of tasks appropriated for the evaluation of such skills in school children sample ranging from third to fifth graders. The data were statistically analyzed by using structural equations modeling and Spearman/Kurskall Wallis tests, in addition to mean and standard deviation analysis. The findings revealed that ART perception was correlated only with the word and pseudoword repetition task, which assesses the phonological working memory (PWM). Reading skills were directly correlated with phonological awareness (PA) and lexical access and indirectly with PA, via ATP. Intelligence was not correlated with any of the reading tasks. It was discussed the possibility that the ART perception is related only to the phonological and reading abilities of school children who have not yet reached all levels of PA, which does not seem to have been the case of the population studied here. These results confirm the role of PP and ATP skills on reading and reinforce the importance of stimulating such skills in preschool and school children in order to promote the appropriate development of reading competences. Likewise, they can also prompt therapeutic interventions in the population presenting reading difficulties.