Habilidades numéricas básicas: escolarização e envelhecimento normal e patológico

Abstract

The present study investigated the relationship between lack of schooling, pathological aging and basic numerical skills. Initially, a sample of adults with multiple levels of education was divided into four groups according to their reading level. One group was composed by illiterate adults, another group by adults with similar reading level of first grade, another group had the reading level similar to the second grade and the last one was literate adults. All participants had normal intelligence, being well adapted to society. Participants did two transcoding tasks: Arabic Number Writing and Arabic Number Reading. First, there was a better performance of the sample in Arabic Number Reading task than in Arabic Number Writing task. Illiterates adults showed a worse performance when compared to literate adults in all tasks, the two groups of exilliterates had similar performance. The sample error rate increased as the numbers became more difficult. Further analyses in Arabic Number Writing task were carried out with the inclusion of three elderly groups: patients with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) patients with Frontotemporal Dementia (bvFTD) and elderly Controls. The three elderly groups performed better than illiterates and ex-illiterates in Arabic Number Writing. Error analysis showed that low educated groups showed more syntactical errors, while groups with progressive dementias showed similar errors rates of syntactic and lexical errors. A second study was conducted to investigate the calculations skills in participants with low education. For this, the calculations were presented in an informal situation of marketing and in a formal situation using a pencil and paper task. The results showed that the participants had similar performance in both modalities of calculations. However, greater difficulties were observed in the multiplication block. This study has exploratory character and show that difficulties in basic numerical skills are present in adults with low education and the elderly with progressive dementias. However, the patterns of difficulties are different. In adults with low education, the types of errors reflect a clear role of the lack of formal schooling, while in elderly subjects these results are associated with the stage of progressive disease. The role of formal education was also evidenced in calculations abilities, in which participants had greater difficulties in the multiplication which is an operation learned later during schooling