DEBORA MARIA BEFI LOPES
Projetos de Pesquisa
Unidades Organizacionais
Departamento de Fisioterapia, Fonoaudiologia e Terapia Ocupacional, Faculdade de Medicina - Docente
LIM/34 - Laboratório de Ciências da Reabilitação, Hospital das Clínicas, Faculdade de Medicina
LIM/34 - Laboratório de Ciências da Reabilitação, Hospital das Clínicas, Faculdade de Medicina
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- How Word/Non-Word Length Influence Reading Acquisition in a Transparent Language: Implications for Children's Literacy and Development(2023) SOARES, Aparecido J. C.; SASSI, Fernanda C.; FORTUNATO-TAVARES, Talita; ANDRADE, Claudia R. F.; BEFI-LOPES, Debora M.Decoding skills are crucial for literacy development and they tend to be acquired early in transparent languages, such as Brazilian Portuguese. It is essential to better understand which variables may affect the decoding process. In this study, we investigated the processes of decoding as a function of age of children who are exposed to a transparent language. To this end, we examined the effects of grade, stimulus type and stimulus extension on the decoding accuracy of children between the ages of six and 10 years who are monolingual speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. The study included 250 children, enrolled from the first to the fifth grade. A list of words and pseudowords of variable length was created, based on Brazilian Portuguese structure. Children assessment was conducted using the computer program E-prime((R)) which was used to present the stimuli. The stimuli were programmed to appear on the screen in a random order and children were instructed to read them. The results indicate two important moments for decoding: the acquisition and the mastery of decoding skills. Additionally, the results highlight an important effect of the extent and type of stimuli and how it interacts with the school progress. Moreover, data indicate the multifactorial nature of decoding acquisition and the different interactions between variables that can influence this process. We discuss medium- and long-term implications of it, and possible individual and collective actions which can improve this process.
bookPart Teste de vocabulário por figuras USP(2018) SOARES, Aparecido J. Couto; BEFI-LOPES, Debora M.- Syntactic Structural Assignment in Brazilian Portuguese-Speaking Children With Specific Language Impairment(2012) FORTUNATO-TAVARES, Talita; ANDRADE, Claudia R. F. de; BEFI-LOPES, Debora M.; HESTVIK, Arild; EPSTEIN, Baila; TORNYOVA, Lidiya; SCHWARTZ, Richard G.Purpose: In this study, the authors examined the comprehension of sentences with predicates and reflexives that are linked to a nonadjacent noun as a test of the hierarchical ordering deficit (HOD) hypothesis. That hypothesis and more modern versions posit that children with specific language impairment (SLI) have difficulty in establishing nonadjacent (hierarchical) relations among elements of a sentence. The authors also tested whether additional working memory demands in constructions containing reflexives affected the extent to which children with SLI incorrectly structure sentences as indicated by their picture-pointing comprehension responses. Method: Sixteen Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children (8;4-10;6 [years; months]) with SLI and 16 children with typical language development (TLD) matched for age (+/- 3 months), gender, and socioeconomic status participated in 2 experiments (predicate and reflexive interpretation). In the reflexive experiment, the authors also manipulated working memory demands. Each experiment involved a 4-choice picture selection sentence comprehension task. Results: Children with SLI were significantly less accurate on all conditions. Both groups made more hierarchical syntactic construction errors in the long working memory condition than in the short working memory condition. Conclusion: The HOD hypothesis was not confirmed. For both groups, syntactic factors (structural assignment) were more vulnerable than lexical factors (prepositions) to working memory effects in sentence miscomprehension.
- Investigation of auditory processing disorder and language impairment using the speech-evoked auditory brainstem response(2012) ROCHA-MUNIZ, Caroline N.; BEFI-LOPES, Debora M.; SCHOCHAT, ElianeThis study investigated whether there are differences in the Speech-Evoked Auditory Brainstem Response among children with Typical Development (TD), (Central) Auditory Processing Disorder (C) APD, and Language Impairment (LI). The speech-evoked Auditory Brainstem Response was tested in 57 children (ages 6-12). The children were placed into three groups: TD (n = 18), (C)APD (n = 18) and LI (n = 21). Speech-evoked ABR were elicited using the five-formant syllable/da/. Three dimensions were defined for analysis, including timing, harmonics, and pitch. A comparative analysis of the responses between the typical development children and children with (C)APD and LI revealed abnormal encoding of the speech acoustic features that are characteristics of speech perception in children with (C)APD and LI, although the two groups differed in their abnormalities. While the children with (C)APD might had a greater difficulty distinguishing stimuli based on timing cues, the children with LI had the additional difficulty of distinguishing speech harmonics, which are important to the identification of speech sounds. These data suggested that an inefficient representation of crucial components of speech sounds may contribute to the difficulties with language processing found in children with LI. Furthermore, these findings may indicate that the neural processes mediated by the auditory brainstem differ among children with auditory processing and speech-language disorders.
- Association between audiological profile and primary language impairment in children(2015) PEREIRA, Marilia Barbieri; BEFI-LOPES, Debora M.; SAMELLI, Alessandra GiannellaObjectives: The aim of the present study was to characterize the Brazilian Portuguese speaking children seen at the Speech-Language Pathology Service of a Health Center, between 1985 and 2009, diagnosed with primary language impairments (PLI): language development impairment (LDI), phonological disorder (PD) and reading and writing impairment (RWI) regarding demographic and audiological profile; as well as investigate the association between PLI and demographic variables, and the association between PLI and hearing disorders. Methods: A survey of medical records was carried out, collecting audiological and language impairment diagnostic data, totaling 2424 individuals in the study group. In addition, audiological evaluation data of 186 children without language disorders complaints were collected so that they constituted the control group. Results: From the study group,1524 children (62.87%) had PLI. Considering the PLIs, the following occurrences were observed: PD = 58.84%, LDI = 30.75% and RWI = 10.41%, with a predominance of males (64.19%) and age range up to 6 years (67.15%). For the audiological profile, there was a predominance of normal hearing thresholds (81.34%), followed by conductive hearing loss (15.47%). Tympanogram type A was more prevalent (56.24%), followed by B and C types (21.84% and 18.16%). Acoustic reflexes were present in the majority of subjects (51.7%). There was a significant association between belonging to the 7-12 years-old group and presenting with PD, belonging to the group up to 6 years and having LDI, and belonging to the older group and presenting with RWI. There was a significant association between males and presenting with LDI. There was statistically significant association between PLI and abnormal audiological profile. Individuals with abnormal audiological profile were 63% more likely to have PLI than those who had normal audiological profile. Conclusions: It is suggested that having an abnormal audiological profile would be a risk factor for PLI. Hence, these findings can serve as a basis for children hearing and speech language monitoring, and as an important tool for the planning of health promotion and prevention actions, as well as the development and implementation of intervention programs.
bookPart Teste de linguagem infantil nas áreas de fonologia, vocabulário, fluência e pragmática(2018) SOARES, Aparecido J. Couto; BEFI-LOPES, Debora M.- Executive functioning and reading achievement in school: a study of Brazilian children assessed by their teachers as ""poor readers""(2014) ABREU, Pascale M. J. Engel de; ABREU, Neander; NIKAEDO, Carolina C.; PUGLISI, Marina L.; TOURINHO, Carlos J.; MIRANDA, Monica C.; BEFI-LOPES, Debora M.; BUENO, Orlando F. A.; MARTIN, RomainThis study examined executive functioning and reading achievement in 106 6- to 8-year-old Brazilian children from a range of social backgrounds of whom approximately half lived below the poverty line. A particular focus was to explore the executive function profile of children whose classroom reading performance was judged below standard by their teachers and who were matched to controls on chronological age, sex, school type (private or public), domicile (Salvador/BA or Sao Paulo/SP) and socioeconomic status. Children completed a battery of 12 executive function tasks that were conceptual tapping cognitive flexibility, working memory, inhibition and selective attention. Each executive function domain was assessed by several tasks. Principal component analysis extracted four factors that were labeled ""Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility,"" ""Interference Suppression,"" ""Selective Attention,"" and ""Response Inhibition."" Individual differences in executive functioning components made differential contributions to early reading achievement. The Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility factor emerged as the best predictor of reading. Group comparisons on computed factor scores showed that struggling readers displayed limitations in Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility, but not in other executive function components, compared to more skilled readers. These results validate the account that working memory capacity provides a crucial building block for the development of early literacy skills and extends it to a population of early readers of Portuguese from Brazil. The study suggests that deficits in working memory/cognitive flexibility might represent one contributing factor to reading difficulties in early readers. This might have important implications for how educators might intervene with children at risk of academic under achievement.
article 14 Citação(ões) na Scopus Effects of impoverished environmental conditions on working memory performance(2014) ABREU, Pascale M. J. Engel de; PUGLISI, Marina L.; CRUZ-SANTOS, Anabela; BEFI-LOPES, Debora M.; MARTIN, Romain- Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Effects on Verbal Working Memory and Vocabulary: Testing Language-Minority Children With an Immigrant Background(2013) ABREU, Pascale M. J. Engel de; BALDASSI, Martine; PUGLISI, Marina L.; BEFI-LOPES, Debora M.Purpose: In this study, the authors explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and working memory performance in multilingual language-minority children. Method: Twenty 7-year-old Portuguese-speaking immigrant children living in Luxembourg completed several assessments of first (L1)- and second-language (L2) vocabulary (comprehension and production), executive-loaded working memory (counting recall and backward digit recall), and verbal short-term memory (digit recall and nonword repetition). Cross-linguistic task performance was compared within individuals. The language-minority children were also compared with multilingual language-majority children from Luxembourg and Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Brazil without an immigrant background matched on age, sex, socioeconomic status, and nonverbal reasoning. Results: Results showed that (a) verbal working memory measures involving numerical memoranda were relatively independent of test language and cultural status; (b) language status had an impact on the repetition of high-but not on low-wordlike L2 nonwords; (c) large cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects emerged for productive vocabulary; (d) cross-cultural effects were less pronounced for vocabulary comprehension with no differences between groups if only L1 words relevant to the home context were considered. Conclusion: The study indicates that linguistic and cognitive assessments for language-minority children require careful choice among measures to ensure valid results. Implications for testing culturally and linguistically diverse children are discussed.
bookPart Linguagem(2018) SILAGI, Marcela Lima; MANSUR, Letícia Lessa; SOARES, Aparecido J. Couto; BEFI-LOPES, Debora M.