Impacto das condições socioeconómicas no desenvolvimento do funcionamento executivo e na consciência fonológica em crianças do pré escolar

Abstract

Theoretical Background: The Executive Functions (EF) and the PhonologicalAwareness (PA) are essential to the children´s normal development. Its critical period ofdevelopment occurs during childhood and is highly conditioned by the children´ssocioeconomical status (SES), with the risk of under stimulation being higher in povertycontexts. This way, it is imperative to evaluate the SES’ impact in the EF and PA, inorder to elaborate intervention programs that aim to stimulate the underdevelopedcapacities, diminishing the potential effects of a low SES in the children’s’ normaldevelopment.Method: The sample can be divided in two groups: Low SES, with 29 participants, andHigh SES, with 66 participants, all aged between 4 and 6 years old. To assess de EF weadministered The Corsi Block test, Digit Span Backwards, Shape School and Fish andSharks, and to assess the PA we administered the TICL and ACLLE test. IndependentSample Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney Tests and Linear Regressions were used.Results: The High SES revealed better results in all EF and PA tests, except in one PAtask (Phonemical Id- ACLLE), in which the Low SES had better results. The linearregression showed that the Working Memory (WM) predicts PA, but the InhibitoryControl (IC) doesn´t predict PA. Differences were found in IC results, where girls hadbetter results when compared to boys.Discussion: As expected, the High SES’ results were better than in all EF and PA tests(except one PA task. Linear Regression showed WM as a predictor of PA in all measures but one - Phonemical Id-ACLLE - like we saw in other studies It was notpossible to establish a relation between WM or IC and the Phonemical Id task(ACLLE). Unlike we expected, linear regression showed no relation between IC andPA. As the literature shows, girls had better results in IC tasks, when compared to boys.The results reinforce the need for cognitive stimulation of the EF and PA, especially inchildren with low SES.

Date of Award	5 Mar 2021
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Maria Vânia Silva Nunes (Supervisor) & Joana Rodrigues Rato (Co-Supervisor)