Attentional and Executive Deficits in Brazilian Children with Developmental Dyslexia

Abstract

The present study aims to compare the performance between Brazilian children with Developmental Dyslexia (DD) and children without learning difficulties on tests of attention and Executive Functions. The study sample consists of study group (20 subjects) attending the Learning Disability clinic of Univesity Hospital and control group (20 subjects) from public school in Campinas-SP. The instruments utilized were: WISC-III factor indexes and subtests, cancellation test, Trail Making Test, Stroop Color Word Test, Tower of London, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and verbal fluency test. The results revealed differences between groups in scores of different instruments. The findings suggest that children with dyslexia have difficulties in performing visuospatial and auditive attention tasks, as well as tasks involving different components of executive functions, such as flexibility, inhibitory control, strategy use, working memory and verbal fluency. Such changes may be part of dyslexia and accompany the core deficit in the phonological component of language.