Funções neuropsicológicas de escolares com transtorno do desenvolvimento da linguagem e dislexia do desenvolvimento

Abstract

Introduction: In view of the growing number of cases of children with developmental dyslexia or developmental language disorder in neuropsychological evaluations, understanding their cognitive profile will facilitate the differential diagnosis by showing the basic linguistic-cognitive abilities in both disorders. Objective: to verify the cognitive functions in schoolchildren with developmental dyslexia and schoolchildren with developmental language disorder. Method: the study was divided into two articles: 1) integrative review study and; 2) case study, cross-sectional, observational and quantitative, composed of elementary school students, aged between 06 and 12 years. Initially, 16 children were evaluated, 8 with a diagnostic hypothesis of developmental dyslexia and 8 with a hypothesis of developmental language disorder. After the evaluations, only 6 had their diagnoses confirmed. Children diagnosed with other neurodevelopmental disorders, genetic syndromes, hearing loss, and school difficulties resulting from educational failures were excluded from this study. The skills evaluated were attention, memory, executive functions, language and praxes. Results: 1) Integrative review study: important findings pointed to phonological skills, explaining the similarities and differences in dyslexia and developmental language disorder, through a broad base of language skills and; 2) Case study: brought contributions to understanding the differences and similarities of cognitive characteristics in children with developmental dyslexia and developmental language disorder, in which they showed neuropsychological relationships that did not differ in intelligence quotient, phonological recoding ability, word reading speed and oral reading comprehension.