Dissertação
Compreensão de leitura em adolescentes e fatores associados
Fecha
2018-02-26Autor
Lorene Karoline Silva Gentilini
Institución
Resumen
Introduction: The period of adolescence is characterized by the process of
development, adaptations and biological, cognitive, social, emotional and
behavioral changes. It begins between 10 and 13 years of age and ends between
18 and 22 years of age. According to data from the Brazilian Institute of
Geography and Statistics, for the year 2010, the total Brazilian population is
190,732,694 inhabitants, of which 17.9% are adolescents between 10 and 19
years old. During adolescence oral and written language is practically acquired,
being, at the end of the period, similar to the language of an adult. However, on
many occasions, we find adolescents who do not have a correct use of language
and who present learning difficulties. Reading is a complex process that
encompasses linguistic, cognitive, communicative, and social skills. The act of
reading involves processes such as decoding, fluency, and comprehension,
which is the primary goal of reading. However, for this purpose to be achieved,
several factors are involved: the ability to identify words, cognitive processes such
as memory and attention, writing exposure, vocabulary knowledge,
metacognition, semantic skills, syntactic awareness and general knowledge
about the topic read. By the start of middle school, adolescents are expected to
have a good level of reading comprehension. However, the studies indicate that
most of them can read, but they can not extract the most relevant ideas from the
text. This low textual comprehension makes it difficult to formulate criticism, as
well as school failure presenting as a consequence due to the difficulty in
understanding the contents properly. The motivation for the present study arose
because, in clinical speech-language practice, a significant number of
adolescents with complaints of oral language disorders, difficulties and learning
disorders are observed. However, we note in the national and international
literature the scarcity of studies and instruments designed to evaluate oral and
written language in adolescents, which hinders the diagnostic process and the
evaluation of the effectiveness of the treatments. Objective: To develop a
collective evaluation tool for reading comprehension for teenagers from 6th to 9th
grade and to investigate its relationship with reading fluency, vocabulary,
memory, attention and executive functions. Methods: 104 adolescents of both
genders (66.3% female), aged 11 to 15 years, regularly enrolled at two public
schools in the city of Belo Horizonte, participated in the study: 6th grade (n = 34),
7th year (n = 24), 8th year (n = 27) and 9th year (n = 19). The inclusion criteria in
the study were: signing of the Term of Free and Informed Assent by the
adolescent and the Consent Form by the person responsible; to be between 11
and 15 years of age and to be regularly enrolled in grades 6 through 9 in the
participating schools. Were excluded adolescents with current or previous history
of neurological or psychiatric diseases reported by those responsible, as well as
individuals with uncorrected visual or auditory alterations, in addition to
participants who did not complete the tests. Two studies were carried out, whose
procedures of the first study were: the construction of an instrument for collective
evaluation of reading comprehension of adolescents, the elaboration of the
instrument involved seven stages with the participation of two judges. The
instrument is composed of a narrative genre text appropriate for adolescents of
elementary school and 10 multiple choice questions, being, five literal and five
inferential questions. Through this instrument, the assessments of reading
fluency and reading comprehension of the adolescents were carried out. In the
second study, the adolescents were submitted to the following evaluations: Brief
Neuropsychological Evaluation NEUPSILIN for the evaluation of attention,
memory and executive functions; Boston Naming Test for vocabulary
assessment; Oral reading of words and pseudowords to evaluate reading fluency
of isolated items; Adaptation of the interpretation test of direct and indirect speech
acts of the Montreal Battery for Communication Evaluation - MAC for evaluation
of reading comprehension of sentences; and the instrument developed by the
researchers for the evaluation of textual reading comprehension. The descriptive
analysis was performed by calculating frequencies and measures of central
tendency and dispersion. In the univariate analysis, Student's t-tests were used
for comparison between two independent means; Anova to compare three
independent means; and Pearson's Correlation to relate two continuous
numerical variables. Variance analysis (One-Way ANOVA) was also applied,
using the Bonferroni post hoc test for multiple comparisons. However, the
analysis of the power of the tests and size of the effect was made through the
calculation of Cohen. For the multivariate analysis the backward method was
used, the significance of the final model was evaluated by the F test of the
analysis of variance and the quality of the adjustment by the coefficient of
determination (R2). The level of significance was of 5%. Results: In study 1, no
differences were detected between the sixth and seventh grades, nor between
the eighth and ninth grades, in any reading component. Based on these results,
two groups were used to analyze the data: Group 1 (sixth and seventh grades)
and Group 2 (eighth and ninth grades). The analysis of the instrument of
collective evaluation of reading comprehension of adolescents evidenced
improvement in reading fluency and comprehension with the advancement of
schooling. The comparison between Groups 1 and 2 showed that there was a
significant difference in the total correct answers of the questionnaire, in the total
correct answers in the literal questions and in the total of inferential questions
with medial size effect. The number of words per minute did not differ in the two
groups. However, the size of the effect was enormous. In study 2, there were
statistically significant associations between reading comprehension and
accuracy reading of words and pseudowords, reading comprehension of
sentences with direct and indirect situations, attention, general memory, short
term memory and school year. In the correlation analysis it was verified that the
correlations occurred between -0.009 to 0.526. There were statistically significant
correlations between the comprehension of textual reading and accurate reading
of words and pseudowords, reading comprehension of direct and indirect
sentences, vocabulary, attention and semantic memory. The magnitude of the
correlation was moderate for accuracy of reading words and pseudowords,
reading comprehension of direct and indirect phrases, vocabulary and attention,
and weak for semantic memory. The multiple linear regression was performed
considering the total of correct answers of the text reading comprehension as
variable outcome and the variables of the study that were significant at the level
of p ≤ 0.20 as explanatory variables. The variables that remained in the final
model were the number of pseudowords read correctly per minute and the
vocabulary considering the total of correct answers. The result evidences that the
increase of a pseudo word in the number of pseudowords correctly read per
minute increases 0.03 in the overall score of general correctness of the reading
comprehension. And the increase of a correct answer in the vocabulary total of
correct answers increases by 0.17 in the overall score of overall correct reading
comprehension scores. Conclusion: The instrument of collective assessment of
reading comprehension is easy to apply and analyze and may help teachers,
clinicians and researchers to measure adolescents' reading development. It was
possible to verify the evolution of adolescent performance during the school
years. There was improvement in reading fluency and comprehension with the
advancement of schooling. The multivariate linear regression analysis showed
that accurate reading of pseudowords and the wider vocabulary increase the
reading comprehension capacity. Other skills such as word reading, sentence
reading comprehension, memory and attention showed positive correlations with
the reading comprehension, but did not remain in the final model of linear
regression analysis. We emphasize the need for future studies in order to
increase the number of adolescents evaluated. We suggest that the studies be
carried out with adolescents from public and private schools, with and without
learning disorders, in order to establish normative data for the instrument of
collective assessment of reading comprehension.