A calculation and number processing battery for clinical application in illiterates and semi-literates.
Ten simple tasks assessing counting, number processing, elementary calculation and quantity estimation were proposed to 122 normal Brazilian adults aged between 18 and 58 years with 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 years of education. Tasks such as counting the number of elements in small sets were almost perfectly mastered by these illiterate or semi-literate normal subjects; however in other tasks (e.g. those assessing knowledge of the correspondence between numbers and banknotes) a sizeable proportion of the sample showed errors. The pattern of errors was analysed to identify difficulty factors. A strong gender effect with better performance in men than women was observed, which was even greater than the expected effect of educational level. Results in normals allowed to propose cut-off scores for neuropsychological assessment in brain-damaged patients with very low levels of education, which were tested in a small sample of illiterate or semi-literate patients with cerebrovascular accident. It is argued that the relatively neglected area of neuropsychological assessment in illiterates is of great practical and theoretical interest.
Deloche
G
G
URCA, Reims, France. gerard.deloche@univ-reims.fr
Souza
L
L
Braga
L W
LW
Dellatolas
G
G
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D001938:Brazil; D003710:Demography; D004493:Education; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D008606:Mental Processes / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000592:standards*; D009790:Occupations; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D012015:Reference Standards; D012737:Sex Factors