Language is part of nature, and as such, certain general principles that generate the form of natural systems, will also create the patterns found within linguistic form. Since network theory is one of the best theoretical frameworks for extracting general principles from diverse systems, this thesis examines how a network perspective can shed light on the characteristics and the learning of syntax. It is demonstrated that two word co-occurrence networks constructed from adult and child speech (BNC World Edition 2001; Sachs 1983; MacWhinney 2000a) exhibit three non-atomic syntactic primitives namely, the truncated power law distributions of frequency, degree and the link length between two nodes (the link representing a precedence relation). Since a power law distribution of link lengths characterises a hubterranean structure (Kasturirangan 1999) i.e. a structure that has a few highly connected nodes and many poorly connected nodes, both the adult and the child word co-occurrence networks exhibit hubterranean structure. This structure is formed by an optimisation process that minimises the link length whilst maximising connectivity (Mathias & Gopal 2001 a&b). The link length in a word co-occurrence network is the storage cost of representing two adjacently co-occurring words and is inversely proportion to the transitional probability (TP) of the word pair. Adjacent words that co-occur often together i.e. have a high TP, exhibit a high cohesion and tend to form chunks. These chunks are a cost effective method of storing representations. Thus, on this view, the (multi-) power law of link lengths represents the distribution of storage costs or cohesions within adjacent words. Such cohesions form groupings of linguistic form known as syntactic constituents. Thus, syntactic constituency is not specific to language and is a property derived from the optimisation of the network. In keeping with other systems generated by a cost constraint on the link length, it is demonstrated that both the child and adult word co-occurrence networks are not hierarchically organised in terms of degree distribution (Ravasz and Barabási 2003:1). Furthermore, both networks are disassortative, and in line with other disassortative networks, there is a correlation between degree and betweenness centrality (BC) values (Goh, Kahng and Kim 2003). In agreement with scale free networks (Goh, Oh, Jeong, Kahng and Kim 2002), the BC values in both networks follow a power law distribution. In this thesis, a motif analysis of the two word co-occurrence networks is a richly detailed (non-functional) distributional analysis and reveals that the adult and child significance profiles for triad subgraphs correlate closely. Furthermore, the most significant 4-node motifs in the adult network are also the most significant in the child network. Utilising this non-functional distributional analysis in a word co-occurrence network, it is argued that the notion of a general syntactic category is not evidenced and as such is inadmissible. Thus, non-general or construction-specific categories are preferred (in line with Croft 2001). Function words tend to be the hub words of the network (see Ferrer i Cancho and Solé 2001a), being defined and therefore identified by their high type and token frequency. These properties are useful for identifying syntactic categories since function words are traditionally associated with particular syntactic categories (see Cann 2000). Consequently, a function word and thus a syntactic category may be identified by the interception of the frequency and degree power laws with their truncated tails. As a given syntactic category captures the type of words that may co-occur with the function word, the category then encourages consistency within the functional patterns in the network and re-enforces the network’s (near-) optimised state. Syntax then, on this view, is both a navigator, manoeuvring through the ever varying sea of linguistic form and a guide, forging an uncharted course through novel expression. There is also evidence suggesting that the hubterranean structure is not only found in the word co-occurrence network, but within other theoretical syntactic levels. Factors affecting the choice of a verb that is generalised early relate to the formation and the characteristics of hubs. In that, the property of a high (token) frequency in combination with either a high degree (type frequency) or a low storage cost, point to certain verbs within the network and these highly ‘visible’ verbs tend to be generalised early (in line with Boyd and Goldberg forthcoming). Furthermore, the optimisation process that creates hubterranean structure is implicated in the verb-construction subpart network of the adult’s linguistic knowledge, the mapping of the constructions’ form-to-meaning pairings, the construction inventory size as well as certain strategies aiding first language learning and adult artificial language learning.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This dissertation documents the emergence of a new language, Light Warlpiri, in the multilingual community of Lajamanu in northern Australia. It then examines the acquisition of Light Warlpiri language, and of the heritage language, Lajamanu Warlpiri, by children. Light Warlpiri has arisen from contact between Lajamanu Warlpiri (a Pama-Nyungan language), Kriol (an English-based creole), and varieties of English. It is a Mixed Language, meaning that none of its source languages can be considered to be the sole parent language. Most verbs and the verbal morphology are from Aboriginal English or Kriol, while most nouns and the nominal morphology are from Warlpiri. The language input to children is complex. Adults older than about thirty speak Lajamanu Warlpiri and code-switch into Aboriginal English or Kriol. Younger adults, the parents of the current cohort of children, speak Light Warlpiri and code-switch into Lajamanu Warlpiri and into Aboriginal English or Kriol. Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri, the two main input languages to children, both indicate A arguments with ergative case-marking (and they share one allomorph of the marker), but Lajamanu Warlpiri includes the marker much more consistently than Light Warlpiri. Word order is variable in both languages. Children learn both languages from birth, but they target Light Warlpiri as the language of their everyday interactions, and they speak it almost exclusively until four to six years of age. Adults and children show similar patterns of ergative marking and word order in Light Warlpiri. But differences between age groups are found in ergative marking in Lajamanu Warlpiri - for the oldest group of adults, ergative marking is obligatory, but for younger adults and children, it is not. Determining when children differentiate between two input languages has been a major goal in the study of bilingual acquisition. The two languages in this study share lexical and grammatical properties, making distinctions between them quite subtle. Both adults and children distribute ergative marking differently in the two languages, but show similar word order patterns in both. However the children show a stronger correlation between ergative marking and word order patterns than do the adults, suggesting that they are spearheading processes of language change. In their comprehension of sentences in both Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri, adults use a case-marking strategy to identify the A argument (i.e. N+erg = A argument, N-erg = O argument). The children are not adult-like in using this strategy at age 5, when they also used a word order strategy, but they gradually move towards being adult-like with increased age.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Psychology, Committee on Human Development, March 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

A crucial component of child language acquisition is successful generalization. First, a speaker must acquire abstract knowledge of how a particular linguistic-structure conveys meaning, and use this knowledge to generalize the structure to new lexical-items. For example, a speaker can use abstract knowledge of a SUBJECT-VERB-OBJECT structure to produce a sentence such as The man rolled the ball, even if the verb roll has never been encountered in this structure before. Second, a learner must appropriately restrict ‘overgeneralizations’ whereby a structure is used with an unsuitable verb (e.g. *The man fell the boy). The most prominent theories regarding restriction of overgeneralizations are based on frequency of use and (semantic, phonological or pragmatic) compatibility between the item and construction. Since developmental evidence for these accounts is mostly limited to the judgment paradigm, which is unsuitable for testing children aged 5 and under, the aim of this thesis was to examine whether these restriction mechanisms are used by children as young as 3 or 4 – whose generalization mechanisms are at an earlier stage of development - and to develop new paradigms for doing so. Study 1 used a production priming paradigm to examine children’s (aged 3-4; 5-6) restrictions of verbal un- prefixation (e.g., *unbend). Children’s production probability of verbs in un- form (e.g., *unbend) was negatively predicted by the frequency of the target verb in bare form (i.e., bend/s/ed/ing) and by the frequency of synonyms to a verb’s un- form (e.g., straighten for *unbend). Additionally, grammaticality judgments from older children (aged 5-6) revealed that preferences for un- forms were positively related to the extent to which the verb’s semantics overlapped with a covert, probabilistic semantic “cryptotype” of meanings thought to be shared by verbs that are grammatical in un- form (e.g., tie, pack, twist, screw, cover). Study 2 investigated whether overgeneralization errors in the domain of English past-tense (i.e., when ‘regular’ inflections are applied to verbs that require ‘irregular’ inflection; e.g., *sleeped, *throwed) are best attributed to analogy across exemplars, or to a default, “add –ed” rule applied regardless of a verb’s memorized associations. Past-tense forms of novel verbs were elicited by showing children (aged 3-4; 5-6; 6-7; 9-10) animations of an animal performing a novel action described with a novel verb (e.g., gezz; chake) and asking what the animal ‘did yesterday’. A verb’s likelihood of receiving regular inflection (e.g., gezzed, chaked) was positively associated with its phonological similarity to existing regular verbs, consistent with the analogy-based approach. Study 3 investigated the suitability of an online measure of sentence processing, namely Event Related Potentials (ERP), to investigate the role of verb-frequency in restricting transitive overgeneralizations. In line with previous studies, ‘P600’ and ‘LAN’ components were evoked in response to overgeneralization errors. However, the magnitudes of these components were not sensitive to a manipulation of verb-frequency (e.g., *The clown laughed the boy vs. *The clown giggled the boy), raising doubt toward the suitability of ERP for examining the relative acceptability of overgeneralization errors. Overall, the research indicates that even young children’s generalizations are sensitive to the linguistic input (i.e., statistical regularities and generalized semantic or phonological patterns of use) and are not well explained by a system of abstract rules that act on discrete categories, whether this applies to syntactic categories (e.g., add -ed to any instance of the category “VERB”) or discrete verb classes (e.g., a narrow-range rule that acts invariably on any verb that is part of an ‘alternating’ verb-class).

Child language acquisition is a fundamental topic in cognitive sciences as understanding language development can aid our understanding of cognition in general. The aim of this thesis is to explore inflectional noun morphology acquisition of Finnish-speaking children. There are two major methodologies applied to achieve the aim. A corpus consisting of 18 hours of child and child-direct speech was collected for a productivity analysis and for analyses of different input frequency effects on the child's accuracy with case marking and the likelihood of extending cases to incorrect contexts. Second, an experiment was designed to investigate how two-, four-, and six-year-old Finnish children comprehend transitive sentences. Study 1 (Chapter 2) investigated what linguistic productivity means. The study compared the mean number of inflections per noun between controlled samples of child speech at the ages of 1;7-1;8, and adult speech to compare the child's productivity with noun inflections against an adult speaker. The results showed a significant difference in productivity between the two samples, demonstrating the gradual emergence of linguistic productivity. Study 2 (Chapter 3) utilised the same naturalistic corpus as Study 1 to examine the impact of seven input frequency measures on the child's accuracy with noun case marking. The analysis demonstrates that while high type and token input frequencies did correlate with more accurate use of nouns compared to items with lower frequencies, high frequencies were also associated with increased likelihood of usage in incorrect contexts. Study 3 (Chapter 4) presents an experiment comparing children's comprehension of grammatical cues in transitive sentences. Case marking and word order were manipulated to establish how children of different ages utilise these cues in comprehension. The results demonstrated that all age groups performed most accurately when both cues supported each other whereas all age groups struggled with conflicting cues.

O aumento da prevalência mundial dos Transtornos do Espectro Autista (TEA) evidencia a necessidade de identificação e reabilitação precoces para um melhor prognóstico e qualidade de vida das crianças e famílias envolvidas. Entretanto, poucos instrumentos de triagem validados estão disponíveis para uso no Brasil, principalmente na rede pública de assistência. Neste contexto, o estudo teve o objetivo de verificar evidências de validade de critério e aprimorar a parte dedicada à linguagem expressiva oral do Protocolo de Observação para Crianças com Suspeita de Transtornos do Espectro Autista. Participaram da pesquisa 30 crianças em idade pré-escolar (10 com desenvolvimento típico, 10 com síndrome de Down e 10 com TEA). A partir da aplicação do PROTOCS-TEA verificou-se que os itens que melhor diferenciaram as crianças com TEA dos controles foram os referentes à atenção compartilhada, brincadeira simbólica e movimentos repetitivos do corpo, apontando para o potencial uso do instrumento para o fim a que se propõe. / The worldly increasing prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders demonstrates the need of early identification and rehabilitation for a better prognosis and life quality of children and families involved. However, a few screening valid tools are available in Brazil for use in the public health system. In this context, this study aimed to investigating the criterion validity evidence and to upgrade the part concerning to expressive oral language of the Protocolo de Observação para Crianças com Suspeita de Transtornos do Espectro Autista (PROTOCSTEA). Thirty pre-scholars took part in this research (10 with typical development, 10 with Down syndrome and 10 with ASD). The results showed that that the items which better differentiated ASD children from the controls where the ones related to joint attention, symbolic play and repetitive movements of the body, pointing to the potential use of this instrument as a valid one.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / In this study we investigated the possible effects of the symptom of dyspraxic and matern function in mother-child interaction dialogic with delay in oral language. The results of linguistic analysis of the interactions of mother-child dyad with the exercise of maternal function was confronted and the efficacy and effectiveness of therapeutic strategies in line interactionist / psychotherapy was analyzed. On this study, six subjects took part, who went through footage of the mother-child dyad and therapist-child for realization of the analysis. There were also continuous interviews with the mothers with a view to including them in the therapeutic process, giving them voice. There was a poor link between mother-child, with exercise of maternal function deficit, intrusive mothers, absent, teaching or super-present, which took place in substantially reducing or virtual absence of dialogic interaction. This dialogical insecurity prevented the linguistic support necessary for language development. The paternal figure was virtually absent in five of the six cases. Therapeutic interactions between the speech therapist and child, added to ongoing interviews and meetings with moments of the dyad, led the rise in mother-child bond and improves the dialogic interaction. We find the emergence of the desire of the mother and son on the potentiation of linguistic operation in dyad capable of anchoring greater possibilities of language of children. / Neste trabalho, foram investigados os possíveis efeitos do sintoma dispráxico e da função materna na interação dialógica mãe-criança com retardo de linguagem oral. Confrontaram-se os resultados das análises lingüísticas das interações da díade mãe-criança com o exercício da função materna e analisaram-se a eficácia e efetividade de estratégias terapêuticas na linha interacionista/psicanalítica. Fizeram parte deste estudo seis sujeitos que passaram por filmagens da díade mãe-criança e terapeuta-criança para realização das análises. Realizaram-se ainda entrevistas continuadas com as mães com o intuito de incluí-las no processo terapêutico, dando-lhes voz. Observou-se um vínculo precário entre mãe-filho, com exercício da função materna deficitário, mães intrusivas, ausentes, pedagógicas ou superpresentes cuja materialidade se deu na diminuição ou quase-ausência da interação dialógica. Tal precariedade dialógica impedia o suporte lingüístico necessário para o desenvolvimento da linguagem. A figura paterna era praticamente ausente em cinco dos seis casos. Interações terapêuticas entre a Fonoaudióloga e a criança, somadas às entrevistas continuadas e momentos de sessões com a díade, permitiram o aumento do vínculo mãe-filho e melhora da interação dialógica. Percebe-se o surgimento do desejo da mãe sobre esse filho e a potencialização do funcionamento lingüístico na díade capaz de ancorar maiores possibilidades de linguagem das crianças.

A heterogeneidade do Transtorno Fonológico tem suscitado muitas discussões e despertado a atenção dos pesquisadores quanto a importância de se descrever detalhadamente as características fonológicas dos sujeitos que o apresentam. Instrumentos específicos que contribuem para o diagnóstico diferencial desse Transtorno de outras alterações de linguagem possibilitam maior precisão na sua identificação. O presente estudo teve como objetivo descrever o desempenho de crianças com Transtorno Fonológico no Test of Language Development Primary 3 adaptado para o Português Brasileiro. Participaram da pesquisa 91 sujeitos, de ambos os gêneros, com idades variando de 4:0 a 8:10 anos, sendo 76 crianças com desenvolvimento típico de fala e linguagem (grupo controle) e 15 crianças com Transtorno Fonológico (grupo pesquisa). Foram aplicados os subtestes do Test of Language Development Primary 3 adaptado em todos os sujeitos, e analisados os escores padrão dos subtestes e os quocientes dos índices compostos. Também foram analisadas as correlações entre os índices Percentage of Consonants Correct - Revised do ABFW e o Percentage of Consonants Correct - Revised do Test of Language Development Primary 3 adaptado, e, entre cada um desses índices e os escores padrão dos subtestes e os quocientes do teste. Foi ainda analisada a associação entre histórico de otite, audiometria e o Percentage of Consonants Correct - Revised do Test of Language Development Primary 3 adaptado nas crianças com Transtorno Fonológico. Os sujeitos do grupo pesquisa apresentaram desempenho semelhante ao grupo controle nos subtestes de Semântica, porém o desempenho daquele grupo foi inferior, quando comparado ao grupo controle, nos subtestes de Sintaxe e de Fonologia. Quanto aos subtestes verificou-se que seis deles discriminaram os dois grupos, para os quais foram determinados valores de corte. Apenas o subteste Articulação de Palavra teve contribuição adicional significativa na discriminação dos dois grupos, permitindo classificar o indivíduo em um deles. No grupo pesquisa foi verificado um desempenho inferior ao grupo controle, em todos quocientes; também foram observadas diferenças significativas entre os grupos em todos quocientes, exceto no Quociente Compreensão. Foi verificada correlação positiva apenas entre dois subtestes de Fonologia e o Percentage of Consonants Correct - Revised do ABFW e o Percentage of Consonants Correct - Revised do Test of Language Development Primary 3 adaptado, porém não houve correlação entre os quocientes e os índices. Não se verificou associação entre o Percentage of Consonants Correct - Revised do Test of Language Development Primary 3 adaptado, o histórico de otite e os resultados da audiometria no grupo pesquisa; todos os sujeitos desse grupo apresentaram resultados dentro dos padrões de normalidade na audiometria. Os dados desse estudo mostraram que as crianças do grupo pesquisa não apresentam dificuldades em tarefas de vocabulário, contudo, além das dificuldades fonológicas, foram observadas alterações das habilidades sintáticas dessas crianças. Possivelmente essa alteração no domínio sintático seja decorrente de alterações na representação fonológica presentes nesse transtorno. O Test of Language Development Primary 3 adaptado mostrou-se um instrumento eficaz na diferenciação de crianças com e sem Transtorno e poderá ser usado como prova complementar no diagnóstico do Transtorno Fonológico. / The heterogeneity of the phonological disorder has raised discussion and attention of researchers regarding the importance of describing in a detailed manner the phonological characteristics of the subjects. Specific tools that contribute to the differential diagnosis of phonological disorder from other language disorders provide more accuracy in their identification. This study aimed to describe the performance of phonological disordered children in the Test of Language Development Primary 3 adapted to Brazilian Portuguese. Participants were 91 boys and girls, with age ranging from 4:0 to 8:10 years, divided into two groups: 76 typically developing speech and language children (control group) and 15 phonological disordered children (phonological disordered group). Subtests of the Test of Language Development Primary 3 adapted were conducted to all subjects and the subtests\' standard scores and the composite quotients of the test were analyzed. It was also analyzed correlations between the Percentage of Consonants Correct - Revised of the ABFW and the Percentage of Consonants Correct - Revised of the Test of Language Development Primary 3 adapted, and correlation of both indexes with subtest and with the composite quotient of the Test of Language Development Primary 3 adapted. Also, association between otitis background, audiometry and Percentage of Consonants Correct - Revised of the Test of Language Development Primary 3 adapted in children with phonological disorder was analyzed. Subjects of the phonological disordered group showed similar performance to the control group in Semantics subtests, however the performance of this group was lower compared to the control group, in the Syntax and Phonology subtests. It was found that six subtests discriminated the two groups and cutoff values were determined. Only the Word Articulation subtest had a significant additional contribution in the discrimination of the two groups allowing the classification of the individual in one of them. The phonological disordered group performed lower than the control group in all quotients; significant differences were observed between groups in all quotients except for the Listening quotient. Positive correlation was only found between two Phonology subtests with the Percentage of Consonants Correct - Revised of the ABFW and the Percentage of Consonants Correct - Revised of the Test of Language Development Primary 3 adapted, but there was no correlation between the quotient and these indexes. There was no association between the Percentage of Consonants Correct - Revised of the Test of Language Development Primary 3 adapted, otitis background and audiometry in the phonological disordered group; all subjects of this group presented results within normal range in the audiometry. Data from this study showed that children of the phonological disordered group did not present difficulties on vocabulary tasks, however, in addition to phonological difficulties it was observed impaired syntactic skills. Perhaps this impairment in the syntactic domain may be result of changes in the phonological representation of this disorder. The Test of Language Development Primary 3 adapted proved to be an effective tool in the differentiation of children with and without phonological disorder and may be used as an additional test for the diagnosis of phonological disorder.

Introdução: O aumento dos índices de obesidade infantil nas últimas décadas vem merecendo atenção crescente como problema de saúde pública, devido ao impacto que causa na vida das crianças pelas diversas alterações metabólicas e outras patologias, além de trazer consequências sociais, econômicas e psicológicas. Estudos visando a relação obesidade infantil e cognição tiveram início, no entanto, somente nos últimos anos. Objetivo: Investigar a linguagem escrita e as diferentes habilidades cognitivas envolvidas no seu processamento em crianças que foram diagnosticadas com obesidade desde a primeira infância. Material e Métodos: 41 crianças (média de idade: 9,6 anos) participaram desse estudo. Foram divididas em grupos conforme estado nutricional: G1 (n=14) crianças com diagnóstico atual de obesidade e histórico de sobrepeso/obesidade desde antes dos três anos e G2 (n=27) crianças eutróficas (pareadas segundo a idade e tipo de escola). Foram analisados dados do histórico médico e nível de atividade física e realizada a avaliação audiológica (pesquisas dos limiares entre 250Hz e 16000Hz) nos dois grupos. Em seguida foram submetidos à avaliação da leitura de palavras e pseudopalavras, a testes de aritmética, escrita sob ditado, consciência fonológica, nomeação automática rápida, memória de trabalho fonológica, memória de trabalho visuoespacial, atenção (teste por cancelamento) e flexibilidade cognitiva (teste de trilhas). Para a análise estatística utilizou-se o teste de Igualdade de Proporções, o teste Manny-Whitney e Manova Não-Paramétrica = 0,05. Resultados: Os grupos eram homogêneos na proporção de histórico de intercorrências pré e peri natais e histórico de convulsões/otites/anemia e apresentaram igualmente baixo nível de atividade física. Não foram observadas diferenças nos testes de desempenho escolar nas tarefas de leitura/escrita/aritmética, porém, os resultados do teste de avaliação do uso de rotas de leitura, indicou dificuldade de G1 em alternar as rotas fonológicas e lexicais demonstrando dificuldade em flexibilidade cognitiva. Essa dificuldade foi confirmada pelos resultados de desempenho do teste de trilhas e de atenção alternada, apesar de manterem bom desempenho em testes de atenção pura. Não foram encontradas diferenças entre os grupos nas tarefas de nomeação automática rápida e memória de trabalho visuoespacial. Quanto à memória de trabalho fonológica, o G1 apresentou melhor desempenho assim como em tarefas de consciência fonológica que mais se utilizam deste tipo de memória. A avaliação auditiva indicou limiares auditivos dentro do padrão de normalidade nos dois grupos, porém o G1 apresentou limiares auditivos significativamente mais elevados nas frequências mais graves (250hz a 4000hz). Conclusão: O presente estudo demonstrou que a condição de obesidade leva a alterações no desempenho cognitivo em crianças com efeitos positivos sobre a memória de trabalho fonológica e algumas tarefas de consciência fonológica, e efeitos negativos em outras como a flexibilidade cognitiva e atenção alternada que interferiram no processamento da linguagem escrita na habilidade para alternar rotas de leitura. O desempenho escolar em geral, dos grupos foi semelhante, já outros recursos cognitivos que auxiliam em sua aprendizagem podem ter sido requeridos. / Introduction: The rising of obesity rates in childhood has deserved attention as a healthy public problem due to the impact caused in the lives of children by various metabolic and other diseases, causing social, economic and psychological consequences. However, only in recent years the studies aiming the link between obesity in children and cognition has begun. Objective: Evaluate the different cognitive skills involved in the written language in children diagnosed with childhood obesity. Methods and Materials: 41 children (age average: 9,6 years old) participated of this study. The children were divided in groups according to nutritional status: G1 (n = 14) children diagnosed with obesity and with history of overweight / obese since three years or less, and G2 (n = 27) normal weight (matched by age and type of school). Audiological evaluation (thresholds between 250Hz and 16,000Hz) was performed in both groups after evaluation of medical historical data and level of physical activity. Tests involving reading words and pseudo words, arithmetic, writing under dictation, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, phonological working memory, visuospatial working memory, attention (cancellation test) and cognitive flexibility (trail making test) were performed . The Proportions Equality, Manny-Whitney and Manova Non-Parametric - = 0.05 tests were used for statistical analysis. Results: The groups were homogeneous considering the history prenatal and perinatal complications and history of seizures / ear infections / anemia besides the both groups presented low level of physical activity. There were no differences in school performance tests involving reading / writing / arithmetic. However, G1 presented difficulty to alternate the phonological and lexical routes in tests involving the use of reading routes, so indicating difficulties in cognitive flexibility. This difficulty was confirmed by the results obtained in trail making and alternating attention tests, even while maintaining a good performance in pure tests of attention. No differences were observed between groups in rapid automatized naming and visuospatial working memory tests. G1 presented the best performance in tasks involving phonological working memory. The thresholds of hearing were considered present in normal range for both groups in the hearing tests. However G1 presented thresholds of hearing higher in low frequencies (250hz a 4000hz). Conclusion: This study showed that childhood obesity can change cognitive performance in children. Positive effects on phonological working memory and in some phonological awareness tasks were observed. However, negative effects were observed in tasks involving cognitive flexibility and alternating attention which interfered in the processing of written language and in the ability to alternate reading routes. In general the school performance were similar in both groups, however other cognitive resources that assist in their learning may have been required.

This study aimed to investigate the occurrence of a relationship between phonological awareness and expressive vocabulary in children with normal language development and children with phonological disorders; it aimed also to compare the performance of children with normal language development to the one of children with phonological disorders; and to verify the influence of age in the performance of these abilities and in the relationship with each other. The sample was composed by seventy-four subjects divided in two groups: fifty in the control group (children with normal language development) and twenty-four in the study group (children with phonological disorders). These groups were subdivided according to the age of the subjects, and composing the control group: twelve children were five years old, twenty-seven were six years old and eleven were seven years old. In the study group: ten children were five years old, ten were six years old and four were seven years old. These subjects accomplished tests that evaluated their abilities in phonological awareness and expressive vocabulary. Initially, the performance of the two groups (control and study) was compared according to the age groups. Later, the subjects with phonological disorders were analyzed, in the three studied age groups in order to verify the existent correlations between phonological awareness and expressive vocabulary in these subjects, as well as the influence of age in these correlations and in the performance of the tests. According to the results, it can be concluded that the children of the study group that were five and seven years old obtained an inferior performance than the control group. The subjects six years old didn't present significant differences among the groups. The children five years old of the two groups presented difficulties in the same tasks, except in phoneme detection in word beginning. And the subjects six and seven years old of both groups showed difficulties just in expressive vocabulary. Also, there is a relationship among some abilities in phonological awareness and expressive vocabulary in children with phonological disorders, at different ages. The performances at these abilities get better as the children get older and the relationships are more intense when the children are younger; as they grow older, these abilities become more independent, reducing the number of correlations. / Os objetivos deste estudo foram investigar a relação entre consciência fonológica e vocabulário expressivo em crianças com desenvolvimento típico da linguagem e em crianças com desvio fonológico; comparar o desempenho de crianças com desenvolvimento típico da linguagem com o de crianças com desvio fonológico; verificar a influência da idade no desempenho destas habilidades e na relação entre elas. A amostra foi composta por 74 sujeitos divididos em dois grupos: 50 no grupo controle (crianças com desenvolvimento típico da linguagem) e 24 no grupo estudo (crianças com desvio fonológico). Estes grupos foram subdivididos conforme a faixa etária dos sujeitos, compondo o grupo controle: 12 crianças com cinco anos de idade, 27 com seis anos e 11 com sete anos. No grupo estudo: dez crianças com cinco anos, dez com seis anos e quatro com sete anos. Estes sujeitos realizaram testes para avaliar as habilidades em consciência fonológica e em vocabulário expressivo. Inicialmente, comparou-se o desempenho dos dois grupos (controle e estudo) de acordo com as faixas etárias. Posteriormente, foram analisados os sujeitos com desvio fonológico, nas três faixas etárias estudadas, a fim de verificar as correlações existentes entre consciência fonológica e vocabulário expressivo, bem como a influência da idade nestas correlações e no desempenho nos testes. Conforme os resultados encontrados, pode-se concluir que as crianças do grupo estudo de cinco e sete anos obtiveram um desempenho inferior ao grupo controle. Os sujeitos de seis anos não apresentaram diferenças significativas entre os grupos. As crianças de cinco anos dos dois grupos apresentaram dificuldades nas mesmas tarefas, exceto em detecção de fonema em início de palavra. E os sujeitos de seis e sete anos de ambos os grupos mostraram dificuldades apenas em vocabulário expressivo. Os achados também mostram que há relação entre algumas habilidades em consciência fonológica e vocabulário expressivo em crianças com desvio fonológico, nas diferentes idades. O desempenho nestas habilidades melhorou conforme o aumento da idade e a relação entre elas é maior quando as crianças são mais novas; quanto mais velhas as crianças vão ficando, tais habilidades vão se tornando mais independentes, diminuindo o número de correlações.