An innovative program focused on the promotion of parent-child reading aloud resulted in benefits to parent-child interactions and to child language and cognitive development that were greater than those provided by educational child care alone. This promising approach merits further evaluation at scale.

Verbal fluency (VF) is a widely used tool in neuropsychological assessment.Objective:We aimed to investigate the influence of age and educational level on clustering and switching in three VF modalities: phonemic (PVF), semantic (SVF) and unconstrained (UVF). We evaluated type of cluster, mean cluster size, and quantity of clusters, intersections, and returns. A total of 260 healthy subjects were assessed.Methods:Participants were divided into three age groups: young adults (18 to 39 years), middle-aged adults (40 to 59 years) and older adults (60 to 80 years) and into two groups of educational level: 1-8 years (low), 9 years or more (high). A two-way ANOVA analysis was conducted to analyze the effect of age and educational level and its interactions. A repeated measures ANOVA was performed to verify the performance during the task.Results:A main effect of age was detected on the UVF and SVF scores for total switches, taxonomic clusters, and for the total semantic clusters on the SVF. There was a greater effect of educational level on total switches (UVF, PFV and SVF), taxonomic clusters (UVF and SVF), thematic clusters and total semantic cluster (UVF), phonemic and mixed clusters (PVF), mean cluster size (UVF and SVF) and intersections (SVF). Educational level had a greater effect on all three VF tasks.

rESUMo objetivo: Comparar o desempenho de sete meninos com diagnóstico comprovado de TDAH (G1) e 14 controles saudáveis (G2) em tarefas neuropsicológicas. Método: G1 e G2 foram pareados por sexo, idade e escolaridade em tarefas atencionais e executivas (Fluência Verbal e Discurso Narrativo da Bateria MAC, Teste de Cancelamento dos Sinos -versão infantil, Geração Aleatória de Números, Go-no Go do NEUPSILIN-Inf e N-Back auditivo). resultados: Destacaram-se diferenças entre os grupos quanto à atenção concentrada seletiva, à memória de trabalho, ao automonitoramento, à iniciação e à inibição. Conclusão: Foi possível verificar contribuições incipientes para um raciocínio de relações intercomponentes das FE e atencionais em pacientes com TDAH. aBStraCt objective: To compare the performance of seven boys with a confirmed diagnosis of ADHD (G1) and 14 healthy controls (G2) in neuropsychological tasks. Method: G1 and G2 were matched by gender, age and educational level. They were assessed through attentional and executive tasks (verbal fluency and narrative discourse from MAC Battery, Bells Testchildren's version, Number Random Generation, Go-no Go and auditory N-Back). results: There were remarkable differences between groups for sustained focused attention, working memory, self-monitoring, initiation and inhibition. Conclusion: Contributions for incipient comprehension of relationships among cognitive components in ADHD patients could be identified.

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Executive functions (EF) have been a major focus of interest in neuropsychology. However, there are few studies about their development in healthy children. To fill this gap in the literature, the current study aims to compare the performance in EF tasks in children from 6 to 12 (n=90) years old. Three age groups (6-7, 8-10 and 11-12 yearsold) were assessed using the following instruments: verbal fluency, narrative discourse, random number generation, N-Back, Bells Test and Hayling Test. Analyses of variance were used to compare the scores among groups. There was a significant effect of age in all executive performance scores, especially between the youngest and oldest groups. The most significant differences were observed in the central executive component of working memory and inhibition, which showed a marked development between 6-7 and 8-10 years of age. In addition, a remarkable peak was observed in the tasks that assess planning and processing speed in the group of 11-12 year-old children. The current results suggest that the development of all components of EF should be further investigated in school-aged children in normative studies so that possible dissociations in the development of these abilities can be better understood.