Abstract
This study investigated how the difficulties in language in children with Rolandic Epilepsy (RE) could be related to alterations in their development of phonological awareness and/or working memory. We evaluated fourty-two children aged 6 to 13 years old. From these, twenty-one children were diagnosed with RE and formed the experimental group; and twenty-one children without RE, paired with the experimental group by sex, age, education and socioeconomic status, formed the control group. The results showed significant differences in the performances of children with RE and healthy children in the tests that evaluated working memory and phonological awareness. Also, positive and high significant correlations were found between working memory and phonological awareness in the RE clinical subgroup. Generally, the results suggest that compromises in both cognitive functions might be associated to loss of language capabilities in children with RE, and also point that the development of working memory and phonological awareness are interconnected.
Highlights
This study aimed to investigate the working memory and phonological awareness in children between 6 and 13 years who were diagnosed with rolandic epilepsy, known as Benign Childhood Epilepsy with centro-temporal spikes
This is because this area is considered to be the main weakness in the cognitive functions of this clinical subgroup, which is possibly associated to the harm caused by epilepsy crises on a developing brain (Aquino, Montenegro, Guerreiro & Guerreiro, 2005; Flax et al, 2003; Overvliet et al, 2013; Smith et al, 2012), especially on the areas of the brain related to language: the center of the brain, predominantly in the lower portion of the rolandic and Sylvian areas (Fonseca, Tedrus, Chiodi, Cerqueira & Duran, 2004; Hommet et al, 2001; Staden, Isaaca, Boyd, Brandl &, 1998; Xiao et al, 2016; Zaninotto & Hamad, 2012)
Significant losses regarding the performance of children with Rolandic Epilepsy (RE) in tasks that investigated the phonological loop, a component of the working memory, were found in this study. In this context, starting off from the weaknesses in working memory capabilities in children with RE found in this study, as well as considering the fundamental part of the executive component in linguistic processing (Baddeley, 2012; Uehara & Landeira-Fernandez, 2010), our findings suggest that the language compromise in this clinical subgroup seems to be influenced by deficits in working memory
Summary
This study aimed to investigate the working memory and phonological awareness in children between 6 and 13 years who were diagnosed with rolandic epilepsy, known as Benign Childhood Epilepsy with centro-temporal spikes. It is a benign epilepsy syndrome, without apparent anatomical brain lesions, and it is the most common form of focal seizures in childhood, accounting for 25% of all seizures in this period. This is because this area is considered to be the main weakness in the cognitive functions of this clinical subgroup, which is possibly associated to the harm caused by epilepsy crises on a developing brain (Aquino, Montenegro, Guerreiro & Guerreiro, 2005; Flax et al, 2003; Overvliet et al, 2013; Smith et al, 2012), especially on the areas of the brain related to language: the center of the brain, predominantly in the lower portion of the rolandic and Sylvian areas (Fonseca, Tedrus, Chiodi, Cerqueira & Duran, 2004; Hommet et al, 2001; Staden, Isaaca, Boyd, Brandl &, 1998; Xiao et al, 2016; Zaninotto & Hamad, 2012)
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