PURPOSE: the main purpose of this study is to analyze the social, cognition and perinatal aspects that increase the risk of a child in reading, writing or arithmetic alterations. METHOD: we analyzed 45 children (about 8.3 year old), in average, and observed their reading, writing, arithmetic, phonological awareness, memory and auditory processing skills. In addition, the children's parents answered a questionnaire about the child's gestation, birth, life and social aspects. In order to check the relationship among the independent and dependent variables (reading, writing, arithmetic), we used the logistic regression. RESULTS: we observed that alterations in phonological awareness increase the risk of a child in reading (OD = 42; p-value 0.02), writing (OD = 10.8; p-value 0.01) or arithmetic (OD = 42; p-value 0.002) alterations. Alterations in phonological memory increase the risk of a child in reading (OD = 24; p-value 0.04) or arithmetic (OD = 42; p-value 0.04). In the study we also observed that high education level of children's mother reduce the risk for children's school problems (OD = 0,3; p-value > 0.001) and mother's low level education (OD = 2.3; p-value > 0.001) affect the children's reading. The weight in birth or prematurity is not related with school performance. CONCLUSIONS: children who have phonological awareness and phonological memory alterations or children who also have low education level mothers have increased the risk as for learning problems.
Underachievement; Risk Factors; Language Development Disorders; Cognition; Social Conditions; Perinatal Care
