Preschoolers’ cognitive-linguistic performance in different educational contexts

ABSTRACT Purpose: to investigate preschoolers’ cognitive-linguistic performance in different educational settings. Methods: thirty-nine children aged 4:0 to 5:11 years, enrolled in two private preschools from different Brazilian regions, were assessed with the Protocol for the Early Identification of Reading Problems, in the version adapted to preschool - which includes the following tests: alphabet knowledge; metaphonological skills; phonological working memory; rapid automatized naming; silent word reading; and hearing sentence comprehension based on figures. The groups were compared with the Mann-Whitney statistical test, and significant differences were set at p < 0.05. Results: as expected, data revealed different performances between preschoolers from the two schools. The worse results in both were related to rhyme production and rhyme identification, which reveals that phonological awareness is probably not being stimulated in these groups. Participants performed as expected or “under attention” in the other skills. Conclusion: the performances of preschoolers from both schools were identified and classified, revealing differences in cognitive-linguistic performances between the different educational settings. These results ratify the importance of a teaching approach that helps develop cognitive-linguistic skills, early in preschool.


INTRODUCTION
Preschool is the first stage of basic education, aiming at the overall development of children up to 5 years old in physical, psychological, intellectual, and social aspects, complementing the family's and community's actions.It must be provided in day care centers or equivalent institutions for children up to 3 years old and preschools for those 4 or 5 years old 1 .
Children's first school years are the most important ones for their social, communication, and learning development.During this phase, the school and family must monitor the development of their language and other cognitive skills to take measures as soon as possible if they perceive any difficulties.Hence, preschool professionals must have instruments available to monitor the development of cognitive-linguistic skills considered predictive of learning to read and write 2 .Moreover, considering that such development depends on stimuli and interactions experienced at home and school, assessing these skills is crucial to decision-making regarding the best pedagogical practices for this target public 2,3 .
Studies indicate a positive association between linguistic and cognitive development, indispensable pillars of school learning.Linguistic skills considered predictive of learning to read include phonology, syllabic and phonemic awareness, morphology, discourse, and pragmatics, while the cognitive skills are auditory and visual information processing, processing speed, attention, memory, planning, and organization 4,5 .
More directly related to the initial process of learning to read and write, the literature highlights skills that comprise phonological processing, such as phonological awareness, phonological memory, and rapid serial naming.These competencies are associated with successful learning because they are respectively responsible for the capacity to analyze the sound structure of speech, retain information, and quickly access the language's representations of the phonological information 6 .Thus, these skills should be developed during the final preschool years to prepare students for the challenges of learning to read and write, which takes place at the beginning of elementary school 7 .
Therefore, addressing cognitive-linguistic skills since preschool provides children with greater understanding and autonomy to meet the challenges of learning to read and write.It also allows them greater time to deal with possible difficulties and solve or minimize them before they enter elementary school.Studies also argue that early stimulating these skills minimizes the effects of existing gaps due to individual, cultural, and socioeconomic differences -thus decreasing discrepancies caused by unequal educational opportunities, so common in the country 2,5,7 .
Nevertheless, despite recognizing that the stimulation of children's cognitive-linguistic skills before they begin learning to read and write is beneficial to such process 2,7 , research still focuses on the first grades of elementary school.Thus, there is a lack of studies exploring strategies to assess and develop cognitivelinguistic skills in preschool.
In this perspective, a study in children from a public preschool verified the effectiveness of an intervention program aimed at developing their cognitivelinguistic skills in this learning stage 8 .It proposed an adaptation of the Protocol for the Early Identification of Reading Problems (IPPL, in Portuguese) 9 to be used in preschool, as no other such instrument had been published in Brazil.The study results demonstrated that the adapted instrument was sensitive to discriminate between preschoolers with better and worse performances, also identifying preschoolers at risk of learning disorders 8 , however, the study 8 in question tested the instrument in only one public school, and it would be important to use it in other educational settings.
Given the above, this study aimed to investigate the cognitive-linguistic performance of preschoolers from different educational contexts.

METHODS
This research was approved by the originating institution's Human Research Ethics Committee of the Federal of Pernambuco University, Brazil, under evaluation report no.4.148.247and CAAE 14630719.0.0000.8807.
The methodological process indicated for this research was a quantitative analysis, and the study was characterized as descriptive, correlational, and cross-sectional.

Participants
The sample comprised 39 preschoolers aged 4:0 to 5:11 years old, enrolled in preschool.Data were collected in the following two institutions: a private school (middle class) with 20 participants from Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil; and a private school (higher middle class) with 19 participants from Teresópolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Participants were selected by convenience.The exclusion criteria were children whose parents did not sign an informed consent form, or who had any syndromic, neurological, and/or sensory changes, such as severe hearing and/or visual problems.

Instruments
Cognitive-linguistic skills were assessed with the Protocol for the Early Identification of Reading Problems 9 , in the version adapted to preschool 8 .
The instrument adaptation required adjustments in test instructions, including new training items, using concrete support material for some tests, excluding or modifying tests that involved phonemic analyses and manipulations, and excluding a word and pseudoword reading test.
Its final version has the following tests: alphabet knowledge (vowels and consonants); metaphonological skills (rhyme production, rhyme identification, syllabic segmentation, word production from initial syllables, syllabic synthesis, initial syllable identification); phonological working memory; rapid automatized naming; silent word reading (choosing among three words the one that represents a figure); and hearing sentence comprehension based on figures.

Procedures
It is important to point out that data were collected after the critical period of the COVID-19 pandemic, between September and October 2020, when resumed in-person classes posed many challenges to schools and faculty.
Initially, personal data were obtained from the students' identification forms at school to contact their parents/guardians.They were sent an information letter with the study objectives, ensuring the participants' confidentiality.Those who agreed to participate in the research signed an informed consent form.
Then, the children were individually assessed in the quietest possible room in the school, during regular school hours.The sessions lasted about 30 to 40 minutes and were recorded and registered in their respective answer protocols.

Data analysis
The cognitive-linguistic skills were analyzed according to the number of correct answers in the protocol 8 .The test is scored by ascribing one point to every correct answer and zero to every wrong or missing answer.The score was divided into three strata to allocate preschoolers into three performance categories: expected, under attention, and at-risk.
The performances of preschoolers from the two institutions were compared with the Mann-Whitney nonparametric test, with the significance level set at 5% (p < 0.05).

RESULTS
In general, data revealed that preschoolers from Recife had lower performance indices than those from Teresópolis, with significant differences in the following tests: vowel knowledge, consonant knowledge, rhyme identification, word production, syllable identification, and phonological working memory, as seen in Table 1.
under attention, and at risk of learning problems -, as shown in Table 2.
The participants' performances were contrasted with the initial instrument standardization data 8 and were distributed in the performance categories -expected,  to teach in this modality; the methods used to assess students; and so forth 13 .
In the case of this study, the preschoolers' learning may have been further affected, as the development of cognitive-linguistic skills requires a thorough integration of neuropsychological, linguistic, intellectual, emotional, and socioenvironmental processes -which were certainly affected by the social isolation measures implemented during the critical phase of the pandemic 13 .
Hence the poorer performance in rhyme production in both schools in this study may indicate that the stimulation of this metaphonological skill was not given priority in either educational setting.Phonological awareness is considered one of the most important skills to predict successful initial learning to read and write.Studies point out that developing metaphonological skills since preschool can reduce the possibilities of failure in learning to read and write and increase the odds of children's success throughout their school learning process 2,4,7,14,15 .
Children must be formally taught phonological awareness and other predictive skills, such as knowledge of letters and syllables.These skills are not naturally developed by simply using oral language, so they depend on teaching 2,4,15 .As previously mentioned, preschoolers in this study performed "under attention" in some of these skills, such as consonant knowledge, alphabet knowledge, syllabic segmentation, syllabic synthesis, phonological working memory, automatized naming time, silent reading, and sentence hearing comprehension.
An international study 16 likewise found disturbing predictive skill results in public schools.It aimed to identify performances in phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming in Ecuadorian preschoolers.The study comprised 100 children from four public schools, assessed with a phonological processing test and a rapid automatized naming test.The results indicated that 31% of the children had difficulties in phonological development and 39%, in rapid automatized naming.Data suggest the importance of implementing strategies and tools to develop these skills and identify early children at risk for learning disorders.
In Brazil, the concern with the development of cognitive-linguistic skills has also motivated changes in education laws and public policies.Thus, the National Curriculum Framework (BNCC, in Portuguese) 17 , the document that regulates the essential content to be taught and stimulated in Brazilian schools, presents It was found that most children's results from both schools were expected -i.e., good performance -in vowel knowledge, syllable identification, and number of correct answers in rapid automatized naming.The school from Teresópolis also had expected results in producing words based on initial phoneme or syllable.
Most preschoolers from both schools had underattention results -i.e., intermediate performances -in consonant knowledge, alphabet knowledge, syllabic segmentation, syllabic synthesis, phonological working memory, automatized naming time, silent reading, and hearing sentence comprehension.Preschoolers from Teresópolis also had such performances in thyme identification.
Children from both schools had at-risk results -i.e., below the expected -in rhyme production.Those from Recife also had such performances in rhyme identification, while the ones from Teresópolis had so in syllabic synthesis.
It must be highlighted that, in individual analysis, children would be considered at risk only if they performed in this stratum in most of the investigated skills.On the other hand, the collective analysis indicates the most delayed skills, which need greater stimulation in each group.

DISCUSSION
Studies emphasize the importance of monitoring the development of cognitive-linguistic skills since preschool to ensure successful initial learning to read and write 7,[10][11][12] .This study found that preschoolers performed well or intermediately in some skills, although the results present disturbing data concerning the development of metaphonological skills in preschoolers from both educational settings.
Their low performance in cognitive-linguistic skills may be due to extrinsic factors (especially the lack of good socioeducational opportunities provided by either families or schools), or risk factors for learning disorders 10 .On the other hand, the early identification of more delayed skills at school may help guide pedagogical practices to promote their development, minimizing the impact of the children's lack of opportunities at home 2,5,7 .
It is likewise important to emphasize that the pandemic had great impacts on education, particularly in the initial stages, and remote teaching was related to various factors, such as the students' motivation to learn; their access to the Internet and technological resources; the teachers digital training and competence 32 goals for preschoolers.At least 16 of them refer to language, hearing, verbal, reading, and writing expression and comprehension skills, revealing the concern with preparing children to enter elementary school.
Another important point is that BNCC 17 emphasizes that teachers should follow up on all children's learning individually and as a group, recording their achievements in various ways, such as reports, portfolios, photographs, drawings, and texts, to demonstrate their progress and ensure their learning rights.Monitoring their learning development enables teachers to organize their pedagogical practices and pay even closer attention to the development of preschoolers' predictive skills.Hence, the instrument used in this study may be quite useful to preschool teachers and professionals, as its application in different contexts revealed aspects that need greater stimulation in both populations, respecting the peculiarities of each scenario.
The National Literacy Policy (PNA, in Portuguese), established by Decree no.9.765, of April 11, 2019, aimed to foment programs and actions to teach reading and writing based on the most recent scientific evidence, grounded on neuroeducation principles.PNA recognizes the importance of preschool to raise the quality of Brazilian education, especially that of literacy 18 .It also admits that, despite the greater access to preschool in the country in the last years, many children still do not learn as expected for their age and education level.Moreover, this problem was certainly aggravated by the restrictive measures imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
This study applied the Protocol for the Early Identification of Reading Problems in the version adapted to preschool in two different educational settings.The results identified children at risk, under attention, and with expected performance in the different skills assessed by the test.Therefore, it can be recommended as a screening instrument, enabling schools to better direct pedagogical actions for this target public and identify early children at risk for learning disorders.
Using standardized instruments is greatly important to assess schoolers and preschoolers, as they make it possible to compare their performance in different contexts.Given the relevance of early childhood to children's global development and that most studies on language involve this age group 19 , it can be inferred that interventions focusing on them can potentialize their development.Further studies are needed to unveil the best practices to develop such important skills for children's future development.
An article 10 aimed at discussing and understanding cognitive processes and brain mechanisms involved in learning to read and write in alphabetic systems highlights that pedagogical strategies supported on oral language can be used to help develop metalinguistic skills.Other studies likewise observed the benefits of applying a phonological awareness intervention program for preschoolers 8,11 .
For instance, the comparison of results before and after an educational intervention conducted in research 8 showed advancements in most skills assessed after the intervention -which ratifies the idea that these skills can and should be stimulated since preschool 7 .Thus, identifying early the factors that contribute to perceived difficulties and developing strategies to stimulate delayed skills can positively help and prepare preschoolers to begin learning to read and write 15 .
It must be highlighted that further studies must give priority to preschool to find new assessment and intervention possibilities to monitor and develop cognitivelinguistic skills.

CONCLUSION
This study revealed similarities and differences in preschoolers' cognitive-linguistic performances in different educational settings, suggesting that these performances reflect the different educational opportunities they had.Therefore, the development of these skills must be monitored to guide pedagogical practices at school and enable teaching approaches that help develop cognitive-linguistic skills early in preschool.

Table 1 .
Description of the mean and standard deviation of the preschoolers' performances in the adapted protocol tests in two private schools Captions: VK -vowel knowledge, CK -consonant knowledge, RP -rhyme production, RI -rhyme identification, SSEG -syllabic segmentation, WP -word production based on initial phoneme or syllable, SSYN -syllabic synthesis, ISI -initial sound or syllable identification, PWM -phonological working memory, RAN -rapid automatized naming, CAN -correct automatized naming, SR -silent reading, HC -hearing sentence comprehension.

Table 2 .
Absolute frequency of preschoolers at risk, under attention, and with expected performance in each test of the adapted protocol