Habilidades iniciales de lectura y escritura: Su relación con las funciones ejecutivas y el nivel socioeconómico familiar

Abstract

Aprender a leer y a escribir requiere de un conjunto de habilidades y conocimientos iniciales que los niños adquieren en las interacciones con otros en los contextos de crianza. Diversos factores modelan la adquisición de dichas habilidades, entre ellos el nivel socioeconómico familiar (NSE) y el desarrollo de las funciones ejecutivas. El presente trabajo se propuso analizar el valor predictivo de las funciones ejecutivas (FE) en habilidades iniciales de lectura y escritura (HILE) en niños argentinos, controlando los efectos de la edad y el NSE. Participaron 186 niños y niñas de 6 a 10 años de edad de contextos urbano-marginados. Los resultados indicaron que el modelo propuesto presentó un ajuste excelente a los datos y explicó el 66% de la varianza de las HILE. Los resultados más significativos indicaron que las FE constituyeron el factor que moduló con mayor fuerza el desempeño de los niños en las HILE, presentando efectos directos (B =.60) y mediando el impacto de las variables edad (B =.34) y NSE (B =.16). En línea con la literatura, los resultados informan que las FE son recursos significativos para el aprendizaje de la lectura y la escritura en la infancia, y destacan su posible rol mediador entre el NSE familiar y las HILE. Estos hallazgos permiten identificar a las FE como un objetivo de intervención, en tanto que su fortalecimiento puede ser un modo de aminorar la brecha educativa entre los niños más y menos favorecidos.

Learning to read and write requires a set of initial skills, such as lexical development, identification of letters and words, association between grapheme and phoneme, handling the spelling code. Children begin to internalize these skills, and knowledge, at an early age, in the interactions they have with others in their family context. The sociocultural characteristics, the availability of educational, and literacy resources in family, vary depending on the socioeconomic status of the family, and differentially model the acquisition of these skills (Andrés et al., 2010; Piacente et al., 2006; Rosemberg & Stein, 2009). In Argentina, it has been reported that children from marginalized contexts tend to be exposed to fewer words, and less diversity of words, in everyday interactions at home, which can affect language development and consequently, learning to read and write (Rosemberg & Stein, 2009). Child’s cognitive development is another factor of interest. In recent decades, the predictive role of executive functions (EF) has gained relevance: a set of cognitive control capacities involved in cognitive, emotional and behavioral self-regulation. The literature documented interrelationships between developmental trajectories of executive functions, language development, and learning to read and write (Booth et al., 2014; De Franchis et al., 2017; Marder & Barreyro, 2019; Skibbe et al., 2019). In line with these postulates, this study set out to analyze the predictive value of EFs –attention, planning, inhibitory control, metacognition and cognitive flexibility- in initial reading and writing skills (IRWS, letter-word identification and dictation) in Argentine children, controlling for the effects of age and family socioeconomic status (SES). A causal-correlational transectional design was used. The intentional non-probabilistic sample was made up by 186 children (48 % girls), 6 to 10 years old, belonging to marginalized urban contexts (41 % low superior SES, 39 % low inferior SES, and 20 % marginal SES). The children were evaluated with Word Identification and Dictation of Woodcock-Muñoz Achievement Battery, and a set of neuropsychological tests of FE. The SES was estimated based on the educational level and occupation of the children's parents. The analysis of structural equations indicated that the proposed model presented an excellent fit to the data (χ 2 (23, 178) = 27.52, p = .234; GFI = .97; CFI = .99; RMSEA = .03) and explained the 66 % of the variance of the children's IRWS. EFs were the factor that most strongly modulated IRWS performance in children, presenting direct effects (β = .60), and mediating the impact of the variables age (β= .34) and SES (β= .16). In line with the literature (Booth et al., 2014; De Franchis et al., 2017; Marder y Barreyro, 2019; Skibbe et al., 2019), the results report that EFs are significant resources for learning to read and write in infancy, and make three contributions of interest. First, the implication of EFs in tasks of reading words, writing letters and handling the spelling code, was documented in children 6 to 10 years of age, which could indicate that the automation of IRWS would be achieved later in schoolchildren from marginalized contexts. Another finding of interest was to document that the evolutionary gains in the EFs drove the learning of the HILE, which indicates an overlap in the development trajectory, and an optimal moment, for its strengthening. Another contribution was to report that the EFs modulated the relationship between the family SES and the IRWS. Taken together, these findings make it possible to identify EF as an intervention target, while its strengthening may be a way to reduce the educational gap between the most and least favored children.