Performance of public and private school students in auditory processing, receptive vocabulary, and reading...

To characterize the performance of 5th grade students from public and private elementary schools in auditory processing, receptive vocabulary, and reading comprehension.

The study sample was composed of 34 Elementary School (5th grade) students: 16 from public school (PubG) and 18 from private school (PrivG), whose parents and teachers responded to questionnaires on their language development, socioeconomic level, and academic performance. The auditory skills of figure-ground, association between auditory and visual stimuli, figure-ground for linguistic sounds, binaural integration, temporal ordering, and temporal resolution were assessed using the following auditory behavioral instruments: Pediatric Speech Intelligibility (PSI) test, Dichotic Digits Test (DDT), Auditec® Frequency Pattern Test (FPT), and Gaps-in-Noise (GIN) test. Receptive vocabulary and reading comprehension were evaluated using the TVF-usp and PROLEC tests, respectively.

Statistically significant differences were observed between the socioeconomic level of students in both schools. Although the results obtained in the applied tests were within the reference values in both groups, there was a tendency to higher scores in the PrivG. Differences between the groups were also verified in the DDT and FPT. Values similar to normality were obtained in the temporal resolution and reading comprehension assessments. On the vocabulary test, most school children in the PrivG were concentrated in the 'high' and 'middle' categories, whereas those in the PubG were in the 'middle' and 'low' categories.

There are differences in performance between students from private and public schools. Public school children presented right ear advantage in the dichotic task, whereas private school children showed more efficient mechanisms and strategies regarding auditory stimuli for the tasks of binaural integration, temporal ordering, and interhemispheric transfer. Temporal resolution reached values expected for the adult population in both groups. Better vocabulary performance was observed in the most economically favored children. Elementary School (5th grade) students from both school networks present developed reading.