Dyslalia is a language disorder that is present in a wide percentage of children. This work proposes an intervention protocol in music therapy to improve attention, memory, and language for children with the dyslalia disorder. A confirmatory mixed-method design composed of two studies was conducted: the first included a quantitative and pre-experimental design with a sample of 20 children aged between 5 and 8 years (Mage=6.45, SD=1.23) diagnosed with dyslalia. The second study used a qualitative confirmatory methodology, where participants’ parents and therapists participated. Wepman’s and the initial Luria pre- and post-tests measurements were applied. The results of the pre-experiment found statistically significant improvements in verbal regulation t(19)=-5.03, p=<.001, d=.76, attention t(19)=-5.05, p=<.001, d=.76, and memory t(19)=-2.88, p=.009, d=.55. In the qualitative phase, narratives were found that affirmed the positive results of the pre-experiment. Moreover, data surrounding the benefits of the music therapy intervention protocol in the improvement of cognitive processes and the relationship with previous literature that found positive results with this type of intervention are discussed.
Attention
La Memoria de Trabajo y su relación con otras funciones cognitivas en la Enfermedad de Parkinson.
Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a neurological illness due to degeneration of the dopaminergic neurons of the nigro-striatal pathway. Each of the five frontal-subcortical circuits contributes in a different way to PD’s symptoms. The clinical manifestations are variable; they include non cognitive deficits like: rigidity, tremor, bradykinesia, and other motor deficits like hypomimic (mask-like face), hypophonia, dysarthria, dystonia and abnormal postures among others. The emotional disorders in PD include depression and anxiety. The frontotemporal dementia in PD has been described. The neuropsychological examination of the PD patient is done considering whether the main symptoms are bradykinesia and rigidity, since these patients show more severe cognitive decline. We must examine the attention, which is between the normal limits in simple tasks, but it shows deficits in more complex tasks; memory and learning are disturbed, orientation is intact; in verbal functions we evaluate vocabulary, syntaxes and grammar which are relatively intact, although the sentence length tend to be reduced; the visuospatial disorders are frequent in PD; thinking and reasoning must also be examined, in both of them there is normal performance and they show a realistic appreciation of their condition and limitations; the executive functions are evaluated, there are consistent failures in tests that require concept formation and thinking flexibility. PD treatment can be medical using L-Dopa, or surgery through techniques by lesion or stimulation to different surgical targets like the internal globus pallidus, the subthalamic nucleus, or the ventral medial thalamic nucleus, unilateral or bilaterally. The PD repercussions in working memory (WM) will be studied related to executive functions, speech, cronometraje, saccades and attention.
