Assessment of metalinguistic knowledge in children of last cycle of peruvian Preschool Education

El conocimiento metalingüístico es la capacidad para reconocer la naturaleza, formas y funciones del lenguaje escrito. Implica la toma de conciencia de lo impreso. Aunque existen mayores referentes sobre su evaluación en lengua inglesa, crece el interés por investigar qué sucede en niños de habla española. El propósito del presente trabajo es evaluar las tareas del conocimiento metalingüístico en niños de 5 años con el empleo de una de las tareas que contiene la Batería de Inicio a la Lectura-BIL (dirigido a niños entre 3 y 6 años). Participaron 90 niños del aula de 5 años. Fueron distribuidos en tres grupos de edad propuestos por la BIL. Se evaluaron tres tareas: reconocimiento de palabras, reconocimiento de frases y funciones de la lectura. Los resultados confirman que se trata de una habilidad presente en los niños del aula de 5 años. Se evidencia su condición evolutiva, al encontrarse diferencias significativas en el reconocimiento de palabras y conocimiento de las funciones de la lectura entre los tres grupos de edad. Asimismo, ha sido posible el empleo de un instrumento diseñado en idioma españolMetalinguistic knowledge is defined as the ability to recognise components of written language as well their nature, form and function. It involves print awareness. Although there is more evidence in English language about metalinguistic knowledge assessment, there is a growing interest to investigate how it develops in Spanish-speaking children. The purpose for this paper is to assess the tasks of this predictor in five-years-old children with the use of one of the tasks contained in Batería de Inicio a la Lectura –BIL; an instrument aimed at children between 3 to 6 years. A total of 90 children were evaluated. All of them attend to five-years-old classroom and were divided into three age groups according to the test. There were three tasks evaluated: recognition of words and phrases and reading functions. Findings confirm that knowledge metalinguistic can be observed in this age group. In addition, their evolutionary condition has been confirmed. There were significant differences in word recognition and reading functions between age groups. It was possible to have applied an instrument designed to Spanish-speaking childre

Diversidad intraespecífica y factores de virulencia en el “complejo de especies de Aeromonas hydrophila” (A. Hydrophila, A. Salmonicida, A. Bestiarum).

[spa] El género Aeromonas está constituido actualmente por 26 especies reconocidas, algunas de las cuales incluyen varias subespecies. Son habitantes ubicuos del agua dulce, pero también de aguas cloradas, salobres y marinas. Se han obtenido cepas de Aeromonas de una amplia variedad de alimentos, y se han aislado de muestras clínicas. Algunas especies de Aeromonas son causantes de infecciones intestinales y extraintestinales aunque los mecanismos por los que causan diarreas bacterianas no están todavía establecidos de manera clara. Dentro del “complejo A. hydrophila” (A. hydrophila, A. salmonicida, A. bestiarum, A. piscicola y A. popoffii), hay que destacar A. salmonicida como patógeno importante de peces y A. hydrophila como patógeno oportunista de humanos. La virulencia de estas especies es multifactorial e implica mecanismos de patogenicidad complejos asociados a toxinas (citotóxicas y citotónicas), proteasas, hemolisinas, lipasas, adhesinas, aglutininas, pili, etc. A partir de una colección de 128 de cepas del “complejo A. hydrophila”, se ha realizado un estudio filogenético, poblacional y de factores de patogenicidad. El estudio filogenético con las secuencias parciales de los genes cpn60, dnaJ, gyrB, y rpoD, ha permitido clarificar la taxonomía de las especies del “complejo A. hydrophila”, demostrándose que posee un origen polifilético que cuestionaría la posible existencia del grupo como tal. El análisis de la población de las cepas estudiadas revela un fuerte desequilibrio de ligamiento, típico de una población clonal, y una elevada diversidad genética. También se ha estudiado la prevalencia y distribución de diversos factores de virulencia en la población estudiada para poder establecer su potencial patogénico. Para ello se han determinado actividades enzimáticas, el perfil de sensibilidad a antibióticos, la detección por PCR de los genes act (aerolisina/hemolisina), alt (toxina citotónica) y ast (toxina citotónica), y la capacidad de adherencia y efecto citopático de las cepas en la línea celular Caco-2. Los resultados obtenidos revelan un elevado potencial patogénico de las cepas de Aeromonas estudiadas, independientemente de su origen.[eng] The genus Aeromonas comprises 26 currently recognized species, some of them divided in to several subspecies. They are ubiquitous in fresh water, but found in chlorinated, brackish and marine water. Aeromonas strains are obtained from a wide variety of foods, as well as clinical samples. Aeromonas species are the cause of intestinal and extra-intestinal infections although the mechanisms that cause bacterial diarrhoea are not yet clearly established. The “A. hydrophila complex” (A. hydrophila, A. salmonicida, A. bestiarum, A. piscicola and A. popoffii), includes A. salmonicida, an important pathogen of fish, and A. hydrophila, an opportunistic pathogen in humans. The virulence of these species is multifactorial and involves complex pathogenic mechanisms associated with toxins (cytotoxic and cytotonic), proteases, haemolysins, lipases, adhesins, agglutinins, pili, etc. A phylogenetic study was performed from a collection of 128 strains belonging to the “A. hydrophila complex", determining partial sequences of dnaJ, cpn60, gyrB and rpoD genes, this analysis allowed us to clarify the taxonomy of this group of Aeromonas species, showing a polyphyletic origin that challenges the existence of the group as such. The population analysis of the studied strains revealed as strong linkage disequilibrium, typical of a clonal population, and a high genetic diversity. We also studied the prevalence and distribution of different virulence factors in the population to establish its pathogenic potential. For this purpose, we determined several enzymatic activities and the antibiotic sensitivity profile of these strains. We also detected the presence of act (aerolysin), alt (cytotonic toxin) and ast (cytotonic toxin) genes by PCR as well as the adhesion capacity and cytopathic effect of the strains on the Caco-2 cell line. The results obtained revealed a high pathogenic of potential the studied Aeromonas strains, regardless of their origin

Evaluation of Online Training by Young People with Intellectual Disabilities: Experience during Covid-19 in a University Context

This work shows a job-training module was adapted to online learning for young people with intellectual disabilities participating in a university job skills programme, this adaptation emanating from the health crisis produced by COVID-19. The article aims to find out how this group of young people evaluate the experience of online training and to compare the perceived satisfaction in face-to-face and online training. Methodology: The research follows a cross-sectional descriptive study, through two ad-hoc questionnaires completed by 16 students. Results: The results show that distance learning has more advantages than disadvantages; the students self-report that they have strengthened elements related to active job search, self-management skills and autonomous management of digital programmes. Furthermore, there are no significant differences in terms of satisfaction between the virtual and face-to-face modes, both in terms of satisfaction with the activities and the relationship with the teachers. Conclusion: The participants are open to online training and positively value direct support. It is seen that the Internet provides the group with opportunities for autonomous development; blended learning allows them to generate other uses for the Internet, enabling them to enrich their digital and work skills.El presente trabajo muestra cómo se adaptó a enseñanza online un módulo de formación laboral para jóvenes con discapacidad intelectual que participan en un programa universitario de formación para el empleo, esta adaptación emana de la crisis sanitaria producida por la COVID-19. El artículo busca conocer cómo este grupo de jóvenes evalúa la experiencia de formación online y comparar la satisfacción percibida en la formación presencial y online. Metodología: La investigación obedece a un estudio de tipo descriptivo transversal, a través de dos cuestionarios ad-hoc cumplimentados por 16 estudiantes. Resultados: Muestran que la formación a distancia tiene más ventajas que desventajas; los estudiantes autoinforman que afianzaron elementos relativos a búsqueda activa de empleo, habilidades de autogestión y manejo autónomo de programas digitales; además se manifiesta que no existen diferencias significativas respecto a la satisfacción entre modalidad virtual y presencial, tanto en satisfacción con las actividades como en la relación con los docentes. Conclusión: Los participantes están abiertos a la formación online y valoran de forma positiva el apoyo directo. Se vislumbra que Internet otorga oportunidades de desarrollo autónomo al colectivo, la formación mixta les permite poder generar otros usos a Internet, permitiéndoles enriquecer sus habilidades digitales y laborales

Easy-to-read Texts for Students with Intellectual Disability: Linguistic Factors Affecting Comprehension

Background: The use of ‘easy-to-read’ materials for people with intellectual disabilities has become very widespread but their effectiveness has scarcely been evaluated. In this study, the framework provided by Kintsch's Construction–Integration Model (1988) is used to examine (i) the reading comprehension levels of different passages of the Spanish text that have been designed following easy-to-read guidelines and (ii) the relationships between reading comprehension (literal and inferential) and various linguistic features of these texts. Method: Sixteen students with mild intellectual disability and low levels of reading skills were asked to read easy-to-read texts and then complete a reading comprehension test. The corpus of texts was composed of a set of forty-eight pieces of news selected from www.noticiasfacil.es, a Spanish digital newspaper that publishes daily journalistic texts following international guidelines for the design of easy-to-read documents (IFLA, Tronbacke B. (1997) Guidelines for Easy-to-read Materials. IFLA, The Hague). Results: Participants correctly answered 80% of the comprehension questions, showing significantly higher scores for literal questions than for inferential questions. The analyses of the texts' linguistic features revealed that the number of coreferences was the variable that best predicted literal comprehension, but contrary to what the previous literature seemed to indicate, the relationship between the two variables was inverse. In the case of inferential comprehension, the number of sentences was a significant negative predictor; that is, the higher the sentence density, the lower the ability of these students to find relationships between them. The effects of the rest of linguistic variables, such as word frequency and word length, on comprehension were null. Conclusions: These results provide preliminary empirical support for the use of easy-to-read texts but bring into question the validity of some popular design guidelines (e.g. augmenting word frequency) to optimally match texts and reading levels of students with intellectual disability. Two factors are suggested as contributing to the effect of sentence density on inferential comprehension: (i) long texts present higher conceptual density, so there are more ideas to store, retrieve and integrate, which increases the demand on inferential reasoning and (ii) long texts are perceived as difficult, which affects reading motivation and, consequently, induces passive reading strategies. The need for further research to elucidate the origin of our main findings with a larger and more heterogeneous sample of students with intellectual disability is highlighted.This research was funded by the AVANZA intellectual disability program (Project expedient: TSI-040200-2008-0063) of the Spanish Minister of Industry, Tourism and Trade and Technosite (ONCE Foundation Group)

Who do you refer to? How young students with mild intellectual disability confront anaphoric ambiguities in texts and sentences

Along 2 experiments we tested the anaphoric pronoun resolution abilities of readers with intellectual disability in comparison with chronological and reading age-matched groups. In Experiment 1, the anaphor test of Elosúa, Carriedo, and García-Madruga (2009) confirmed that readers with intellectual disability (ID) are slower than control readers resolving clitic anaphoric pronouns, especially when the use of morphological cues (e.g. gender) is necessary. In order to test if the poor performance could be due to low levels of metacognitive skills during reading, an inconsistency detection task combined with eye tracking was designed in Experiment 2. Participants read short texts with an anaphoric pronoun in the fifth sentence, either morphologically (gender) consistent or not with the information provided in the second sentence. The scores in the anaphor comprehension questions presented after the text confirmed that readers with ID are affected by the gender inconsistency but they are unable to explicitly report it and recover from it, as the number of re-fixations after reading the critical sentence suggests. As their answers to the explicit detection questions showed, the adults control group did not show any preference for morphosyntax or semantics in spite of being aware of the inconsistency. In sum, both groups of readers with and without ID are affected by inconsistencies, but ID readers do not have appropriate metacognitive skills to explicitly identify the source of the inconsistency and fix it

Direct evidence of recombination in the recA gene of Aeromonas bestiarum

tTwo hundred and twenty-one strains representative of all Aeromonas species were characterized usingthe recA gene sequence, assessing its potential as a molecular marker for the genus Aeromonas. The inter-species distance values obtained demonstrated that recA has a high discriminatory power. Phylogeneticanalysis, based on full-length gene nucleotide sequences, revealed a robust topology with clearly sepa-rated clusters for each species. The maximum likelihood tree showed the Aeromonas bestiarum strains ina well-defined cluster, containing a subset of four strains of different geographical origins in a deep inter-nal branch. Data analysis provided strong evidence of recombination at the end of the recA sequences inthese four strains. Intergenomic recombination corresponding to partial regions of the two adjacent genesrecA and recX (248 bp) was identified between A. bestiarum (major parent) and Aeromonas eucrenophila(minor parent). The low number of recombinant strains detected (1.8%) suggests that horizontal flowbetween recA sequences is relatively uncommon in this genus. Moreover, only a few nucleotide differ-ences were detected among these fragments, indicating that recombination has occurred recently. Finally,we also determined if the recombinant fragment could have influenced the structure and basic functionsof the RecA protein, comparing models reconstructed from the translated amino acid sequences of ourA. bestiarum strains with known Escherichia coli RecA structures

Potential pathogenicity of Aeromonas hydrophila complex strains isolated from clinical, food, and environmental sources

Aeromonas are autochthonous inhabitants of aquatic environments, including chlorinated and polluted waters, although they can also be isolated from a wide variety of environmental and clinical sources. They cause infections in vertebrates and invertebrates and are considered to be an emerging pathogen in humans, producing intestinal and extra-intestinal diseases. Most of the clinical isolates correspond to A. hydrophila, A. caviae, and A. veronii bv. Sobria, which are described as the causative agents of wound infections, septicaemia, and meningitis in immunocompromised people, and diarrhoea and dysenteric infections in the elderly and children. The pathogenic factors associated with Aeromonas are multifactorial and involve structural components, siderophores, quorum-sensing mechanisms, secretion systems, extracellular enzymes, and exotoxins. In this study, we analysed a representative number of clinical and environmental strains belonging to the A. hydrophila species complex to evaluate their potential pathogenicity. We thereby detected their enzymatic activities and antibiotic susceptibility pattern and the presence of virulence genes (aer, alt, ast, and ascV). The notably high prevalence of these virulence factors, even in environmental strains, indicated a potential pathogenic capacity. Additionally, we determined the adhesion capacity and cytopathic effects of this group of strains in Caco-2 cells. Most of the strains exhibited adherence and caused complete lysis

Un programa de formación en lectura crítica en Internet para jóvenes con discapacidad intelectual

En este artículo se presenta un programa de intervención dirigido al entrenamiento de personas con discapacidad intelectual en algunas de las habilidades básicas necesarias para evaluar críticamente la fiabilidad de la información disponible en internet. Así, la herramienta trata de sensibilizar a los participantes acerca de la habitual existencia de información contradictoria en internet sobre un mismo tema, y, principalmente, enseñarles a identificar y evaluar tres factores básicos relacionados con la fiabilidad y la validez de dicha información: el control editorial de la fuente, el conocimiento acreditado por la profesión del autor y la intención del autor o del sitio web