Language skills and working memory in children with cleft palate

Purpose: To identify the attentional, visual memory and written language resources in children with Cleft Palate. method and results: Participated: 20, both sexes, Age: 7 to 11 years old , Diagnostic: Cleft Palate (repair). The following instruments were used, Colored Progressive Matrices - (Raven, 2003), TDE Academic Performance Test (Stein, 2006), Divided Attention Test TEDIF-1 (Tonglet, 2008). Procedure: Analyzed according to the specific protocol of instruments. Descriptive statistical analysis was performed. For comparison of results was used the Mann-Whitney Test. Results: colored progressive matrices, the results showed the expected average percentile for age with satisfactory viso spatial resources to establish relationships analog and logical sequence similarity, 35% of the study was child with 09 years old. Academic performance and memory, participants had poor academic performance; 44% had scores in the standard expected for the age group and educational level in reading and writing, and 37.5% in tests of visual attention and working memory. Conclusion: The study identified that the resources of working memory involving selective attention, sustained and alternating proved lagged by age and education, compromising efficiency in writing tasks. Identified difficulties in writing words of low and high frequency, indicating limitations in competence of this function and damage on the school