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Background. A strong link between phonological awareness (PA) and literacy exists, but the origins of this link are difficult to investigate, since PA skills are hard to test in young, pre-literate children, and many studies neither include such children nor report children's initial literacy levels. Aims. To examine PA and literacy in children who are attending or not attending school in rural East Africa. Sample. One hundred and eight children ages 7-10 years, with no education, or in grade 1 or 2, randomly selected from a community survey of all children in this age group. Methods. PA skill, reading, cognitive abilities, and socio-economic status were examined. Results. Implicit and explicit PA skill with small or large units is related to letter reading ability, and this effect is independent of age, schooling, and cognitive ability. Some PA tasks are performed above chance levels by children who cannot recognize single letters. Conclusions. Basic PA develops prior to the attainment of literacy, and learning to read improves PA both quantitatively and qualitatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-sectional studies of the relationship between helminth infection and cognitive function can be informative in ways that treatment studies cannot. However, interpretation of results of many previous studies has been complicated by the failure to control for many potentially confounding variables. We gave Tanzanian schoolchildren aged 9-14 a battery of 11 cognitive and three educational tests and assessed their level of helminth infection. We also took measurements of an extensive range of potentially confounding or mediating factors such as socioeconomic and educational factors, anthropometric and other biomedical measures. A total of 272 children were moderately or heavily infected with Schistosoma haematobium, hookworm or both helminth species and 117 were uninfected with either species. Multiple regression analyses, controlling for all confounding and mediating variables, revealed that children with a heavy S. haematobium infection had significantly lower scores than uninfected children on two tests of verbal short-term memory and two reaction time tasks. In one of these tests the effect was greatest for children with poor nutritional status. There was no association between infection and educational achievement, nor between moderate infection with either species of helminth and performance on the cognitive tests. We conclude that children with heavy worm burdens and poor nutritional status are most likely to suffer cognitive impairment, and the domains of verbal short-term memory and speed of information processing are those most likely to be affected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]