A calculation and number processing battery for clinical application in illiterates and semi-literates

Ten simple tasks assessing counting, number processing, elementary calculat ion and quantity estimation were proposed to 122 normal Brazilian adults ag ed between 18 and 58 years with 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 years of education. Tasks s uch as counting the number of elements in small sets were almost perfectly mastered by these illiterate or semi-literate normal subjects; however in o ther tasks (e.g. those assessing knowledge of the correspondence between nu mbers and banknotes) a sizeable proportion of the sample showed errors. The pattern of errors was analysed to identify difficulty factors. A strong ge nder effect with better performance in men than women was observed, which w as even greater than the expected effect of educational level. Results in n ormals allowed to propose cut-off scores for neuropsychological assessment in brain-damaged patients with very low levels of education, which were tes ted in a small sample of illiterate or semi-literate patients with cerebrov ascular accident. It is argued that the relatively neglected area of neurop sychological assessment in illiterates is of great practical and theoretica l interest.