Relation of Literacy and Music Literacy to Dementia in Older Black and White Brazilians

Background: Literacy is more consistently reported than education as protective against dementia in developing regions. Objective: To study the association of verbal literacy, numeracy, and music literacy with dementia in older Black and White Brazilians with a broad spectrum of education. Methods: We studied 1,818 Black, Mixed-race, and White deceased Brazilians 65 years or older at death (mean = 79.64). Data were retrospectively obtained within 36 hours after death in a face-to-face interview with an informant, usually a family member. Dementia was classified using the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) scale. Three forms of literacy were ascertained: verbal literacy (10 questions: reading and writing), numeracy (3 questions: multiplication, percentages, and use of a calculator), and music literacy (1 question: reading music). Black (11%) and Mixed-race (23%) older adults were combined in analyses. Models adjusted for age and sex. Results: Dementia was identified in 531 people. Participants had 0 to 25 years of education (median = 4). More literacy was associated with lower odds of dementia (all p≤0.039). Participants that read music had about half the odds of having dementia. Participants in the highest quartile of numeracy and verbal literacy had respectively 27%and 15%lower odds of having dementia compared to the lowest quartile. Literacy was lower in Blacks (p < 0.001, except music p = 0.894) but the effect of literacy on dementia was similar (interaction p > 0.237). In secondary analyses, playing instruments without reading music was not associated with dementia (p = 0.887). Conclusion: In a large sample of Brazilians, verbal literacy, numeracy, and music literacy were associated with lower odds of dementia. The effect was similar across races.

Communicative Patterns of Imbal Wicara in Ngunduh Mantu Event of Javanese Wedding Tradition

Indonesia is a country possessing many cultures, one of which is the tradition of wedding ceremonies which differ in each region. In Javanese culture, one of the wedding ceremonies is called ngunduh mantu. Imbal wicara becomes one of the series in that procession. This paper focuses on examining the communication pattern of imbal wicara in ngunduh mantu ceremony, which is a Javanese wedding tradition. It used a qualitative method of communication ethnography with a purposive sampling technique. The results of this study are (1) the communication situation of imbal wicara has two processions, namely pasrah penganten and pasrah tinampi, (2) the communication event of imbal wicara is in the form of giving the bride to the groom's family to be guided wisely, and (3) the communication act of imbal wicara is in the form of gratitude for the two families and hope that their household will always be full of delight. Overcoming Covid-19 through verbal literacy in imbal wicara.

Literacy: A Literary History

Literacy is a measure of being literate, of the ability to read and write. The central activity of the humanities—its shared discipline—literacy has become one of its most powerful and diffuse metaphors, becoming a broadly applied metaphor representing a fluency, a competency, or a skill in manipulating information. The word “literacy” is of recent coinage, being little more than a century old. Reading and writing, or effectively using letters (the word at the root of literacy), are ancient skills, but the word “literacy” likely springs from and reflects the emergence of mass public education at the end of the 19th and the turn of the 20th century. In this sense, then “literacy” measures personal and demographic development. Literacy is mimetic. It is synesthetic—in some languages, it means hearing sounds (the phonemes) in what is seen (the letters); in others, it means linking a symbol to the thing symbolized. Although a recent word, “literacy” depends upon the emergence of symbolic sign systems in ancient times. Written symbolic systems, by contrast, are relatively recent developments in human history. But they bear a more complicated relationship to the spoken language, being in part a representation of it (and thus a recording of its contents) while also offering a representation of the world, the referent: that is, literacy involves an awareness of the representation of the world. Reading and writing are tied to millennia of changes in technologies of representation. As a term denoting fluidity with letters, literacy has a history and a geography that follow the development and movement of a phonetic alphabetic and subsequent systems of writing. If the alphabet encodes a shift from orality to literacy, HTML encodes a shift from verbal literacy to a kind of numerical literacy not yet theorized.

The controlled direct effect of temperament at 2-3 years on cognitive and academic outcomes at 6-7 years

There is widespread interest in temperament and its impact upon cognitive and academic outcomes. Parents adjust their parenting according to their child’s temperament, however, previous studies have not accounted for parenting while estimating the association between temperament and academic outcomes. We examined the controlled direct effect of temperament (2-3 years) on cognitive and academic outcomes (6-7 years) when mediation by parenting practices (4-5 years) was held constant. Participants were from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (n=5107). Cognitive abilities were measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (verbal) and the Matrix Reasoning test (non-verbal). Literacy and numeracy were reported by teachers using the Academic Rating Scale. Mothers reported children’s temperament using the Short Temperament Scale for Toddlers (subscales: reactivity, approach, and persistence). Parenting practices included items about engagement in activities with children. Marginal structural models with inverse probability of treatment weights were used to estimate the controlled direct effect of temperament, when setting parenting to the mean. All temperament subscales were associated with cognitive abilities, with persistence showing the largest controlled direct effect on verbal (β=0.58; 95%CI 0.27, 0.89) and non-verbal (β=0.19; 0.02, 0.34) abilities. Higher persistence was associated with better literacy (β=0.08; 0.03, 0.13) and numeracy (β=0.08; 0.03, 0.13), and higher reactivity with lower literacy (β=−0.08; −0.11, −0.05) and numeracy (β=−0.07; −0.10, −0.04). There was little evidence that temperamental approach influenced literacy or numeracy. Overall, there was a small controlled direct effect of temperament on cognitive and academic outcomes after accounting for parenting and confounders.