vii
CoDAS is the new title of the Jornal Brasileiro de Fonoaudiologia, which was previously the traditional journal Pro-Fono. Hence, it is a traditional, experienced and renowned publication, that was renewed to keep up with the scientific and editorial development, and also to achieve new and challenging goals.
The first and certainly more difficult decision during this process was to focus the editorial force of the Sociedade Brasileira de Fonoaudiologia (SBFa) in only one publication. This way, we aim to further improve the quality of the published articles and the efficiency of the editorial processes, making them more agile and satisfying to authors, reviewers and readers. The change in the periodicity to bi-monthly will allow the publication of approximately the same number of papers that were published by the two journals edited by the SBFa until 2012. On the other hand, the transference of the Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Fonoaudiologia’s editorial process to the Academia Brasileira de Audiologia (ABA), maintaining a broad thematic interest, is a strong evidence of maturity and will ensure the continuity of the publication.
Maintaining the publication integrally bilingual, with strong investments on the quality of the text in English and in Portuguese, was a courageous decision, supported by the SBFa board. It will also depend on the cooperation of authors and reviewers, in an effort to develop a journal that will publish high quality research conducted in Brazil and other countries, and that may have impact on different realities. This will increase the journal’s impact while bringing to the independent speech-language pathologist or audiologist the most recent national and international scientific developments in the area.
CoDAS’ internationalization is one of the main objectives of the changes that are being proposed. It is a demand – or a necessity – of the graduate programs that have been improving for the last decades, reaching internationally recognized quality levels. This proximity with the graduate programs is made evident by the new structure of the editorial board, with the definition of a group of associate editors comprised by professors of graduate programs.
The first issue of CoDAS in 2013 presents 12 original articles, one case report about verbal communication skills in typical language development, and one article of evidence-based practice about parents’ participation on the rehabilitation of children with cochlear implant. The original articles refer to different research areas: one on swallowing, one on voice, one on public health, four on audiology, and five on language.
The first article, from Padovani, Moraes, Sassi and Andrade, is a prospective study involving 35 pa-tients with critical swallowing disorders from a Brazilian teaching hospital, which revealed that the practice with standardized protocols adds an important option for the management of oropharyngeal dysphagia in intensive care unit.
The article on voice, from Teixeira, Rodrigues, Silva, Azevedo Gama and Behlau, presents a question-naire that assesses motivational stages of patients undergoing voice treatment (URICA-VOICE), and concludes that most of the 66 dysphonic patients undergoing treatment were still in the contemplation stage, which might restrict the therapy outcomes.
The article on public health, by Alvarenga, Araújo, Melo, Martinez and Bevilacqua, presents the validation of a monitoring questionnaire on hearing and language development in the first year of life, applied to the families of 304 children, and concludes that the use of the validated instrument should be considered as a complement to the actions developed by community health agents.
The first article on audiology, from Angrisani, Azevedo, Carvallo, Diniz, Ferraro, Guinsburg and Matas, presents an electrophysiological characterization of the hearing of 72 premature infants, 35 small and 37 appropriate for gestational age, and found no difference in the responses of auditory evoked potential among preterm small and appropriate newborns. Thus, the condition “small for gestational age” is not a risk factor for retrocochlear impairments. The second article, by Lyra e Silva, Urosas, Sanches and Carvallo, characterizes the normal values of acoustic energy reflectance obtained with pure tone stimulation in 77 neonates using transient evoked otoacoustic emissions, and showed a reflectance curve with peculiar configuration to the age, with no
viii
difference between genders. The third article, by Sena, Ramos, Rodrigues and Lewis, compared the testing time of two procedures of Automatic Auditory Brainstem Response (AABR), and concluded that the use of q-sample tests and repetition rate of 90 Hz showed earlier response detection. The fourth and last article in the area, from Oliveira, Murphy and Schochat, analyzed the auditory processing in children with dyslexia, and concluded that these individuals present temporal auditory processing and figure-ground disorders, evidenced by behavioral auditory processing tests.
The first article on language, from Martins, Berti and Chacon, verified the perceptual-auditory deve-lopment and orthographic performance of fricative consonants in the writing acquisition of 20 children from the first two grades of elementary education at a public school in Brazil. They found that, although related, the perceptual-auditory and the orthographic performances do not match term by term. The second article, by Wert-zner, Pagan-Neves, Alves and Barrozo, verified the performance of 72 children with and without speech sound disorders in oral motor skills measured by oral diadochokinesia and showed the importance of using different methods of analysis on the functional evaluation of oral-motor processing aspects of children with speech sound disorder. The third article of this area, from Oliveira, Broglio, Bernardes and Capellini, studied the relationship between speech rate and speech disruption in 14 individuals who clutter and who do not clutter. They concluded that individuals who clutter present higher speech rate and higher than average frequency of disfluencies, as well as a positive correlation between these variables. The fourth article, from Befi-Lopes, Pedott, Bacchin and Cáceres, verified the relationship between word class and silent pauses in 20 children with specific language impairment and 40 with typical language development, and concluded that word class influences the duration of silent pauses, and that SLI children have longer silent pauses. The last article, by Miilher and Fernandes, com-pared the pragmatic profile of communicative initiatives and the bi-dimensional profile involving the aspects of initiative and responsivity of 30 recorded interaction samples between speech-language therapists and children with autism spectrum disorders, and concluded that it is essential to consider the bi-dimensional communicative profile and to qualify the answers in order to determine the child’s communication abilities.
The case report, by Abe, Bretanha, Bozza, Ferraro and Lopes-Herrera, verified the verbal communi-cative abilities of 10 children with typical language development, emphasizing the more dialogical character of these children’s interactions when exposed to spontaneous interaction situations with a familiar adult.
The article in the Evidence-Based Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology section, from Couto and Carvalho, offers a systematic review about factors that influence parents’ engagement during the oral rehabi-litation process of children with cochlear implants, and concluded that their involvement depends on several distinct influential factors, which audiologists should understand and consider.
This set of papers describes studies conducted according to the most strict international research standar-ds, conducted with Brazilian Portuguese speaking subjects, reflecting the Brazilian reality, and applicable not only in this context but also to other realities and populations. Multicultural integration, that is essential to any humanistic work in the present reality, may be developed also by the contact with other realities and populations, based on the contact with scientific papers that are made accessible to a larger number of readers. The proposed changes in our journal aim to improve the impact of these studies and their contribution to this integration.
Some of the changes proposed will be gradually implemented, but all of them will demand the involve-ment of all in building CoDAS as a journal that will be a reference for quality and innovation, publishing quality research in Communication Sciences and Disorders conducted in different regions of Brazil and other countries. For this, we count on the authors’ understanding, the reviewers’ collaboration, and the readers’ contributions. We are looking forward to critics, opinions and, of course, some praises.
A great 2013 to everyone.
