Atenção e controle inibitório em pré-escolares e correlação com indicadores de desatenção e hiperatividade

• Ano de defesa: 2010
• Autor(a) principal: Trevisan, Bruna Tonietti
• Orientador(a): Capovilla, Alessandra Gotuzo Seabra
• Banca de defesa: Carreiro, Luiz Renato Rodrigues , Primi, Ricardo
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Distúrbios do Desenvolvimento
• Departamento: Psicologia
• País: BR
• Palavras-chave em Português: funções executivas; TDAH (Transtorno do Déficit de Atenção e Hiperatividade); avaliação neuropsicológica
• Palavras-chave em Inglês: executive functions; ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder); neuropsychological assessment
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: CNPQ::CIENCIAS HUMANAS
• Link de acesso: http://dspace.mackenzie.br/handle/10899/22460

Executive functions (EF) are characterized by a set of cognitive and metacognitive processes that allow individuals to regulate their behavior, allowing their engagement in direct actions to goals. During development, children gradually become more able to control their thoughts and actions. This change has been linked to the development of EF, because they are especially important in new situations, as in the learning process, and is therefore considered crucial in preschool. In addition, changes in these processes have been documented in several cases, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Thus, the purpose of this study was to evaluate attention and inhibitory control in preschool children, specifically: to verify the relationship between signs of inattention and hyperactivity and EF, verifying if the performances in the tests differ between groups of children with and without signs of inattention and hyperactivity, and the relation between EF and development of preschool children, examining if the abilities of attention and inhibitory control increase with the progression school grades. A total of 139 preschool children, aged between 4 and 7 years old, 65 males, from two public schools in a town in Sao Paulo state, were assessed with Trial Making Test, Cancellation Attention Test, Stroop Test for Preschoolers, Semantic Generation Test, Go/No-Go Task, Simon Task, Columbia Mental Maturity Scale, Scale for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and SNAP-IV. Nonparametric analysis of Mann-Whitney test revealed, in general, differences between extreme groups with and without inattention and hyperactivity indicators for measuring instruments in all of EF, especially for groups in the inattention domain. Spearman correlation analysis also revealed significant correlations between indicators and performance in EF, with changes in the patterns of correlation throughout the school grades, showing relation with more basic cognitive abilities in the initial grades and with more complex skills in the lasted grades. Through MANOVAS and Kruskal-Wallis were observed developmental trends of the skills of attention and inhibitory control over the school grades.