Neuropsychological assessment of executive functions: developmental tends and instruments validity evidences / Avaliação neuropsicológica das funções executivas: tendências desenvolvimentais e evidências de validade de instrumentos

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2009

RESUMO

Executive functions (EF) are an abilities set, including selective attention, cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control, planning, monitoring and working memory, among others, whose function is to regulate and control goals oriented behaviors. There are evidences that these abilities follow distinct developmental paths, and some of them still are in full development until the initial adulthood. In this way, this study aimed to investigate the development tends of different abilities of the EF in children and adolescents, searching for validity evidences of neuropsychological assessment instruments of these abilities. The participants were 572 children and adolescents with ages between 6 and 14 years, students of 1st to 8th grades of two public schools of a city of the SP interior. The instruments utilized were Auditive Work Memory Test, Visual Work Memory Test, Cancel Attentional Test, Trail Making Test parts A and B, Semantic Generation Test, Computerized Stroop Test, the Tower of London and the FAS Verbal Fluency Test. The Cancel Attentional Test and Trail Making Test parts A and B were applied collectively; the others, individually. Variance analysis and Kruskal-Wallis analysis revealed age effect in the performances in all instruments. The data suggested that the abilities evaluated follow developmental courses lightly distinct, the most initiating a more abrupt development between the 9 and 10 years. Mann-Whitney analysis showed that the girls were better that the boys in the auditive working memory, alternated attention and verbal fluency measures. Diverse significant correlations were find between the performances, the most of them were of low to moderate, corroborating the literature that defends the notion of the EF unit and diversity. Exploratory Factorial Analysis returned a two factors solution and regression analysis enabled the verification that the executive abilities can contribute of differential ways to the complex task performance, like as the FAS Verbal Fluency Test and the Tower of London Test. In this way, the study provided his contributions to the knowledge about EF and its development, as well derived validity evidences to the diverse instruments and, it‟s a hope, can expand its contribution to the future availability of adequate instruments for the construct assessment.

ASSUNTO(S)

psicologia cognitiva funções executivas executive functions desenvolvimento neuropsychological assessment development avaliação neuropsicológica

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