Mirella Liberatore Prando

Relação entre habilidades de processamento auditivo e funções neuropsicológicas em adolescentes

OBJETIVO: averiguar a existencia de relacoes entre o desempenho em testes de processamento auditivo e em tarefas cognitivas. METODOS: participaram 12 adolescentes com desenvolvimento tipico, estudantes de terceiro ano do Ensino Medio de escolas privadas do estado do Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil, examinados com uma bateria de testes de PA(C) e com o Instrumento de Avaliacao Neuropsicologica Breve Neupsilin. Foram realizadas analises de correlacao de Pearson e analises qualitativas intertestes para comparacao do desempenho na avaliacao do PA(C) e na avaliacao neuropsicologica. RESULTADOS: da bateria de testes PA(C), os Testes SSI - MCI - Teste de Sentencas Sinteticas com mensagem competitiva ipsilateral, SSW - Teste de Dissilabos Alternados e o teste Dicoticos de Digitos apresentaram correlacao forte significativa positiva (coeficiente de correlacao de Pearson) com os subtestes do Neupsilin: atencao - contagem inversa, percepcao de faces, linguagem oral automatica e repeticao, memoria verbal episodica e memoria de trabalho - span auditivo de palavras em sentencas. Alguns testes do PA(C) apresentaram maior frequencia de dissociacoes com subtestes neuropsicologicos. As correlacoes encontradas indicam que os testes de PA(C) e as tarefas neuropsicologicas parecem examinar algumas habilidades cognitivas subjacentes em comum. As dissociacoes observadas sugerem que os processamentos auditivo e neuropsicologico sao relativamente independentes e a analise intertestes do desempenho dos participantes na avaliacao do PA(C), comparada ao desempenho na avaliacao neuropsicologica, confirma os resultados encontrados para as questoes anteriores. CONCLUSAO: ressalta-se a necessidade de se pensar o contexto da administracao dos testes de PA(C), considerando-se a relacao de complementaridade da avaliacao neuropsicologica e do exame de processamento auditivo.

Componentes atencionais e de funções executivas em meninos com TDAH: dados de uma bateria neuropsicológica flexível

OBJECTIVE: To compare the performance of seven boys with a confirmed diagnosis of ADHD (G1) and 14 healthy controls (G2) in neuropsychological tasks. METHOD: G1 and G2 were matched by gender, age and educational level. They were assessed through attentional and executive tasks (verbal fluency and narrative discourse from MAC Battery, Bells Test - childrens version, Number Random Generation, Go-no Go and auditory N-Back). RESULTS: There were remarkable differences between groups for sustained focused attention, working memory, self-monitoring, initiation and inhibition. CONCLUSION: Contributions for incipient comprehension of relationships among cognitive components in ADHD patients could be identified.

Tarefa N-back auditiva: desempenho entre diferentes grupos etários

One of the most internationally used instruments for evaluation of Working Memory (WM) is the Auditory N-Back Task. In Brazil, resources to evaluate this system are scarce. The aim of this study is to investigate the performance of different age subjects in auditory n-back tasks. We divided the 102 subjects in four groups: 27 children, 22 adolescents, 26 young adults and 27 older adults. The results demonstrate an age-related difference in the n-back task performance. The accuracy increased in the transition from childhood to adolescence and kept growing from adolescence to adulthood. We also found a decrease in the performance of aged subjects. The Auditory N-Back Task results are in agreement with WM development trajectory, and so, it demonstrates to be an adjusted instrument to evaluate this system in experimental setting.

Effects of age and school type on unconstrained, phonemic, and semantic verbal fluency in children

ABSTRACT Biological and cultural factors have been found to have a significant influence on cognitive development and performance in neuropsychological instruments such as verbal fluency tasks (VFT). Variations of traditional VFT, involving unconstrained word production and increased retrieval times, may provide further data regarding the executive, attentional, mnemonic, and linguistic abilities involved in VFT. As such, the aim of this study was to investigate the impact of age and school type on the performance of 6- to 12-year-old children in unconstrained, phonemic, and semantic VFT. The VFT were administered to 460 participants. The effects of age and school type on verbal fluency (VF) performance were analyzed using a two-way analysis of variance, followed by Bonferroni post-hoc tests (p ≤ .05). A repeated-measures analysis was also used to evaluate VF performance over time (p ≤ .05). Main effects of age and school type were identified on all measures (effect sizes ranged from .05 to .32, p ≤ .05). VF scores increased with age and were higher among private school students. The influence of age on VFT may be associated with the development of executive functions. The impact of type of school on VF performance may be explained by the greater availability of cognitive stimulation (semantic knowledge) provided by private schools and families with better socioeconomic levels.

Avaliação da linguagem e do processamento auditivo na caracterização neuropsicológica do TDAH: Revisão Sistemática

O objetivo foi identificar estudos que investigaram o processamento auditivo (PA) e linguistico na avaliacao clinica e/ou neuropsicologica de criancas/ adolescentes com TDAH. Buscamos em base de dados PubMed de 2000 a 2012 pela sintaxe [language or linguistic] AND [auditory processing or auditory perception] AND [attention deficit or hyperactivity]. Os abstracts foram analisados por double blind review com terceiro juiz para consenso. De 202 resumos, foram analisados 17 artigos completos, com 15 incluidos; 46,67% dos estudos avaliaram a linguagem (palavra e sentenca), 33,33%, PA (integracao binaural, processamento temporal e figura-fundo auditiva) e 13,33%, ambos. O transtorno de leitura foi a comorbidade mais prevalente (46,67%). Em geral, o desempenho linguistico e de PA nao foram analisados para fins neuropsicologicos especificos, mas apenas para identificar comorbidades.