Estudo do desempenho em testes de memória e funções executivas de crianças de escola pública

Abstract

The memory performance evaluation and the executive functioning test on children and adolescents through specific instruments such as neuropsychological tests are necessary on each age group as well as to ascertain performance standard deviation, allowing to set hypothetical explanations for any type of disorder during these two stages of human development. The objective of the present study was to develop referential normative standards for the Short-term Memory Test (STMT) and the electronic version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), both carried out at UFAM`s Psychological Assessment Laboratory, with school aged children (8, 9, 10, 11 years old), and also to analyse how the above mentioned tests eventually correlate to each other. The present study was approved by the UFAM`s Ethics Committee under CAAE 54249716.1.0000.5020. A total of 203 children participated in the study, all were residents of Manaus, 42,4% were female and 57, 6% were male, aged between 8 and 11 years. As expected, and following previous literature, the average performance in each of the four age groups was progressively better on both tests. Thus it made possible to establish normative standards for both, the electronic version of the WCST, and the STMT given the researched public. The appraisal of the results showed that local performance was lower in the WCST than the national sample it was compared with. The Pearson’s correlating study between the STMT and the WCST did not demonstrate the existence of a higher degree of correlation among them on most of the assessment numbers for neither of the tests while considering all age groups. Therefore, in the current study no correlations between the short-term memory and the executive functioning were found. This study bears great social importance by granting future investigations with normative performance standards of public school kids using these two important instruments, thus enabling the assessment of other children with the symptoms of a cognitive disorder or suspected to suffer from it.