Abstract

LOPES, Regina Maria Fernandes  and  ARGIMON, Irani I. de Lima. COGNITIVE TRAINING IN THE ELDERLY AND ITS EFFECT ON THE EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS. Act.Colom.Psicol. [online]. 2016, vol.19, n.2, pp.159-176. ISSN 0123-9155.  https://doi.org/10.14718/ACP.2016.19.2.8.

Aging is commonly associated to cognitive decline and loss of other abilities, which leads to the need of researching elements that may contribute to preventive cognitive rehabilitation interventions aiming to guarantee the elderly quality of life. The objective of this study is to characterize elderly who enrolled in this intervention, to measure the effects of cognitive training with emphasis on executive functions, by comparing an Experimental to a Control group. This is a quantitative research that used a quasi-experimental design; it is correlational and comparative, involving pre- and post-testing and intervention. The sample was formed by 83 elders, split into an Experimental Group (EG) (45 people) and a Control Group (GC) (38 people). The instruments used were the following: a neuropsychological semi-structured interview about sociodemographic characteristics; Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE); Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI); Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS); WAIS-III subtests: Digit Span, Vocabulary, Block Design, Coding, Letter-Number Sequencing (LNS), and Symbol Search; Trail Making Test (TMT); Ray Complex Figures; Sternberg Paradigm; verbal fluency tasks about semantics (animals) and phonemes (F-A-S); Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test (RVLT); Stroop Test: colors and words; go/no go tasks; and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). The results from the comparison between groups showed that there was a significant difference regarding the number of errors in the Sternberg Paradigm and Completed Categories of the WCST. Intragroup comparisons showed that the EG had better results after the intervention on the following tests: GDS, RAVLT, Rey Complex Figures (memory), Digit Span and Vocabulary.

Keywords : Cognitive training; executive functions; elderly; neuropsychology; aging.

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