Atenção, memória e funções executivas em crianças e adolescentes de 6 a 12 anos avaliados pelo CANTAB

Abstract

Child neuropsychology is a distinct area in the clinical neuropsychology and its emergence is a consequence of the acknowledgment that the brain-behavior relationships in child differ significantly from those in adult. Several neuropsychology tests have been developed to be administered in computers, including the CANTAB that has been widely used by researchers concerning different ages and pathologies groups. In regard to the development, some aspects of attention are present in the beginning of childhood while others continue to develop along the childhood and youth. Memory processes undergo many changes throughout life, especially in preschool age. Executive functions take longer to fully develop and researches indicate that some components are present in immature form on child between 6 to 12 years old, but the complete ripening occurs with age increase. The aim of this work was to investigate the development of attention, memory and executive functions in children and teenagers from 6 to 12 years old using the CANTAB, and verify if there are specific patterns of development for the components of these functions. There were evaluated 85 children and teenagers (43 male) between 6 to 12 years old with no history of neurological and/or psychiatric disorders, chronic exposures to toxic agents, injury or brain surgery and development disorders. They were submitted to the Raven's progressive matrices and the following CANTAB's subtests: Choice Reaction Time, Rapid Visual Information Processing, Pattern Recognition Memory, Delayed Matching to Sample, Spatial Recognition Memory, Spatial Span, Stockings of Cambridge, Intra-Extra Dimensional Set Shift, Stop Signal Task e Information Sampling Task. The results indicated improvements in attention, memory and executive functions in the development in the age groups evaluated. Simple visual attention, visual perception and conceptualization capacity seem to be developed at 6 years old. Attentional span, visual memory, spatial memory, mental flexibility and mental control are in ongoing development in the age groups evaluated, and a good performance is reached at 12 years old. Planning ability and sustained attention showed improvements in age groups evaluated but they have not reached fully development. Decision making and inhibitory control do not showed significant improvement and their ripening should occur after the 12 years old. The CANTAB battery was effective to evaluate Brazilian's children and teenagers from 6 to 12 years old with high applicability in this sample and results consistent with the literature. The comparison between our results and those found in the international studies with CANTAB indicates compatibility in almost all age evaluated, regardless cultural differences.

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