Attentus: instrumento para avaliação psicológica da atenção em crianças de 3 e 5 anos

• Ano de defesa: 2015
• Autor(a) principal: D'Almeida, Leonardo Augusto Guerra
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo; BR; Mestrado em Psicologia; UFES; Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia
• Palavras-chave em Português: Attention; Psychological evaluation; Child; Development; Neuropsychology; New technologies; Atención; Evaluación psicológica; Niños; Desarrollo; Neuropsicología; Nuevas tecnologías; Novas tecnologias; Atenção; Crianças x Desenvolvimento; Crianças x Avaliação x Aspectos psicológicos; Neuropsicologia; Tecnologia educacional; Psicologia; 159.9
• Link de acesso: http://repositorio.ufes.br/handle/10/9039

In this work we used a computerized tool to assess attentional function of children 03-05 years old. For this purpose “Attentus” was created with executable tasks in a fun and motivational way, in addition to comparison of possible differences in performance depending on the age, with cognitive tools and traditional attentional exercises. It is understood that attention involves a series of neuropsychological processes developing simultaneously with cognition. This enables human beings to select, prioritize and organize information in order to generate efficiency in the interaction with the environment, which promotes mental effectiveness, enabling quality learning. With brain maturation, voluntary control of attention is evident and the ability to focus is noticeable after two years of age. To the best of our knowledge there are no instruments to assess attention in low age children. This study is a descriptive case study, which involves 38 children, in the age groups 3 (10 children), 4 (17 children) and 5 years (11 children). Eighteen subjects were females and 20 males. This survey was conducted in two regular institutions of child education in Metropolitan Vitoria - ES. Before the proceding, legal guardians answered a few questions to assess the health and development of each participant. Thereafter we applied the Columbia Mental Maturity Scale - EMMC; attentional exercises of codes based on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale - preschool - WPPSI and the computerized instrument “Attentus” with three attentional tasks: Vigilance, Surveillance and Divided Attention. In addition, after performing the electronic activity, each child answered a semistructured interview for explanations of the choices during the use of “Attentus” by working memory, mode of execution of the task and interest. The results in the three attentional tasks showed higher scores in proportion to increasing age, as well as in the frequency of correct codes and in the percentile on EMMC. These variables were qualitatively related as they contain indication of performance showing associations between general estimate of thinking of children and attentional responses of preschoolers. That is, it was possible to establish differences between the ages, through attentional/cognitive comparison, which occurred in an evolutionary way, since the best performances were obtained in five years old children. Regarding interviews with legal gardians, there were no evidence of significant attentional interference in the performance of the children. As for the preschoolers explanations, most of it was assertive, showing interest and involvement in the activity. Thus, we concluded that “Attentus” is a viable tool for attentional assessment in low age children and we suggest future research to obtain data and parametric associations which may be relevant for this computerized attentional assessment.