Relação entre a memória de trabalho e a flexibilidade cognitiva em crianças do pré-escolar

Abstract

Introduction: Executive functions (EF) are a set of processes involved in creating, executing, supervising, and adapting behavior to a goal. Executive functions (EF) are made up of three components: (1) inhibitory control, (2) working memory and (3) cognitive flexibility. Cognitive Flexibility is a complex, late-developing ability that shows improvements with the development of Working Memory, but the nature of these correlations is unclear. Objectives: To assess the performance of children between 3 and 5 years of age in MT and CF tasks and to evaluate the relationship between MT and CF in the same children. Methodology: The sample consisted of 63 children with typical development who were submitted to the Mr.Ant and Card Sorting tasks from the Early Years Toolbox. Results: The 3-year-old group performed significantly less well than the 5-year-old group and the 4-year-old group performed significantly less well than the 5-year-old group in both the working memory task and the cognitive flexibility task. Only the 4-year-old group showed strong, positive correlations between the variables for Working Memory and the variables for Cognitive Flexibility. Conclusions: There was an increase in MT capacity and HR capacity as a function of age, but the increase was not completely progressive, and there were no differences between the 3-year-old and 4-year-old groups. There were no correlations between the two functions at ages below or above 4 years.

Date of Award	7 Dec 2023
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Filipa Ribeiro (Supervisor)