Publicación:

Memoria de codificación y memoria de evocación diferida en niños, niñas y adolescentes con desnutrición

Resumen

Introdution: There is evidence of the relationship between executive functions, particularly the working memory and malnutrition present in stages of childhood and adolescence, taking into account that these two variables are important for the complete development of the human being. Objectives and Methodology: To discover the working memory in boys, girls and adolescents under malnutrition in the city of Santa Marta - Colombia through a descriptive, quantitative, and transversal study. 19 children and adolescents in malnutrition condition were included. A protocol of neuropsychological tests was applied for the assessment of working memory. Results: Most of the evaluated women were female, they were enrolled between 1st and 7th grade of primary and secondary school, belonging to socio-economic strata 1 and 2. It was possible to demonstrate that those evaluated obtained better scores in auditory stimuli with a percentage of 33% for both types of memory (coded and deferred), while the visual stimuli obtained a 17% showing that the participants have difficulty with the processing of figures, either in the memory of coding or evocation. Conclusions: The sample evidences difficulties in visual memory of the children and adolescents of the study, reason why it is inferred that malnutrition could affect this cognitive process; in addition to socioeconomic factors such as poverty and little access to food.