ABSTRACT
La atención juega un rol clave en el desempeño escolar de los niños. Numerosas investigaciones han informado que la capacidad atencional se correlaciona positivamente con las competencias de lectura, escritura y habilidades matemáticas en escolares primarios. En este marco surge la necesidad de evaluar las habilidades atencionales de los niños en el ámbito educativo con instrumentos válidos, confiables y adaptados a la población escolar. El propósito del trabajo realizado fue elaborar los datos normativos del Test de Percepción de Semejanzas y Diferencias (CARAS) y sus indicadores de desempeño atencional. Esta prueba es utilizada para evaluar la atención focalizada y sostenida y la aptitud para percibir, rápida y correctamente, semejanzas, diferencias y patrones estimulantes parcialmente ordenados. La investigaciónfue descriptiva y se empleó un diseño no experimental, seccional-transversal. El análisis se hizo con una muestra estandarizada por muestreo aleatorio estratificado de 4.462 alumnos, de establecimientos escolares públicos de nivel primario del Gran Mendoza (República Argentina) de 7 a 12 años de edad. Como resultado se obtuvieron puntuaciones correspondientes al desempeño atencional:eficacia atencional (EA), eficiencia atencional (FA) y rendimiento atencional (RA), en tiempos parciales de evaluación (t1 y t2) y tiempo total (T), según sexo y edad. Luego se determinaron las frecuencias acumuladas que posteriormente fueron transformadas a rangos percentilares. Con este tipo de estudio normativo se pretende brindar en los diferentes indicadores de desempeño atencional, una mayor precisión diagnóstica en la evaluación del mecanismo atencional en niños.
Attention plays a key role in school performance of children. Different studies have reported that the attentional capacity is positively correlated with the skills of reading, writing and math in primary school. In the teaching-learning process, a child uses different forms of attention. In one task, the child selects relevant information and inhibits the others. Perhaps, should divide his attention and switch his focus of attention between two or more sources of information, holding -intentionally- these activities for a specified time. In this context, it is important evaluate the attentional abilities of children in education with valid, reliable and adapted instruments to the school population. The main perceptual-attentional skills used in assessing attentional tasks are: perception of differences, visual discrimination, visual integration and perceptual speed. These tasks can be characterized as simple, yet include a lot of tests, which requires a relatively large time to be realized. In this way become continuous performance tasks in which the subject must locate significant stimulus to a wider set of stimuli acting distracting way. The purpose of this work was the development of normative data of performance indicators in Perception Test Similarities and Differences or FACES. This test is used to evaluate the focused and sustained attention and the ability to perceive, quickly and correctly, similarities, differences and partially ordered stimulating patterns. As a main feature, the CARAS, has 60 blocks stimuli each composed of three schematic drawings of faces (with elementary strokes representing the mouth, eyes, eyebrows and hair), one of which is different. The task is to determine the different side and cross it off. The research was descriptive and cross-sectional non-experimental design was used. The analysis was performed on a standardized sample stratified random sample of 4.462 students between 7 and 12 years of public primary schools of Mendoza (República Argentina). As a result are obtained performance attentional scores: attentional efficacy (AE), attentional efficiency (AE) and attentional yield (AY) in partial evaluation time (t1 and t2) and total time (T), for each sex and age. These attentional assessment indicators are proposed by the authors in previous work. Mathematical expressions derived from these indicators, emerged from the chronological review of the progress made in this assessment tool and the need to know more accurately the capabilities of the subjects tested. In this context, the term attentional performance is introduced as an inclusive concept of attentional efficiency, attentional efficiency and attentional yield of a subject in visual search tasks. Attentional efficiency allows to evaluate the accuracy with which a child discriminate stimuli within a series of similar stimuli; attentional efficiency (AF) is defined as the cognitive ability to regulate and optimize the attentional mechanism to select and maintain attention for an extended period of time, using minimal resources of time available. Moreover, attentional yield (AY) is the product resulting from the level of effectiveness and efficiency obtained in selection and sustained attentional task. Then, the cumulative frequencies, which were subsequently transformed to percentile ranks, were determined. With this kind of normative study is to provide, in different attentional performance indicators, greater diagnostic accuracy in assessing attentional mechanism in children. The attentional capacity is key to proper cognitive functioning, thus its evaluation is relevant for the purposes of precise diagnosis and adequate psycho-educational intervention programs that interrupt the cycle of failure and frustration helping to increase the feeling of self-efficacy in the school.
ABSTRACT
El maltrato infantil es altamente negativo para el desarrollo, sin embargo, investigaciones sobre resiliencia señalan que algunos seres humanos logran superar condiciones adversas. Una variable relevante para ello es la creatividad. Asimismo la atención participa regulando procesos y organizando la información. Por lo tanto los objetivos fueron: comparar la atención focalizada y la creatividad gráfica entre niños con y sin historia de maltrato infantil y analizar la relación entre atención y creatividad. Se utilizó el Test CARAS (Thurstone & Yela, 1997) y Test de Creatividad Gráfica (Marín-Ibáñez, 1995). Se evaluaron 61 niños/as de 7 a 12 años de edad. Los resultados señalan diferencias significativas en la creatividad a favor de los niños no maltratados. En la atención no hubo diferencias significativas, pero los niños víctimas de maltrato cometieron significativamente más errores que los niños sin esta característica...
Child abuse has a highly negative impact on growth, nonetheless, recent investigations in resilience point at the fact that some individuals can overcome extremely adverse situations. One relevant variable regarding resilience is creativity. At the same time, attention controls and guides the processes that lead to creative productions. The objectives were: to compare focused attention and graphic creativity in abused and non-abused children and to analyze the relationship between focused attention and the creativity variables. We evaluated 61 children of both sexes, between 7 and 12 years old, with and without family abuse records. The instruments were the CARAS Test (Thurstone & Yela, 1997), and the Graphic Creativity Test (Marín-Ibáñez, 1995). We found some important differences regarding creativity favoring children with no abuse indicators. No significant differences were found regarding attention, though abused children made more mistakes than non-abused ones...