Estudos neuropsicométricos com o teste de cancelamento dos sinos

• Autor(a) principal: Wong, Cristina Elizabeth Izábal
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da PUC_RS
• Texto Completo: http://tede2.pucrs.br/tede2/handle/tede/807
• topic: PSICOLOGIA; NEUROPSICOLOGIA; ATENÇÃO (PSICOLOGIA); TESTES PSICOLÓGICOS; AVALIAÇÃO NEUROPSICOLÓGICA; CNPQ::CIENCIAS HUMANAS::PSICOLOGIA

The Bells Test (BT) is one of the most traditionally used neuropsychological instruments in the diagnosis of hemineglect and attention deficits. Based on a cancellation paradigm, the original Canadian version also known as Test des Cloches was adapted to Brazilian population, in a project that also involved the development of a second version of the task which added visually related distractors to the original stimuli. The aim of this thesis was to collect evidence toward the validity and reliability of both versions of the instrument, as well as to investigate whether age and education had an impact in individuals performance in these tasks. In the process, the performance in this test was normalized according to both age and education. Three empirical studies were conducted. The first study looked for evidence toward the construct/convergent validity and reliability of the instrument in a sample of 66 healthy adults, who completed both versions of the BT as well as other measures of sustained attention (AS, AC-15 and NEUPSILIN Line Cancelling Task). Reliability was analyzed by means of an analysis of test-retest. The second study investigated the influence of age and education in the attentional process, obtaining norms for specific groups divided by age and education. A total of 341 individuals aged between 19 and 75, with a minimum of 5 years of schooling, took part in this study. The third study collected evidence toward the criterion validity of the BT through the assessment of individuals with previously established clinical conditions which should interfere in their performance of the task. The sample was comprised of 30 patients with right brain damage (RBD) and 30 control individuals. Overall, the findings of all three studies suggest that the BT has adequate validity in respect to external variables, both related to performance in other assessment tools of attention and the presence of visual hemineglect. Age and education proved to influence performance in the BT, affecting both the number of omissions and the time taken to perform the test, all of which was reflected in normative data. Studies on different clinical samples with possible attention deficits and/or hemispatial neglect will be carried out so as to seek further evidence regarding the sensitivity and specificity of the BT in Brazilian population.