Evaluación del desempeño atencional: Eficacia, eficiencia y rendimiento

Abstract

En el ámbito educativo las conductas problemas y los desórdenes atencionales son factores de riesgo que afectan el rendimiento académico y social del niño. La importancia del desarrollo de los procesos de aprendizaje, genera la necesidad de evaluar las habilidades atencionales de los niños en el ámbito educativo con instrumentos válidos, confiables y adaptados a la población escolar. Desde la Neuropsicología del Desarrollo se proponen nuevos indicadores para la evaluación atencional a través del Test CARAS denominados: eficiencia y rendimiento 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. Las expresiones matemáticas derivadas de los indicadores propuestos surgen de la revisión cronológica de los avances producidos en este instrumento de evaluación y la necesidad de conocer con mayor precisión las capacidades de los sujetos evaluados. Los indicadores propuestos han evidenciado en la prueba piloto con 48 sujetos una mayor representatividad de las habilidades atencionales y sus fluctuaciones, a partir del estudio de éstas en diferentes tiempos de evaluación. El trabajo que se informa permite introducir el termino desempeño atencional como la resultante de integrar los conceptos de eficacia atencional (EA), eficiencia atencional (FA) y rendimiento atencional (RA) en tareas de búsqueda visual. Con este tipo de estudio se pretende brindar una modalidad de análisis que contemple los diferentes aspectos que intervienen en tareas de búsqueda visual utilizadas para evaluar el desempeño atencional.

In the educational field the behavior problems and attentional disorders are risk factors, which affect the academic performance of the child. 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. The importance of the development of learning processes requires the evaluation of the children's attentional abilities in the educational field as valid and reliable instruments adapted to the school population. This work, focused from the Development Neuropsychology approach, proposes two new indices called attentional efficiency and attentional yield for the evaluation of attention through the Perception of Differences Test - CARAS. 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. These proposed indicators arise with new modes of administration of the Test CARAS and the need for greater accuracy in evaluating attentional. Attentional efficiency is defined (AF) 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. Mathematical expressions derived from the proposed indicators, arising from the chronological review of developments since the original technique to methods and scores currently used today. We believe that the progress made in this work have enriched the analysis in the evaluation of attention and use of the CARAS Test. Although, attentional efficiency, produced advances in the interpretation of the results, new developments in the application of the test methods, that is, analyzing the execution after 3 minutes, have proposed new challenges. Currently with these contributions not only have the chance to meet attentional efficacy (AE) in a period of focused attention mainly, but also its attentional efficiency (AF) and attentional yield (AY) in periods of sustained attention (after three minutes until completion of the task). The proposed indicators have been evident in the pilot test with 48 children greater representation of attentional skills and fluctuations, from the study of different evaluation times. The pilot test was conducted in the institution primary school, located in the city of Mendoza (Argentina). This paper presents the limitation of being a pilot study on a small sample of students. However, it served to apply in real cases the proposed concepts. These results come from children in urban public schools so the interpretation of the results must be contextualized. It must also recognize the importance of further assessments for adequate attentional diagnosis. Currently being developed complementary to regional scale attentional efficacy (AE) with attentional efficiency indicators (AF) and attentional yield (AY) from a random sample of 5000 students in first through seventh grade belonging to marginal - urban and urban primary schools state of Mendoza. This work allows introducing the term attentional performance as the result of integrating the concepts of attentional efficiency (AE), attentional efficiency (AF) and attentional yield (AY) in visual search tasks. With this type of study is to provide a form of analysis, which considers the different aspects involved in visual search tasks used to assess attentional performance.