AVALIAÇÃO NEUROPSICOLÓGICA DAS FUNÇÕES EXECUTIVAS DE IDOSOS BILINGUES: PORTUGUÊS-UCRANIANO

Abstract

Studies involving bilingualism and aging are quite contemporary. However life expectancy in recent decades is in gradual increase, thus, it is important to investigate possible factors that may contribute to aging with a higher quality of life. One of the factors that have recently been investigated as protection criteria of decline and neural degeneration arising from aging is bilingualism. The learning and use of two languages are experiences able to impact cognitive functioning, since bilingual speakers need to select the language to be used and, at the same time, suppress the language that is not in use at that moment. For this reason, it has been found that bilinguals may have better performance than monolinguals in executive tasks, which involve some functions of the frontal lobe of the brain. Yet, in the Brazilian context, the positive effects of bilingualism are not always encountered. Accordingly, the aim of the present study is to verify the possible benefits of bilingualism in the executive functions of healthy bilingual and monolingual elderly, speakers of Brazilian Portuguese and Ukrainian languages. For this purpose, 30 monolingual and 30 bilingual elderly participated in this study, with age ranging from 60 and 76 years old, with a maximum of 08 years of schooling. We investigated the performance of both groups in tasks related to executive functions of focused attention, working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility and planning, through neuropsychological instruments. For exclusion criteria, the questionnaire about cultural aspects, health and the language was used, as well as the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE). Based on this, instruments such as TEACO-FF Test, Digits of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale (WAIS III) subtest, Stropp Color and Word, Color trails and Rey Complex Figure reviewed the executive functions. It was found that in all the evaluated functions there were no statistically significant differences according to the Student`s t-test (95% of reliability), and that the monolingual group had a better performance in many tasks. These results suggest that, in the investigated population, bilingualism did not affect the executive performance of the bilingual group. It is believed that the lack of standardized neuropsychological instruments for the Brazilian elderly population has contributed to the findings of this study. Another factor that can be considered qualitatively is the level of social activities maintained by the elderly, once the monolingual group had a higher frequency of activities, but this variable was not measured during the data collection. However, this research has contributed to emphasize the importance of the context in which researches on bilingualism occur and, obviously, to increase studies in the area.