CONTRIBUIÇÃO DA FLEXIBILIDADE COGNITIVA E CONTROLE DE IMPULSOS NA EMISSÃO DE COMPORTAMENTOS ANTISSOCIAIS

Abstract

The literature indicates growing interest by research that seek the understanding of antisocial behavior. Neuropsychological Studies in this area has grown and suggest that socially inappropriate behavior may be related to deficits in the performance of the prefrontal cortex of the human brain, specifically in executive functions, which are responsible in regulating the behavior. This research aimed at evaluating the executive functions: cognitive flexibility and impulse control in the prison system inmates. For that it was applied two neuropsychological assessment tools - Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and Stroop Color and Word Test - a sociodemographic questionnaire and a semi-structured interview in 60 volunteer participants, of which 30 were serving a sentence of imprisonment for a crime committed and constituted the experimental group (n = 30) and the other 30 participants not inmates formed the control group (n = 30). In statistical analysis with SPSS for Windows, the groups were matched when age and education and came to the conclusion that the performance of groups was statistically equal to a level of variance of 5%, considering the value of p> 0.05. With this study we observed that, unlike what many surveys point, the neuropsychological variables studied were not enough to differentiate cognitive aspects between groups in the detainees and not prisoners condition.