Análise da correlação neuropsicólogica entre as funções executivas, a impulsividade e a ansiedade em pré-vestibulandos

Abstract

Many young people when they get to high school live the dilemma of having to choose a profession that will follow. It is a process that can be marked by doubts, insecurity, social pressures and anxiety. This process favors the expression of anxious behaviors that, when they cease to be functional for the subject, affect the performance during the day of the tests. This work is the result of a quasi-experimental study that aimed to assess the impact of the entrance exam on executive functions and anxiety in pre-college students and how these factors influence the performance of these students, considering the neuropsychology as a fundamental process in the evaluation. Counted on a sample of 120 subjects, divided into three groups: 40 pre-college students, 40 students of the 2nd high school year and 40 university students of the 1st and 2nd semesters. It was used in this study a flexible battery of neuropsychological tests designed especially for evaluation of some components of executive functions: Maze Test, the BIS-11, the Digit Span, the IGT, the Stroop Test, and the BAI. The results of pre-college students, before and after ENEM, were related as well to high school and university students. The findings show that in the pre-college students group there was a significant increase in anxiety before the test compared to post-completion of the test. However, it is clear that anxiety was not harmful to students, since those with more anxiety mostly took higher test scores. Among the group of university and high school students, it was a better performance among university students, indicating that among this group executive functions are better consolidated than in the high school group.