Desarrollo neurocognitivo, funciones ejecutivas y cognición social en el contexto de niños de la calle

Introduction

The situation of kids from the street is similar to a form of abuse and severe chronic stress. This impact can imply delays in their neurodevelopment. In this context we present the results of an investigation where it was compared the performance in different cognitive functions between children in a social context of street and a group of kids that come from a socioeconomically structured family.

Subjects and method

Forty kids, 20 of them came from the street of the metropolitan zone of Guadalajara (Mexico) and 20 kids came from a socioeconomically structured family.

Results

We have found that the cognitive performance of kids in social context of street was in general below their peers. The differences are concentrated in the executive functions of planning and inhibitory control, processing speed and memory, same verbal as visual, but they don’t present a worse neurocognitive development.

Conclusions

The kids from the street don’t present impairment in their neurocognitive development, although they are deficient in some functions. They perform a mistake of meta memory in a way of false positives; it means that they tend to overrate their possibilities of success and achievement; nevertheless paradoxically they perform in a correct way the false negatives, which are referred to their possibilities of failure. It could be that it constitutes a cognitive defense mechanism facing the harshness of their context. The level of development from the social cognition evaluated through the empathy is different in both groups.