Resumen Desde el enfoque no-unitario de la inhibición, se identifican tres procesos inhibitorios: inhibición perceptual, cognitiva y de la respuesta. Esta última permite suprimir conductas prepotentes e inapropiadas para los objetivos en curso. En los últimos años se evaluaron diferentes intervenciones orientadas a optimizar la inhibición de la respuesta durante los inicios de la escuela primaria; sin embargo, los estudios resultan insuficientes para evaluar la eficacia de estas intervenciones sobre el proceso entrenado y otros procesos inhibitorios e identificar las características asociadas a los resultados. En este estudio se propuso analizar la eficacia de un entrenamiento de la inhibición de la respuesta en niños en los primeros años de escolaridad primaria, sobre este proceso y la inhibición perceptual, a corto y largo plazo; y estudiar si variables como la edad y el nivel inhibitorio de base de los participantes se relacionan con los resultados. Participaron 93 niños (de 6 a 8 años), asignados a un grupo de entrenamiento y otro de control, en un diseño experimental con pre-test y dos post-test. Se observaron efectos, atribuibles al entrenamiento, sobre el desempeño de una tarea de inhibición de la respuesta a corto plazo, siendo los niños con un nivel inhibitorio de base más bajo quienes presentaron mayores beneficios. Se discute sobre el aporte de los resultados al modelo no-unitario de la inhibición, el alcance de las intervenciones y el estudio de las características de los participantes en relación con los efectos del entrenamiento.

Abstract From non-unitary perspective of inhibition, three inhibitory processes are identified: perceptual, cognitive and response inhibition. Response inhibition allows suppressing prepotent and inappropriate responses for the current purposes. In the last years, different interventions targeted at optimizing it during the first years of school period. However, the studies are insufficient to understand the efficacy of the interventions on response inhibition and other inhibitory processes, both short- and long-term; and the characteristics that are linked to the results. The goals aims: to analyze the efficacy of a response inhibition training on this process and perceptual inhibition, both short- and long-term, in children in the first years of elementary school; and to analyze if the relationships of age and the level of inhibition in pre-test are related to the results. The participants (93 children, from 6 to 8 years old) were assigned to a training or a control group, in an experimental design, with a pre-test and two post-tests. We observed effects in the short term on children’s performance on a response inhibition task. The children who benefited more from the intervention were those who started the intervention with a lower level of inhibition. We discuss the contribution of these results to non-unitary perspective, the scope of the interventions and the study of the participants’ characteristics related to the results.

Traditionally, semantic memory has been defined as a mental trove that contains organized information about words and their meaning, as well as relationships between words, facts and concepts.There are different ways of explaining how the information in such memory system is represented and organized. One of the main ways of explaining this organization is through categories. Categorization starts the very moment that any sensorial perception is associated to an abstract category; it is the ability to organize information in equivalence classes, and it is very important because it allows us to summarize the information that we gather through our senses and thus facilitate its manipulation. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the main cause of dementia among older adults, and it is one of the most pressing sanitary, social and cultural problems of the present times. The main risk factor for the illness is age, for its prevalence augments exponentially from 65 to 85 years old, and due to the rise in life expectancy it is considered that it might be transformed into a world-wide epidemic in the coming years. The start of the illness is insidious and slowly progressing, and it is characterized by a loss of episodic memory from its beginnings. With respect to the deterioration of semantic memory in AD, a debate has arisen about its mode of presentation, its causes, and whether there is a differential loss of categories (live or non-live beings) in different moments of the illness. During the 90s, Petersen proposed the concept of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to label the subjects with a functional cognitive impairment insufficient to diagnose a dementia syndrome. The importance of this syndrome is that between 8 to 15% of those who suffer it evolve to AD annually, while in the general population this evolution is only from 1 to 2%. However, there is a great controversy about the validity and scope of the term MCI, for its etiology can be very varied and it is very difficult to predict its evolution. There are different sub-kinds of MCI, and the amnesic form is the more likely to evolve into AD, for its main characteristic is the subjective deterioration of memory corroborated by standardized test by reference to normative data for the same age and educational level of the subject. The other cognitive functions not present alterations. The main objective of this work was to analyze the semantic categorization processes in healthy older adults comparing them with two groups of people with neurological pathologies, one with diagnosis of MCI and the other with AD, matched by age, educational level and gender. To evaluate this categorization process, two traditional tasks were used together with a novel method, the DISTSEM, which allows the evaluation of the estimation made by people about the semantic distance among a set of given concepts. The results showed that the group of people without pathologies had a superior performance in all the tasks in comparison with the groups of people with neurological pathologies. On the other hand, the group with AD showed a semantic impairment which affected in the first place the category of live beings, which was evident in the all the tasks. The MCI preserved the categorical structure with only minor intrusions. The DISTSEM has shown itself to be a valuable instrument that allows the discrimination between healthy subjects and those with AD. It is expected that this work can provide empirical evidence relevant to the debate surrounding semantic memory, for studies in patients with brain injury offer key information to examine the organizing models of such memory.

Tradicionalmente la memoria semántica ha sido definida como un tesoro mental que almacena información sobre las palabras, su significado, como así también la relación entre ellas, los hechos y los conceptos. Una de las vías principales para explicar cómo se organiza la información en la memoria semántica (MS) es a través de categorías. La demencia tipo Alzheimer (DTA) suele estar caracterizada por un deterioro en la memoria episódica. Sin embargo, se debate en torno al deterioro de la misma, en qué momento aparece, a qué se debe y si hay una pérdida diferencial en distintos momentos de la enfermedad. El objetivo del trabajo que se informa fue analizar los procesos de categorización semántica en adultos mayores sanos comparándolos con dos grupos de personas con patologías neurológicas: uno con diagnóstico de deterioro cognitivo leve (DCL) y otro con demencia tipo Alzheimer (DTA), emparejados por edad, nivel educativo y género. Para ello, se utilizaron tareas tradicionales para evaluar la memoria semántica y también un método novedoso, el DISTSEM, que permite evaluar las estimaciones que realizan las personas de las distancias semánticas entre los conceptos. Los resultados mostraron que el grupo de personas sin patología tuvo un rendimiento superior en todas las tareas en comparación con los grupos de personas con patología neurológica. Por otro lado, el grupo con DTA mostró un deterioro semántico afectando en primer lugar a la categoría seres vivos. El DCL preservó la estructura categorial sólo con pequeñas intrusiones. El DISTSEM mostró ser un instrumento adecuado para la discriminación entre sujetos sanos y DTA.

El Paradigma de la Señal de Parar, Stop Signal en inglés, es uno de los procedimientos más utilizados para medir el control inhibitorio. Su amplia difusión se explica por dos motivos: su extensa aplicación en el ámbito de la neuropsicología clínica y, porque aporta un índice -el tiempo de frenado- que no se obtiene con otros paradigmas o procedimientos. Esta medida, refiere al tiempo que necesita el individuo para inhibir una respuesta preponderante. El cálculo del índice deriva de un modelo clásico de inhibición, el "Modelo de Carrera de Caballos". Sin embargo, el modelo no ha sido suficientemente difundido en nuestro medio, debido a la complejidad de los análisis matemáticos de base y a que la bibliografía disponible en español en este tema es casi inexistente. Por ello, el objetivo de este trabajo es efectuar una revisión sobre este método y presentar algunas de sus aplicaciones en la neuropsicología clínica y de la psicopatología, tales como para el trabajo con pacientes con trastorno bsesivo compulsivo, adicciones, y trastorno de atención, entre otros. MÉD.UIS. 2014;27(3):89-98

The Stop Signal Paradigm is one of the most used procedures for measuring the inhibitory control. Their widespread diffusion is due to two reasons: its extensive application in the field of clinical neuropsychology and because it provides an index-braking time-that is not accessible with other paradigms or procedures. This index is defined as the time required for inhibiting a dominant response. The method used to calculate this measure is based on a classical model of inhibition: the "Horse Race Model". However, their diffusion is limited in our environment because the available literature in Spanish is poor due to the complexity of mathematical analysis involved. Therefore, the aim of this work is to carry out a review of this method and present some of its applications in the field of clinical neuropsychology and psychopathology, such as working with patients with obsessive compulsive disorder, addictions, and attention disorder, among others. MÉD.UIS. 2014;27(3):89-98

The Extended Theory of the Propagation of the Activation is one of the more accepted models to represent the information stored in the long term memory. In this model isolated concepts do not have meaning but they acquire it by their relation with the others. The aim of this paper is to communicate the results of an experience in which it was applied a method to estimate the semantic distances (Distsem) between nine concepts of the subject cognitive psychology in three instances, individual initial, group and individual final. The participants were 225 students from third year of the career of psychology (National University of Mar del Plata) that were taking the course of cognitive psychology. Subjects were asked to estimate the proximity between random pairs of concepts and then it was applied a set of Social Network Analyses routines. The results show that the student´s semantic networks changed positively in the second individual instance thank to group interaction. The conclusions suggest an association between initial knowledge and the influence exerted in the group product and allow describing the evolution of the networks

La Teoría Extendida de la Propagación de la Activación es uno de los modelos más aceptados para representar la información almacenada en la memoria a largo plazo. En dicho modelo los conceptos no poseen significado de manera aislada sino que lo adquieren por su posición en la estructura reticular. El objetivo de este trabajo es comunicar los resultados de la aplicación del método de evaluación de distancias semánticas (Distsem) sobre nueve conceptos de la asignatura psicología cognitiva en tres instancias, individual inicial, grupal e individual final. Participaron 225 estudiantes del 3er año de psicología (UNMDP) que cursaban la asignatura. Se solicitó a los alumnos estimar la proximidad entre pares aleatorizados de dichos conceptos y luego se aplicó un conjunto de procedimientos de análisis de redes sociales. Los resultados mostraron que las redes semánticas de los alumnos evolucionaron favorablemente en la segunda instancia individual gracias a la interacción grupal. Las conclusiones sugieren una fuerte asociación entre conocimiento inicial y la influencia ejercida en el producto grupal y permiten describir la evolución de las redes.