Estimulação cognitiva em Idosos: uma proposta de intervenção online em tempos de pandemia

Abstract

The present study aimed to evaluate the proposal of cognitive intervention in a virtual environment with elderly people in the second year of the pandemic and its implications on cognitive performance. Cognitive Stimulation - CE can be understood as an essential tool for the enhancement of cognitive functions in people of all age groups and it is known that there is cognitive decline in human aging. Therefore, intervention with a cognitive focus becomes fundamental for the improvement and maintenance of cognitive skills in the daily life of the elderly. To reach the general objective, the study was divided into two articles: the first article is about the social profile, cognitive and functional performance of the participants, based on a more descriptive analysis of the data. It was observed a good functional and cognitive performance in the elderly women, besides a more diversified social profile taking into consideration the different realities and the access to education, beliefs, housing, income, and others. In the second article, a quasi-experimental study was proposed, in which the participants had to go through the pre-test and post-test phases. The objective of the original article was to evaluate the benefits of online cognitive stimulation and consequently compare the performance of these elderly women after the cognitive intervention sessions. The study sample consisted of 20 elderly women who were recruited by non-probability sampling and selected from the convenience field by means of the snowball method. They were divided into two groups. Experimental Group - EG, and Control Group - CG. Each group had 10 participants. In the evaluation phases the following instruments were used for data collection: Sociodemographic Profile, Mini Mental State Examination - MMSE, Lawton & Brody Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale - IADL, Geriatric Depression Scale - GDS and the Multifactorial Memory Questionnaire - MMQ. The cognitive interventions occurred during six weekly meetings, in group format and online through the Google-meet virtual platform. The data were analyzed and processed in the R statistical program, these assumed a normal distribution in the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and homogeneity in Levene's test. We also used descriptive analysis for the mean data and the T test for comparative analysis between the EG and CG, and the significance level P<0.05 was adopted. According to the results, the EG showed statistically significant improvements in cognitive performance after the CB sessions, subtle but not significant changes in functional performance, depressive symptoms, and increased use of cognitive strategies. The CG did not show significant differences. We conclude that the CB has positive effects on the cognitive performance of elderly people and suggest further studies on the subject for scientific and clinical advances in the cognitive health of the elderly.