Memória semântica como fator de resiliência cognitiva em idosos

Abstract

Multiple risk and protection factors mark the aging process. Formal education, reported in years, has been the primary cognitive resilience measure, aiding older adults to withstand the impacts of aging. However, there are still few studies carried out with diverse sociocultural samples that have specific factors that can influence this process. It is necessary to verify whether the use of resilience factors identified in international studies is applied to the Brazilian scenario. Considering the national peculiarities that permeate the traditional resilience factors, this dissertation tried to verify if the semantic memory, a crystallized ability built in life through cultural, academic and occupational expositions, is capable of acting as a better measure of cognitive resilience in our context. Four studies were carried out that sought to analyze the objective of the present dissertation. In the first study, a new measure of semantic memory was developed taking into account the importance of national, cultural, and academic aspects and demonstrated its psychometric characteristics. In the second study, semantic memory acted as a significant moderator between age and general cognition, while the traditional resilience measures were not significant. In the third study, the semantic network structure was evaluated, and it indicated that the organization and activation of that system is a suggestive moderator of the age-general cognition relationship. Finally, in the fourth study different educational groups were submitted to the same multifactorial resilience model and the results indicated that the older adults with distinct educational levels do not benefit from the same resilience factors. Together, the four studies allow us to conclude that it is possible that other factors of cognitive resilience are more impacting due to environmental factors. Additionally, semantic memory may be a possible resilience factor to be considered in our future studies, and older adults of different educational strata can benefit from more accurate models of resilience rather than the use of a unique model. Studies with larger and longitudinal samples are necessary to overcome the limitations of the present research.