Influência da vibração de corpo inteiro em uma habilidade cognitiva de raciocínio em adultos jovens

Abstract

In this work, effects of whole-body vibrations on human cognition were investigated regarding the reasoning process. Forty volunteers, 28 men and 12 women were tested on a vibrating platform by playing a game that was part of a cognitive training app. The app uses points, precision, and reaction time as a score system for individual performance evaluation. The frequency values used as parameters were 5 and 30 Hz, values that appear often in literature as negative and positive regarding human cognition, respectively. The acceleration values were 0.5 and 1.2 m/s² and the combination of the two frequency values mentioned with these two accelerations created four parameters of vibration. The 40 volunteers were divided into 4 groups of 10 people, being 7 men and 3 women in each one, but every person was exposed to all the parameters. It was the order of exposure that changed among the groups. The experiment was composed of six stages in total; the first and last ones were control stages with null values of vibration from the platform, the 4 stages with vibration were in between the control ones. The objective was to determine eventual residual effects and to minimize one possible influence of a learning effect regarding the cognitive game. Two statistical analyses were performed, one descriptive, with the use of graphs, and another one multilevel. The analysis of the experiment showed very little difference in performance between men and women, regarding vibration parameters and the stage of exposure. The most prominent effect could be attributed to a learning effect that was found in the multilevel analysis as the most significant factor.