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Depressive symptoms and cognitive performance of the elderly: relationship between institutionalization and activity programs Sintomas depressivos e desempenho cognitivo nos idosos: relações entre institucionalização e realização de atividades A b s t r a c t Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the frequency of depressive symptoms and to evaluate cognitive performance of institutionalized versus non-institutionalized elderly subjects and to compare the effect of institutionalization and participation in the institution's activity programs on their cognitive performance. Method: A group of 120 elderly subjects with a mean age of 71 years and average schooling of 4.2 years was evaluated. The participants were divided into 3 groups: non-institutionalized (n = 37); institutionalized with activities (n = 37); institutionalized without activities (n = 46

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Even though video game players frequently report losing track of time while playing, few studies have addressed whether there are long-lasting effects of such activity on time perception. We compared the performance of chronic and occasional video game players in sub- and multi-second time perception tasks. Temporal Discrimination and Temporal Bisection tasks, in the range of 100 to 1,000 milliseconds, and Time estimation and Time production tasks, in the range of 5 to 60 seconds, were used to assess sub- and multi-second time perceptions, respectively. Chronic video game players performed significantly better than occasional players on sub-second tasks, but no group difference was found for the multi-second tasks used. Sub- and multi-second time perceptions are associated to different underlying systems: automatic and cognitive controlled for sub- and multi-second tasks, respectively. We argue that video game use seems to induce more efficient implicit, rather than cognitive controlled, processing of time.

O objetivo deste estudo é identificar as estratégias utilizadas nas tarefas de rotação mental pela análise dos traçados dos movimentos oculares. Foi analisado o desempenho de 40 participantes na comparação de pares de objetos tridimensionais rotacionados no eixo y, com diferenças de angulação de 0o a 180o. Foi utilizado um sistema computacional de rastreamento dos movimentos oculares (eyetracking) durante a visualização de figuras. Os resultados mostram que tempo de julgamento, duração média das fixações do olho, número de fixações nos objetos e número de alternâncias entre os dois objetos aumentam em função da diferença de angulação. Análise dos traçados oculares, com base na inspeção visual, indica o uso de dois tipos de estratégias: rotação mental em torno dos eixos padrões e comparação independente da orientação. O uso dessas estratégias é discutido com relação ao desempenho dos participantes e à memória de trabalho.