Neurocognitive development, executive functions and social cognition in context of street children

Abstract

Introduction: The situation of kids from the street is similar to a form of abuse and severechronic stress. This impact can imply delays in their neurodevelopment. In this context wepresent the results of an investigation where it was compared the performance in differentcognitive functions between children in a social context of street and a group of kids that comefrom a socioeconomically structured family.Subjects and method: Forty kids, 20 of them came from the street of the metropolitan zone ofGuadalajara (Mexico) and 20 kids came from a socioeconomically structured family.Results: We have found that the cognitive performance of kids in social context of street wasin general below their peers. The differences are concentrated in the executive functions ofplanning and inhibitory control, processing speed and memory, same verbal as visual, but theydon’t present a worse neurocognitive development.Conclusions: The kids from the street don’t present impairment in their neurocognitive deve-lopment, although they are deficient in some functions. They perform a mistake of meta memoryin a way of false positives; it means that they tend to overrate their possibilities of success andachievement; nevertheless paradoxically they perform in a correct way the false negatives,which are referred to their possibilities of failure. It could be that it constitutes a cognitivedefense mechanism facing the harshness of their context. The level of development from thesocial cognition evaluated through the empathy is different in both groups.