“El estado nutricional en el desarrollo de las funciones cognitivas en niños/as de 4 a 5 años de la parroquia de Salasaca – cantón Pelileo”

Abstract

The present investigation is based on the following topic: Nutritional status in the development of cognitive functions in children from 4 to 5 years old in the parish of Salasaca; whose main objective is to determine the relationship between nutritional status and the development of cognitive functions in children aged 4 to 5 years. The research involved a population of 80 children from the parish of Salasaca; to whom the anthropometric measures were taken to assess their nutritional status through the anthropometric indicators, the same as those applied in the reference curves of the World Health Organization, in order to know their Z score indicating the state nutrition that each child finds. In addition, the CUMANIN test was applied to them, this questionnaire is composed of 13 scales of which only 11 scales were used; in each scale certain cognitive functions intervene, the same ones that are important for the child to achieve a certain activity. The cognitive processes that were taken into account are the inferior ones that are composed of sensation, perception, attention and memory, as well as the superior ones formed by language, praxia, thought, reasoning and intelligence. It was concluded that the nutritional status does not influence the development of cognitive functions since the children had a eutrophic nutritional status. However, there was a relationship between the body mass index for age and the psychomotricity scale, demonstrating that the nutritional status of children who presented possible overweight influences the development of cognitive functions of praxia, attention and memory; this is because there is no good nutritional balance affecting the activity of cognitive processes