Processos cognitivos que operam na construção da referência: uma análise das produções textuais elaboradas na EaD - UFRN

Beneath the theoretical assumptions of Cognitive Linguistics contemporary, we analyze the cognitive processes underlying the construction of the reference in the text. To do so, we choose as corpus the written textual productions of undergraduates at the Department of Distance Education/UFRN provided in sections of responses of presential evaluation activities and activities in the Moodle virtual ambience. These activities and texts were produced in the discipline of Reading, Interpretation and Textual Production taught in the courses of Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Biology and Geography we monitor during the period of 2008.1 to 2010.1. Through the analysis of discursive productions, it was evident that the construction of the reference is made by means of the activation and manipulation of information acquired through our perceptual and social experiences. Thus, we confirm the cognitive assumption that the linguistic clues available in the texts of the activities serve as guides towards cognitive domains that activate the process of building reference

Processos cognitivos que operam na configuração de narrativas: uma pesquisa exploratória dos fenômenos que subjazem à compreensão de textos

This paper investigates the cognitive processes that operate in understanding narratives in this case, the novel Macunaíma, by Mário de Andrade. Our work belongs to the field of Embodied-based Cognitive Linguistics and, due to its interdisciplinary nature, it dialogues with theoretical and methodological frameworks of Psycholinguistics, Cognitive Psychology and Neurosciences. Therefore, we adopt an exploratory research design, recall and cloze tests, adapted, with postgraduation students, all native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. The choice of Macunaíma as the novel and initial motivation for this proposal is due to the fact it is a fantastic narrative, which consists of events, circumstances and characters that are clearly distant types from what is experienced in everyday life. Thus, the novel provides adequate data to investigate the configuration of meaning, within an understanding-based model. We, therefore, seek, to answer questions that are still, generally, scarcely explored in the field of Cognitive Linguistics, such as to what extent is the activation of mental models (schemas and frames) related to the process of understanding narratives? How are we able to build sense even when words or phrases are not part of our linguistic repertoire? Why do we get emotionally involved when reading a text, even though it is fiction? To answer them, we assume the theoretical stance that meaning is not in the text, it is constructed through language, conceived as a result of the integration between the biological (which results in creating abstract imagery schemes) and the sociocultural (resulting in creating frames) apparatus. In this sense, perception, cognitive processing, reception and transmission of the information described are directly related to how language comprehension occurs. We believe that the results found in our study may contribute to the cognitive studies of language and to the development of language learning and teaching methodologies

Processos de construção do sentido por portadores da Síndrome de Asperger

Para la lingüística Cognitiva, la construcción del sentido darse a través del accionamiento de procesos mentales específicos que están directamente ligados a las experiencias socioculturales, sensorio motores y perceptuales. En portadores de la Síndrome de Asperger, el comprometimiento de estos procesos, debido a características específicas dela propia síndrome, puede estar directamente relacionado a problemas de construcción de sentido por estos individuos. En este sentido, el objetivo de esta investigación es investigar los procesos cognitivos que direccionan la construcción del sentido en estos portadores de trastornos neurales. La investigación es realizada con alumnos de la APPARN (Associação de país e amigos dos autistas do Rio Grande do Norte), teniendo como grupo de control alumnos neurotípicos de otras instituciones, siendo los portadores de la síndrome practicantes de la lengua materna o grupo experimental de la búsqueda. Para elucidar el proceso de construcción del sentido por estos alumno, fueron desarrollados testes contiendo rasgos linguisticos norteadores responsables por el accionamiento de algunos procesos cognitivos como los esquemas (JOHNSON, 1987), frames (MINSKY, 1974), affordances (GIBSON, 1979) y simulación mental (BARSALOU, 1999). Los testes fueron basados en los presupuestos teóricos de la Lingüística Cognitiva, más precisamente, de la Teoria Neural del Linguaje. Los resultados apuntan para una posible justificativa para el comprometimiento de la construcción del sentido en portadores de la Síndrome de Asperger, que comprende directamente la relevancia intersubjetiva de la infersencias recibidas y construidas socialmente por los participantes específicamente de este análisis.

Information literacy: uma análise nas bibliotecas escolares da rede privada em Natal / RN

GUEDES, Clediane de Araújo; FARIAS, Gabriela Belmont de. Information literacy: uma análise nas bibliotecas escolares da rede privada em Natal / RN. Revista Digital de Biblioteconomia e Ciência da Informação, Campinas, v. 4, n. 2, p. 110-133, jan./jun. 2007

Universo encantado do cuidado na autopoiese docente: uma viagem epistemológica transdisciplinar

The health transition experienced in Brazilian health care model requires a metamorphosis in human and society, placing new demands on health and education. The Faculty of Science, Culture and Extension of Rio Grande do Norte (Facex), aware of their responsibilities to the Health System, which brings the principle of comprehensiveness as its structural axis, dared to implement a course of nursing in complex thinking and Experiential Pedagogy Humanescente with curriculum inter / transdisciplinary. For deployment of proprosta was not enough to reform thinking of educators, there was a need corporalizar new teaching practices that are aimed at the integral formation of human beings. In this context, emerged the workshop on Human Education autopoietic, self-forming area of the educator, where he developed an Action Research Existential (PA-E) which enabled experience, describe and analyze how the human autopoietic educators could contribute to the practice educational humanescente transdisciplinary curriculum project. Were worked out in meetings, knowledge necessary to practice the transdisciplinary 1st Meeting - learn to create; 2nd Meeting - learn to recognize the laws of nature with emphasis on complexity theory, 3rd Meeting - learn to organize, 4th meeting - namely autoestruturar themselves; 5th Meeting - know how to choose, 6th Meeting - knowing innovate 7th Meeting - namely exchange. Next an autobiographical perspective, we chose the metaphorical possibility to narrate the ways and strategies covered by the author and apprentice in the company of the Little Prince de Saint-Exupery, in search of a sensible pedagogical practice complex, which promotes re-enchant transdisicplinar education. The route involved five methodological connections: a literature review which relate to training for care in undergraduate nursing: the study of learning processes that drive the formation humanopoiética, emphasizing the relationship that involves the complexity and embodiment in the educational process transdisciplinary, highlighting the analysis of what is to learn from the findings of biosciences and recent cognitive theories of Maturana and Varela, the description of the interdisciplinary curriculum of the nursing course of Facex and Training Workshop, Human autopoietic, with emphasis on Experiential Education Humanescente; the report of seven meetings of the Workshops (cocoon), recording the experiences and listening to educators (luminescent butterflies), the final reflections with learning opportunized. Experientiality lived through, the expressions and words, educators say the influence of workshops for their teaching practices, highlighting it as a space for selforganizing, creating, learning and enchantment, and can identify the workshop as a place of transformation necessary for deployment an interdisciplinary curriculum. The knowledge emerging from the study indicate the need for permanent spaces of self, in which the educator learns from its body, between cognitive processes and vital, and in the experiences of their formative process the opportunity to act on the dimensions of knowing and being

Objetos de aprendizagem e alfabetização: a proposição de um encontro

This study investigates the development of Learning Objects for the literacy of children. It aims to know based in the notion of literacy teachers the main factors of academic failure in literacy and researching in Brazil, as well as identify relevant activities in the literacy process of children to support the creation of a set of Learning Objects. Refers to an exploratory research, which is configured as a qualitative nature case study, inspired in part in an action-research described by Thiollent (2003), conducted with ten early grades elementary school teachers of a public municipal school in Parnamirim / RN. As methodological options for data collection uses questionnaires and focuses on the group of teachers, analyzing the data, referring back to the ideas by Szymanski (2001; 2008) and content analysis, guided by Bardin (2002). The development of Learning Objects, follows the steps of development suggested by Garrett (2000). Rules in its multidisciplinary theoretical reference and promotes a conceptual dialogue on: Literacy; Literacy School Failure; Pedagogical Practice in Literacy; Thoughts and Language; Multimedia and Hypermedia; Learning Objects. Perceives that the act of education in literacy as an act of love, courage and social interaction between individuals - educator and pupil, so there is ownership of the object of knowledge in the relations with the world and with the experience, through a pedagogical practice that assumes all different knowledges, the moral political ideal, the mindsets of the students, and can make use of teaching materials that supports the learning process and are consistent with the educational objectives (FREIRE, 1998; FREINET, 1976; VYGOTSKY, 1998; FERREIRO AND TEBEROSKY, 1985; JONASSEN, 2000; WILEY, 2001). Figures out, through the teachers' opinions, five reasons for school failure in literacy, three inside the school environment: teacher; academic assistant and principal; student, and two outside the school environment: parents/family; government and public management. Presents a set of Learning Objects, based on the constructivist thought, developed from the identification of activities considered relevant by teachers in literacy's teaching and learning process. Suggests the use of Learning Objects as pedagogical practice in literacy as a digital resource that supports learning and can trigger important cognitive processes for the acquisition of reading and writing skills in the school environment

Objetivos e conteúdos no ensino de física para adultos: um estudo de caso

The dissertation presents the learning, production and results of a study with a group of adult students of a high school level class in a night time public school at the Zona Oeste district of Natal-RN. As a teacher of Physics of these adult students, whose age is between 17 and 65 years, we felt the need to deepen our knowledge about the specifics of these students and build ways of teaching which would lead to a more significant educational process beside them. Among these ways of teaching, we emphasize, first, the performance of an extra-class activity that triggered the students' oral narratives about their life stories. Such narratives have led us to prioritize, as goals of teaching: socialization and the rescue of the search for a permanent learning, self-esteem and skills development to promote the exercise of autonomy. The students' previous contacts with the country life showed to be extremely significant for their memories and motives, suggesting the theme "Nature" to be adopted as a matrix for generative themes to be adopted during the teaching and learning moments with them. Considering these results, we construct a teaching proposal for continued work with the class, with which we chose the "Climate" as a guiding theme of this proposal, here presented and analyzed. In addition to a movement between problematizations developed in a thematic framework - through the initial questions of the students -, and those in a more conceptual approach - that we induced -, we have adopted as central methodological aspect the use of oral and written language, both as an exercise of dialogue, Freire's perspective, such as a structural element of cognitive processes, the perspectives of Vygotsky and Bakhtin. The development of the proposal was registered by audio and teacher and students´ regular written records, for 1 month and a half. As positive outcomes of the proposal, we emphasize the changing attitudes of students, showing a significant increase of their initiative in participating of the classes, besides a creative and critical use of arguments during the situations studied

O padrão discursivo provérbio numa perspectiva cognitivo-experimental:expressões Idiomáticas em Grande Sertão: Veredas

Este estudio pretende dilucidar las motivaciones que llevan a los lectores del romance Grande Sertão: Veredas a la categorización de ciertas construcciones gramaticales que se encuentran en la obra como proverbiales. Para ello, recurren a la investigación de los procesos cognitivos implicados en la configuración del patrón discursivo proverbio, teniendo como soporte teórico a la Lingüística Cognitiva. En este empeño, nos ancoramos en las nociones de construcciones corporeizadas, simulación mental, frecuencia, patrón discursivo y en la expresión idiomática. Suponemos que los proverbios constituyen un patrón discursivo cristalizado a partir de la recurrencia de uso y, en virtud de eso, indagamos: ¿Qué mecanismos cognitivos son activados por los lectores en el proceso de categorización de las expresiones dichas proverbiales? Motivados por la situación problema presentada, formulamos algunos experimentos con la intención de aclarar las cuestiones investigadas y concluimos que los lectores recurren a constituciones construccionales subyacentes a los proverbios conocidos a través de las interacciones realizadas en su entorno sociocultural, para dar cuenta de la semántica de construcciones inéditas. En ese proceso, los esquemas y frames se activan a través de simulaciones mentales instanciadas por experiencias corporales y culturales, decisivas para la concretización de los procesos de las construcciones proverbiales

Influência do ciclo estral no efeito do diazepam na ansiedade e memória de ratas

Memory and anxiety are related phenomena. Several evidences suggest that anxiety is fundamental for learnining and may facilitate or impair the memory formation process depending of the context. The majority of animal studies of anxiety and fear use only males as experimental subjects, while studies with females are rare in the literature. However, the prevalence in phobic and anxiety disorders is greater in women than in men. Moreover, it is known that gender maybe influence benzodiazepine effects, the classic drugs used for anxiety disorders treatment. In this respect, to further investigate if fear/anxiety aspects related to learning in female subjects would contribute to the study of phobic and anxiety disorders and their relationship with learning/memory processes, the present work investigates (a) the effects of benzodiazepine diazepam on female rats performance in a aversive memory task that assess concomitantly anxiety/emotionality, as the interaction between both; (b) the influence of estrous cycle phases of female rats on diazepam effects at aversive memory and anxiety/emotionality, and the interaction between both and (c) the role of hormonal fluctuations during estrous cycle phases in absence of diazepam effects in proestrus, because female rats in this phase received or not mifepristone, the antagonist of progesterone receptor, previously to the diazepam treatment. For this purpose, the plus maze discriminative avoidance task, previously validated for studies of anxiety concomitantly to learning/memory, was used. The apparatus employed is an adaptation of a conventional plus maze, with two opens arms and two closed arms, one of which presenting aversive stimulation (noise and light). The parameters used were: time in non-aversive arm compared to time in aversive and percentage of time in aversive arm on several temporal divisions, in order to evaluate memory; percentage of time in open arms, risk assessment, head dipping and end exploring to evaluate anxiety ; and distance traveled for locomotion. In experiment I, we found anxiolytic effect of diazepam only for 4 mg/kg dose, however the amnestic effect appear at a dose of 2 mg/kg. In second experiment, rats were divided in groups according estrous cycle phase (metaestrus/diestrus, proestrus e estrus). In this experiment, when we considered estrous cycle phase or diazepam treatment, the results did not demonstrate any differences in anxiety/emotionality parameters. The amnestic effects of diazepam occur in female rats in metestrus/diestrus and estrus and is absent in proestrous rats. Proestrous female rats that received mifepristone exhibited the amnestic effect of diazepam and also anxiolytic effects, that it was not previously observed in this dose. The results have demonstrated dissociation of anxiolytic and amnestic diazepam effects, not previously observed in males; the absence of amnestic effect of diazepam in proestrous phase; and the possible role of progesterone in aversive memory over diazepam effect, because the mifepristone, associated with diazepam, caused amnestic effect in proestrus

Memória de reconhecimento em indivíduos adultos com mais de 45 anos

As we grow old, there are many cognitive processes which decline in the human brain. One of them is the memory, a function that allows retention and posterior use of knowledge learned during the life, understood as a result of multiple systems highly organized and spread in several neural regions. This work aimed to evaluate the recognition memory in adults over 45 years old through words and pictures recognition tasks and the use of two codification or learning conditions (same distracters and different distracters). Twelve individuals were studied (6 men and 6 women) aged between 45 and 88 years old and with similar demographic characteristics. They presented better performance on picture tasks rather than word tasks. Better results were also verified when the codification context had different distracters, which significantly reflected in a long term principally in elderly individuals. The results reached suggest that the codification context influenced the lists of pictures and words learning, mainly for the elderly ones, when compared to adults, and that these results can be related to the phenomena involved with the recognition memory, the recollection and familiarity

Avaliação da relação entre qualidade de sono e uma intervenção com jogos para o desempenho de crianças e adolescentes

The sleep is an active brain process that allows the efficient realization of daily tasks. The changes on sleep patterns may influence the different cognitive processes performance. Many recent studies show the possibility of cognitive performance improvement, through the cognitive training with the use of computer games. The question is if these interventions may be influenced by the sleep quality. Thus, we evaluated the sleep quality effect about the efficacy of an intervention with computers games based on the working memory and attention for a cognitive performance training of elementary school students. The sample was constituted by 42 students with average age of 10,43 years old (SD=1,23), with 22 male participants and 20 female participants. We used to evaluate the sleep with the parents a sleep questionnaire, a sleep diary and the Sleep Behavior Questionnaire. In regard to intervention, the subjectives were distributed in an experimental and in a control group, both with 21 participants. In the first group occurred the intervention that consisted in the working memory and attention training with two cognitive tasks (Safari e Brain Workshop) during 30 daily minutes, for a 6 weeks period. In an equal period, the students from the control group should reproduce an artwork using drawing software. To evaluate the cognitive performance we applied before and after the intervention period the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-III). The results showed that in both the groups the performance of the intelligence, working memory, attention and visuospatial skills was below of the mean. The cognitive processes evaluated after of intervention in the experimental group had a performance significantly higher in the Perceptual Reasoning Index (t = -6,24; p < 0,01) and in the Full Scale IQ (t = -5,09; p < 0,01) and Performance IQ (t = -6,52; p < 0,01), suggesting a improvement on the visuospatial skills, attention, working memory and processing speed. On the control group, the performance was significantly higher in the Coding subtest (t = -5,38; p< 0,01) and in the Perceptual Reasoning Index (t = -3,66; p = 0,01), suggesting a improvement on the visuospatial skills and attention. The mean obtained with the Sleep Behavior Questionnaire was 53,76 (SD=14,96) for an experimental group and 61,19 (SD=12,82) for a control group, indicating tendency for a bad sleep quality in that last one. Not only during the first days, but also in the last fifteen days of the intervention we verified in the two groups an adequate time to sleep, duration and regularity, in the weekdays and on the weekends. We didn t find significant differences between the two groups in none of the sleep variables. We verified statistically meaningful improvement on the performance of the experimental group with the intervention in the two games. We didn t verify significant correlations between the games performance index and in the sleep variables of the experimental group individuals. We verified significant correlations among the performance on the Brain Workshop and the Cubes subtest, the Perceptual Reasoning Index and the Scale Performance IQ, suggesting that the significant improvement of the visuospatial skills and of the attention was correlated with the performance in the Brain Workshop. Although the absence of correlations with the performance in the Safari, possibly it also has relieved in the improvement of the cognitive performance. The findings support the hypothesis that the computer games might be a satisfactory tool for the improvement of the performance in visuospatial skills and attention. This can be resulted of the insertion of visuospatial stimulations in the task, for example, graphical elements with thematic for children that increase the interest. The IQ below mean the individuals might have influenced the improvement absence on the cognitive processes like the working memory with games. Moreover, it wasn t verified a relation between the sleep quality and the intervention efficacy. It might have been influenced by the n of the sample. Future studies must focalize in the improvement of the effect of the interventions with games

Sono e percepção visuoespacial em trabalhadores de uma empresa petroquímica submetidos a esquemas de trabalho em turnos alternantes

Shift work consists of an array of unusual work hours, such as evenings and weekends, and increasing workload, in order to meet the uninterrupted production, which leads to changes in the quality, duration and regularity of sleep. Research indicates that sleep alteration cause cognitive processes to become slower, unstable and prone to errors, leading to loss of cognitive functions such as visuospatial perception. In this sense, this research aimed to evaluate sleep quality and its relation to visuospatial perception in workers in alternating shifts. Participants were 21 panel operators in a petrochemical company, male, aged 19-53 years. All participants were subjected to schedules of alternating shifts (day and night) of 12 nonstop hours and data were collected from 10 workers who were assigned to the day shift and 11 workers assigned to the night shift. For the sleep evaluation were used the Sleep Diary, the Sleep Habits Questionnaire, the Chronotype Identification Questionnaire and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). The visuospatial skills were assessed using the Rey Complex Figure Test and attention was assessed using a portable version of the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT). The results showed that the general sample of workers obtained poor sleep quality on working days and good sleep quality during the work break. There was shortened sleep duration in the work week and appropriate duration in the work break. No losses were found in the workers visuospatiality, but the good quality of sleep during the work break was correlated to adequate visuospatial performance, for the day shift workers. The attention performance oscillated throughout the work hours, especially on the night shift. It is concluded that the alternating shifts work scheme can be detrimental to the sleep quality workers and a good sleep quality can contribute to a better visuospatial performance

Efeito agudo do exercício aeróbio vigoroso sobre as funções executivas em adolescentes

Executive functions are determinant cognitive processes for student success, since they execute and control complex cognitive activities such as reasoning, planning and solving problems. The development of the executive functions performances begin early at childhood going through the adolescence until adulthood, concomitant with the neuroanatomical, functional and blood perfusion changes over the brain. In this scenario, exercise has been considered an important environmental factor for neurodevelopment, as well as for the promotion of cognitive and brain health. However, there are no large scientific studies investigating the effects of a single vigorous aerobic exercise session on executive functions in adolescents. Objective: To verify the acute effect of vigorous aerobic exercise on executive functions in adolescents. Methods: A randomized controlled trial (RCT) with crossover design was used. 20 pubescent from both sexes/gender with age between 10 and 16 years were submitted to two sessions of 30min each: 1) The aerobic exercise session intensity was between 65 and 75% of heart rate reserve, in which 5min for warm-up, 20min at the target intensity and 5min of cool down; and 2) control session watching cartoons. The computerized Stroop test – Testinpacs and trail making test were used to evaluate the inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility assessment respectively, before and after both experimental and control sessions. The reaction time (RT) and number of errors (n) of Stroop test were recorded. The total time (TT) and the number of errors (n) of the trail making test were also recorded. Results: The control session’s RT did not present significant differences in the Stroop test. On the other hand, the exercise session’s RT decreased significantly (p<0.01) after the session. The number of errors made at the Stroop test had no significant differences in control and exercise sessions. The ΔTT of trail making test of exercise session was significantly (p<0.001) lower than the control session’s. Errors made in trail making test did not show significant differences between control and exercise sessions. Additionally, there was significant and positive association among the Stroop test ΔRT of exercise session with xiii chronological age (r= 0.635, p=0.001; r 2 = 0.404, p=0.003) and sexual maturation (rs= 0.580, p=0.007; r 2 = 0.408, p=0.002). Differently, there was no association among the control session ΔRT and chronological age (r= – 0.144, p=0.273; r 2 = 0.021, p=0.545) or sexual maturation (rs= –0.155, p=0.513; r 2 = 0.015, p=0.610). Conclusion: Vigorous aerobic exercise seems to improve acutely executive functions in adolescents. The effect of exercise on inhibitory control performance was associated to pubertal stage and chronological age. In other words, the benefits of exercise were more evident in early adolescence (↑ ΔRT) and its magnitude decreases along the growing up process.

A neuromodulação do córtex pré-frontal dorsolateral na percepção de tempo em contexto neutro ou emocionalmente ativo

The time perception is critical for environmental adaptation in humans and other species. The temporal processing, has evolved through different neural systems, each responsible for processing different time scales. Among the most studied scales is that spans the arrangement of seconds to minutes. Evidence suggests that the dorsolateral prefrontal (DLPFC) cortex has relationship with the time perception scale of seconds. However, it is unclear whether the deficit of time perception in patients with brain injuries or even "reversible lesions" caused by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in this region, whether by disruption of other cognitive processes (such as attention and working memory) or the time perception itself. Studies also link the region of DLPFC in emotional regulation and specifically the judgment and emotional anticipation. Given this, our objective was to study the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the time perception intervals of active and emotionally neutral stimuli, from the effects of cortical modulation by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), through the cortical excitation (anodic current), inhibition (cathode current) and control (sham) using the ranges of 4 and 8 seconds. Our results showed that there is an underestimation when the picture was presented by 8 seconds, with the anodic current in the right DLPFC, there is an underestimation and with cathodic current in the left DLPFC, there is an overestimation of the time reproduction with neutral ones. The cathodic current over the left DLPFC leads to an inverse effect of neutral ones, an underestimation of time with negative pictures. Positive or negative pictures improved estimates for 8 second and positive pictures inhibited the effect of tDCS in DLPFC in estimating time to 4 seconds. With this work, we conclude that the DLPFC plays a key role in the o time perception and largely corresponds to the stages of memory and decision on the internal clock model. The left hemisphere participates in the perception of time in both active and emotionally neutral contexts, and we can conclude that the ETCC and an effective method to study the cortical functions in the time perception in terms of cause and effect.

Information literacy: uma análise nas bibliotecas escolares da rede privada em Natal / RN

GUEDES, Clediane de Araújo; FARIAS, Gabriela Belmont de. Information literacy: uma análise nas bibliotecas escolares da rede privada em Natal / RN. Revista Digital de Biblioteconomia e Ciência da Informação, Campinas, v. 4, n. 2, p. 110-133, jan./jun. 2007