Abstract
The objective of this study was to investigate executive functions (EFs) in older adults with Parkinson’s disease (PD). It was a cross-sectional and comparative study, composed of 62 participants divided into PD group (n = 31; M age = 75.26; SD age = 7.26) and control group (n = 31; M age = 74.03; SD age = 6.95), aged 61 to 93 years, recruited for convenience in 5 cities in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The instruments used were a sociodemographic data questionnaire; MMSE; GDS-15; BIS-11; verbal fluency tasks (FAS and animals), DEX; WCST-64 and FDT. Descriptive analyzes and Student’s t and Chi-square tests were used. The PD group had a lower performance in the WCST-64 and FDT tests compared to controls, indicating worse performance in tasks that required reasoning, cognitive flexibility and processing speed, in addition, showed difficulties in performing tasks that require EF (DEX).
Keywords:
cognition; neuropsychology; aging; problem solving; neuropsychological assessment