Flexibilidad cognitiva y consumo de alcohol en estudiantes de la facultad de psicología de la Universidad Santo Tomás Sede Villavicencio

Abstract

The present research aims to describe the characteristics of cognitive flexibility in alcohol-consuming students from the faculty of psychology of the Santo Tomás University, Villavicencio, based on the positivist epistemological basis and the analytical empirical paradigm. It employs a quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional and non-experimental methodology, in a sample of 121 students from the faculty of psychology, the instruments to be used are the Questionnaire for Identification of Disorders Due to Alcohol Consumption (AUDIT), and the Test Card Classification based on Wisconsin. Among the results, it was found that for both sex there is a low level of alcohol consumption, being the low risk category, where 78% of the participants were located, both in the male and female population. Regarding cognitive flexibility, it is evident that both groups presented a performance below the expected in the category of correct answers, being the female gender the one that registered more participants with a performance outside the expected levels, corresponding to 64%, compared to 55.5% registered in men. On the other hand, the most representative error was that of maintenance, since a performance below the expected levels was obtained, both in the male population, with 88.9%, and in the female population, with a report of 84, 4%. In the main conclusions, it was found that these results suggested that the consumption of alcoholic beverages is not the only cause by which it can affect cognitive flexibility when performing a task, said difficulty in its execution may be related to aspects such as attentional failures or difficulties in the process of internalizing learning, rather than by perseverative responses, a characteristic type of error in alcohol consumers