Caracterización Neuropsicológica y Socioafectiva e Intervención Socio-Cognitiva de Excombatientes en el Conflicto Armado Colombiano

Abstract

Wars and armed conflicts may affect the cognitive and affective process and social response. Sometimes, causing psycho-social affectations in individuals and communities that experimented direct or indirect exposure to these events. Colombia has lived a low intensity-chronic armed conflict for more than 50 years where the population has developed different strategies for adaptations to everyday demands of their social contexts For that, one of the purposes of this thesis was to evaluate and characterize, through neuropsychological and socio-affective protocols, possible alterations in the affective and cognitive functioning (Attention, inhibitory control, empathy, emotional recognition) of victims, ex-combatants and general population with different levels of armed conflict exposure in Colombia. The results of this characterization permitted us to design a Social Cognitive Training (SCT) that was tested in a group of ex-combatants in their reintegration route to civil life. We used neuropsychological instruments such as Trail Making Test A-B form (TMT), The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), and the INECO Frontal Screening (IFS) and computerized task as the Attentional Network Test-Interactions-Vigilance (ANTI-V), Social Categorization Switching Task (SCST), Go-No-Go task and Emotional Recognition Task (ERT) synchronized with electroencephalographic records. Chapters 2 and 3 also evaluated affective processing using instruments such as the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), Social Skills Scale, and the Reading Mind in the Eyes (RMIE). ERT, and the affective processing protocol also included measures to evaluate motives and situations of aggressive behavior such as the Inventory of Motives for Aggression (IMA in the Spanish version) and the Inventory of Situations and Aggressive Behaviors (ISCA in the Spanish version). Some of these measures were used to evaluate the pre-post effects of SCT receive by a group of ex-combatants in their reintegration process compared with another group of ex-combatants that kept their conventional reintegration route.