Procedural framework to examine the potential impact of malnutrition on cognitive and emotional performance and its implications on "becoming-self" in schoolchildren in Caracas.

Abstract

The human being constitutes a biopsychosocial reality (WHO, 2021). It should be understood as what is in the concrete and as everything that still has the possibility of being. In this sense, the purpose of this study was to develop a procedural framework to study, in the future, the possible effects of malnutrition on cognitive and emotional performance, as well as its implications in 'becoming self' in children from the metropolitan area of Caracas, aged between 8 and 12 years. For this purpose, a theoretical review of malnutrition was conducted, and its relationship with the abovementioned variables was considered. In addition, the philosophical positions on the human person proposed by Heidegger, Stein, and Zubiri were studied. At the methodological level, the study was framed within the scientific pretensions of a feasible project, approached from a mixed perspective, comprising a first phase of quantitative data collection through four tests of the emotional and cognitive domains of the neurobehavioral battery NIH Toolbox, followed by a statistical analysis of the results and a qualitative integration of a speculative-hermeneutic nature, related to the constitution and development of the human person in the children evaluated. The sample was made up of children beneficiaries of the Centro de Atención Nutricional Infantil de Antímano (CANIA), and therefore it was non-probabilistic and propositional.

The feasibility analysis was carried out with a pilot sample of 11 subjects in the mentioned age groups, and the results showed that malnutrition could be an important factor in the cognitive and emotional development of the subjects studied. Furthermore, it was found that maternal education, physiological comorbidities, and child abuse could also have an impact on children's performance and recovery in the areas mentioned above. Malnutrition could negatively affect the development of human beings insofar as the appropriation and realization of one's potentialities are limited by neuropsychological development that is far from optimal conditions. However, affection and maternal care have been shown to catalyze the possibilities of recovery and development of affected children. It is important to emphasize that the analyses were carried out based on a pilot experience and that, to have statistical certainty, we would need to complete the project definitively.