Title: Obesity and Memory
Authors: Subhadra Sorrakayala, Veeramohan Rao
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.18535/jmscr/v5i3.59
Abstract
Background: New research suggests that ill effects of obesity may not stop with physical health, mental health may be affected leading to long standing impact like low self esteem, depression, other psychological problems and difficulties in learning and memory. Short term memory plays important role in daily life for remembering telephone numbers, remembering directions, persons and names and short list of items. Short term memory also helps in answering questions in the viva, interviews, and doing calculations.
Aim and Objectives: To find out the short term memory status by visual tasks in obese and non obese children of urban areas. Materials and methods; 80 subjects in the age group of 9 to 15 yrs were taken from the various schools in Kurnool. Among them 40 subjects are obese (as cases) and 40 subjects are non obese children (as controls) for this study. The following tests of Short term memory were conducted which are sub tests of TOMAL (Test of memory and learning) and Weschler’s intelligence scales for children. Visual tasks include the following tests; 1. Alphabetical (Letter span) test 2.Numerical (Digit span) test 3.Word memorization test 4. Object recall test.
Results: Non obese children are having better overall short term memory than the obese children and also performed better in all the individual visual tasks memory tests.
Conclusion: Obesity affects short term memory in children.
Keywords: Obesity, short term memory, alphabetical test, numerical test,
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