Maria Dolores Castro-Rojas

University of Costa Rica | UCR · Instituto de Investigaciones Psicológicas (IIP)

This study is part of a design-based research project aimed at designing a learning intervention for enabling Costa Rican older people to use information and communication technologies for cognitive activity and social interaction. Data from relevant literature, a focus group with older adults, and interviews with professionals teaching older adult...

This study describes the barriers and supportive factors for learning about and using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) present during a learning intervention designed to enable older adults to use ICT for fostering healthy aging in terms of promoting functional ability. Forty-one adults, older than 60 years, participated in a blende...

Insights to prevent chronic diseases and promote healthy aging, wellbeing and quality of life may be found within key communities where individuals have exhibited increase resilience and longevity. Around the world, five key communities—Sardinia (Italy), Nicoya (Costa Rica), Okinawa (Japan), Ikaria (Greece) and Loma Linda California (U.S.)—have bee...

This study is part of a project aimed at designing a learning intervention to enable older Costa Ricans to use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for enhancing cognitive activity and social interaction. This paper presents some results of the designed learning intervention related to participants´ willingness to include the proposed a...

This thesis aims to identify and understand key elements that might be included in designing suitable learning interventions for enabling older adults using information and communication technologies (ICT) (i.e. computers, mobile devices and applications) for enhancing cognitive activity, increasing social interaction, and promoting successful and...

Several authors have suggested that ICT have the potential to promote healthy aging by supporting processes as social inclusion, access to products and services and learning. However, older people are not often using ICT and information about how are they using ICT is scarce. Data from Costa Rica Census 2011 and two questionnaires showed that older...

This paper will demonstrate how avatar-mediated interactions and learning in networks might lead to identity formation and rehabilitation of language after a brain injury. With references to Vygotsky's notion of the social origins of higher mental functions (1978) and Hutchins claims that cognition is something that is embodied and externally distr...

GLOBE is a global educational program for elementary and high school levels, and its main purpose in Costa Rica is to develop scientific thinking and interest for science in high school students through hydrology research projects that allow them to relate science with environmental issues in their communities. Youth between 12 and 17 years old fro...

Resumen Dado que el rendimiento cognitivo es uno de los principales determinantes para el envejecimiento saludable, se realizó una primera descripción del rendimiento en funciones ejecutivas y memoria de 110 Personas Adultas Mayores (PAM) que participan en programas formales en San José, Costa Rica. Se registraron datos sociodemográficos y se eval...

El proyecto busca diversificar la oferta educativa de niños, niñas y adolescentes que viven en condiciones de pobreza y riesgo social, mediante una propuesta didáctica con robótica educativa en la que las personas participantes diseñan, construyen y programan prototipos robóticos ambientados en situaciones reales. Las construcciones se hacen con bl...

The serotonin 1A receptor agonist 8-hydroxy-2-(di-n-propylamino)tetralin (8-OH-DPAT) produces a drastic facilitation of ejaculation characterized by a significant reduction in the number of pre-ejaculatory intromissions and a shortening of ejaculation latency. In the present study, the authors evaluated whether this facilitation of ejaculation can...