This means that it is often difficult to know exactly what cognitive faculties are being measured by a given test (Kessels, 2019 Schmidt et al., 1994). Neuropsychological tests tend to be developed from a practical rather than a theoretical standpoint, and often tap multiple cognitive abilities in a single test (Sohlberg & Mateer, 1989). This insensitivity may contribute to the widely observed lack of correlation between objective neuropsychological tests and patients’ subjective reports of their own cognitive problems (Jenkins et al., 2006 Srisurapanont et al., 2017). As a result, they tend to lack sensitivity to the less severe, and often more diffuse cognitive difficulties encountered by many clinical populations (Nelson & Suls, 2013). Many neuropsychological tests were originally designed to diagnose severe cognitive difficulties (e.g., resulting from stroke). Specifically, we will address the attention domain, which was the most frequently assessed cognitive domain in our survey of cancer-related cognitive impairment studies (Horowitz et al., 2019). The goal of this paper is to begin to address this problem, using factor analysis tools to map the relationships. However, we currently do not understand the relationship between existing neuropsychological tests and widely used cognitive paradigms. We and others have proposed that deriving new measures based on contemporary work in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience could help to solve these problems (Carter & Barch, 2007 Horowitz et al., 2018). However, this approach may be reaching its limits as a clinical research tool in many fields, due to two major issues: sensitivity and construct validity (Bilder & Reise, 2019 Horowitz et al., 2018 Howieson, 2019 Kessels, 2019 Marcopulos & Łojek, 2019 Parsons & Duffield, 2019). By bringing these fields closer together, we can improve our scientific understanding of cognition, and ultimately improve the welfare of people who suffer from cognitive disorders and deficits.Īssessing cognitive functioning across the gamut of health and mental health conditions has traditionally relied on standardized neuropsychological test batteries (Foti et al., 2017 Helmstaedter et al., 2003 Meade et al., 2018 Vives et al., 2015). Furthermore, we hope we have provided a template for other researchers to explore the connections between cognitive paradigms and neuropsychological tests in domains beyond attention. Our results should provide guidance for which neuropsychological tests should be classified as attention tests, and hopefully provide inspiration for the development of new clinical assessments based on experimental attention paradigms. The goal of this paper is to begin to address this problem, using factor analysis tools to map the relationships, specifically in the domain of attention. However, we do not understand the relationship between existing neuropsychological tests and widely used cognitive paradigms. Deriving new measures based on contemporary work in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience could help to solve these problems. However, this approach is limited as a clinical research tool due to two major issues: sensitivity and construct validity. These five tests can be classified as attention tests.Īssessment of cognitive function in clinical populations, for both clinical and research purposes, is primarily based on standardized neuropsychological testing. Digit Symbol Coding and Spatial Span tap attentional capacity, while TMT-A, TMT-B, and Letter Cancellation tap search (or attention-shifting) ability. We conclude that Digit Span and Arithmetic tests should not be classified as attention tests. A hierarchical model where a general cognitive factor was imposed above the five specific factors fit as well as the model without the general factor. Confirmatory analysis in 279 held-out participants showed that this model fit better than competing models. Exploratory factor analysis in a subset of 357 participants identified a five-factor structure: (1) attentional capacity (Multiple Object Tracking, Visual Working Memory, Digit Symbol Coding, Spatial Span), (2) search (Visual Search, TMT-A, TMT-B, Letter Cancellation) (3) Digit Span (4) Arithmetic and (5) Sustained Attention (GradCPT). Participants ( n = 636) completed an on-line battery () of six experimental tests and eight neuropsychological tests. Specifically, do neuropsychological tests commonly used to assess attention measure the same construct as attention paradigms used in cognitive psychology and neuroscience? We built on the “general attention factor”, comprising several widely used experimental paradigms (Huang et al., 2012).
We investigated whether standardized neuropsychological tests and experimental cognitive paradigms measure the same cognitive faculties.
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