TY - JOUR
T1 - Multi-target visual search organisation across the lifespan
T2 - cancellation task performance in a large and demographically stratified sample of healthy adults
AU - Benjamins, Jeroen S
AU - Dalmaijer, Edwin S
AU - Ten Brink, Antonia F
AU - Nijboer, Tanja C W
AU - Van der Stigchel, Stefan
PY - 2019/9/17
Y1 - 2019/9/17
N2 - Accurate tests of cognition are vital in (neuro)psychology. Cancellation tasks are popular tests of attention and executive function, in which participants find and 'cancel' targets among distractors. Despite extensive use in neurological patients, it remains unclear whether demographic variables (that vary among patients) affect cancellation performance. Here, we describe performance in 523 healthy participants of a web-based cancellation task. Age, sex, and level of education did not affect cancellation performance in this sample. We provide norm scores for indices of spatial bias, perseverations, revisits, processing speed, and search organisation. Furthermore, a cluster analysis identified four cognitive profiles among participants, characterised by many omissions (N=18), many revisits (N=18), relatively poor search organisation (N=125), and relatively good search organisation (N=362). Thus, patient scores pertaining to search organisation should be interpreted cautiously: Given the large proportion of healthy individuals with poor search organisation, disorganised search in patients might be pre-existing rather than disorder-related.
AB - Accurate tests of cognition are vital in (neuro)psychology. Cancellation tasks are popular tests of attention and executive function, in which participants find and 'cancel' targets among distractors. Despite extensive use in neurological patients, it remains unclear whether demographic variables (that vary among patients) affect cancellation performance. Here, we describe performance in 523 healthy participants of a web-based cancellation task. Age, sex, and level of education did not affect cancellation performance in this sample. We provide norm scores for indices of spatial bias, perseverations, revisits, processing speed, and search organisation. Furthermore, a cluster analysis identified four cognitive profiles among participants, characterised by many omissions (N=18), many revisits (N=18), relatively poor search organisation (N=125), and relatively good search organisation (N=362). Thus, patient scores pertaining to search organisation should be interpreted cautiously: Given the large proportion of healthy individuals with poor search organisation, disorganised search in patients might be pre-existing rather than disorder-related.
KW - Adult
KW - Aged
KW - Attention/physiology
KW - Executive Function/physiology
KW - Female
KW - Humans
KW - Male
KW - Middle Aged
KW - Pattern Recognition, Visual/physiology
KW - Psychomotor Performance/physiology
KW - Space Perception/physiology
KW - Young Adult
U2 - 10.1080/13825585.2018.1521508
DO - 10.1080/13825585.2018.1521508
M3 - Article (Academic Journal)
C2 - 30221584
SN - 1382-5585
VL - 26
SP - 731
EP - 748
JO - Aging, Neuropsychology and Cognition
JF - Aging, Neuropsychology and Cognition
IS - 5
ER -