Cognitive Ability Testing

There are a number of issues which can have a negative impact on the accuracy of cognitive ability testing. Any issue which has a negative impact on the accuracy of the assessment will also have a negative impact on the accuracy of the decisions made based on the assessment information. While there are numerous textbooks devoted to psychological testing, the main issues which can influence assessment accuracy are relate to appropriate test selection, test validity and reliability, test administration, and test score interpretation. It is beyond the scope of this book to go into these issues in detail. However, the key point is that employees in an 

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This battery, which we call CAT (Cognitive Abilities Tests), has been administered to a number of samples varying in size from 40-860. These samples are summarized in Table 1. In each case, a separate measure of intelligence was obtained. These measures differ across the samples. One of our main interests in testing these groups was to determine if the measures from this battery would predict general intelligence. 

Detterman DK 1990 Computerized cognitive abilities tests for research and teaching. Micro Psychol 4 51-62... 

There is a range of data available at national, LEA, whole-school, individual and group levels. These include Performance and Assessment (PANDA) data (including value added information), Standardised Assessment Tests and Cognitive Ability Tests, to name but a few. 

Uncertainty factor 3 severe headaches are known to occur in angina patients medicated with nitroglycerin and the threshold for vasodilatation does not vary greatly among individuals. The effect was also a threshold effect for central nervous systems depression (no change in cognitive abilities slight imbalance in one of several sensitive motor tests). Individual variation in susceptibility to central nervous system depressants such as anesthetics varies no more than 2-fold. 

The important point in the present context is that these cognitive abilities do not come for free. It is clear that high levels of intensionality are extremely difficult to cope with in computational terms. Kinderman et al. (in press), for example, tested normal adults with a series of tests similar to those used in standard ToM tests but which allowed for up to fifth order intensionality (as opposed to the conventional second order of standard ToM false belief tests). At the same time, subjects were also given tests of environmental causal relationships that required only memory of a sequence of events. Memory tests involved causal relationships of up to sixth orders of embeddness ( A caused B which caused C which. caused F ). Error rates on memory tasks varied fairly uniformly between 5-15% across the six levels of embeddness with no significant trends in contrast, error rates on the ToM tasks increased exponentially with order of embeddness (i.e. intensionality). 

Paper and pencil tests were fine for measuring cognitive ability and required little physical coordination, other than the ability to read and to manipulate a pencil. We provided ordinary reading glasses to offset the loss of near vision resulting from BZ s anticholinergic effects on the muscles of visual accommodation. Later Dr. Dave Harper (one of our draftee doctors) developed an eye-drop sequence that obviated the need for glasses. 

Number Facility (Fig. 30), the most consistently used single test of cognitive ability, was affected very similarly to Pegboard performance (Fig. 31), which is a test of psychomotor function. Near (Fig. 32) and Far (Fig. 33) visual acuity were likewise almost identically affected. 

Few studies have examined the effects of benzodiazepines on other cognitive abilities. Rusted et al.170 reported that 5 and 10 mg diazepam impaired performance on a logical reasoning test, but had no effect on a mental rotation task. Judd et al.178 found that 30 mg flurazepam, but not 15 mg midazolam, impaired arithmetic (addition) abilities the day after drug administration. In contrast, flurazepam had no effect on reading comprehension. 

Mice with abnormally poor or abnormally good cognitive abilities may produce aberrant behavior in this test (e.g., increased or decreased social interaction, respectively). To rule out this possibility, consider testing mice in some additional memory paradigms. Memory tests, such as the Morris Water Maze and OFT habituation, may be performed to assess cognitive functions in any abnormally behaving mouse. 

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