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This study's purpose is to describe the performance of healthy community dwelling Saudi Arabians on fluency tasks and explore the effects of age, sex and education. Arabic-speaking Saudi Arabians > 18 were chosen through convenience sampling. Included were healthy community members whose first language is Arabic. Excluded were anyone with a past history of psychiatric or central neurological diseases, or who was taking medications that affect the central nervous system. Information regarding the variables sex, age, and education was collected. Participants were required to name as many words as they could that started with the letters Ain (ع), Sheen (ش), and Qaf (ق) (letter task), and words that belonged to the categories "countries," "boy names," "girl names," and "four-legged animals" (categorical task). Mean scores were derived for the three letters (ASQ) and four categories (TC). Descriptive statistics, percentile curves, and quantile regressions (0.05, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, and 0.95) were conducted to determine performance range. The study included 301 participants, comprising 162 (53.47%) females. The M(SD) for age was 46.74 (16) and for years of education 14 (4.78). The M(SD) for ASQ was 26.26 (10.01), and for TC, 81.56 (20.77). Percentile curves demonstrated an initial increase, followed by a decrease, in performance with increasing age on letter and categorical fluency tasks. Performance scores showed an increase of 1 to 1.5 and 2 to 3.5 words in the letter and categorical tasks, respectively, for each additional year of education across the quantiles (both with p < 0.0001). Males scored higher in the 0.05 and 0.95 quantiles of the letter fluency task only. We demonstrated a range of normative performance from a Saudi Arabian community, with varying age and education levels. The assessment demonstrated the importance of education as a major variable linearly associated with performance, influencing both tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of return to play assessment following a sports concussion, athletes may have to complete a cognitive task several times within days. The current longitudinal study aimed to examine the practice effect associated with the serial administration of the switch task. We hypothesized that the practice effect would be the greatest between the first and second assessments and that a plateau would be obtained by the third assessment. Forty healthy university students completed the switch task four times at an interval of 48-hour, with half of them doing version A on all visits (AA group), while the others alternated between A and B every other assessment (AB group). For response accuracy, performance generally improved from V1 to V2, and from V2 to V3 (ps ≤.001), irrespective of group. For reaction time, a significant interaction of Visit × Group was observed. Specifically, AA group performance improved from V1 to V2, and from V2 to V3, while the AB group only improved from V2 to V3 (ps ≤.01). Performance improved over the first three assessments and stabilized with no statistically significant change between the third and fourth testing sessions. Although the use of an alternative version has helped reduce the practice effect, it did not help in eliminating it. The current results highlight the need for further examination of the practice effect and its implication in clinical decision-making. Clinicians working in the sports concussion field must take the practice effect into account when they use the switch task for serial testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term asomatognosia refers to a unilateral disturbance of body ownership following a cerebrovascular incident. Patients with asomatognosia consider the contralesional limbs as missing or having disappeared from awareness. This neuropsychological disorder modifies body ownership in terms of perceptual experience, visual identification and sense of belonging of contralesional body parts. In the literature, asomatognosia is usually tested by using verbal scales. In this study, we first developed a new test to assess asomatognosia that includes a visual identification task and a reaching task. We examined 16 healthy participants and 20 right brain damaged patients. The participants were asked to identify, reach and touch their left hand when positioned in peripersonal space, in presence of an extraneous hand (belonging to the examiner). We analyzed how the deficit is modulated by the reciprocal positions in space of the two limbs, the relationship with personal neglect and the anatomical correlate using a Voxel-based Lesion Symptom Mapping (VLSM) analysis with CT data. The results show that the asomatognosia cannot be simply considered as one of the many manifestations of personal neglect but should be taken into account as a "productive" disorder characterized by the misidentification of the own hand with an extraneous hand. The VLSM analysis of patients with asomatognosia revealed the involvement of the inferior and middle frontal lobe. The novel task that has been developed in the present study could be used as an objective tool to measure this specific disorder of body ownership or to uncover subclinical conditions of asomatognosia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Executive functions (EFs) have been assessed with performance-based measures and rating scales. Research has shown a lack of association between these two methods. One factor that might contribute to this difference is the structure provided on performance-based measures that is not provided on rating scales. This study examined the role of structure on self-directed task completion, an aspect of EF, using a novel unstructured performance-based task (UPT). Method: Children aged 8–12 years (38 attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, ADHD; 42 typically developing) and their caregivers participated. We compared performance on the UPT, performance-based measures of EF (Stroop test and Trail-Making Test), and a rating scale to assess EF (Barkley Deficits in Executive Functioning Scale–Children and Adolescents, BDEFS–CA). Results: Group differences were found across all measures. Significant associations emerged between the UPT and Stroop test, Trail-Making Test, and BDEFS–CA, but no significant associations were found between the Stroop test or Trail-Making Test and the BDEFS–CA. In regression analyses, performance-based tasks and the rating scale both uniquely predicted UPT performance. The UPT was a significant predictor of group status when entered with performance-based tasks, but the UPT did not enter as a significant predictor when entered with the rating scale. Conclusion: The UPT is a promising measure to assess self-directed task completion in children with ADHD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) helps to quantify vigilance impairments. Previous studies, in which five SART sessions on one day were administered, demonstrated worse performance during the first session than during the others. The present study comprises two experiments to identify a cause of this phenomenon. Method: Experiment 1, counting eighty healthy participants, assessed effects of repetition, napping, and time of day on SART performance through a between-groups design. The SART was performed twice in the morning or twice in the afternoon; half of the participants took a 20-minute nap before the second SART. A strong correlation between error count and reaction time (RT) suggested effects of test instruction. Participants gave equal weight to speed and accuracy in Experiment 1; therefore, results of 20 participants were compared to those of 20 additional participants who were told to prefer accuracy (Experiment 2). Results: The average SART error count in Experiment 1 was 10.1; the median RT was 280 ms. Neither repetition nor napping influenced error count or RT. Time of day did not influence error count, but RT was significantly longer for morning than for afternoon SARTs. The additional participants in Experiment 2 had a 49% lower error count and a 14% higher RT than the participants in Experiment 1. Error counts reduced by 50% from the first to the second session of Experiment 2, irrespective of napping or time of day. Conclusions: Preferring accuracy over speed was associated with a significantly lower error count. The data suggest that a worse performance in the first SART session only occurs when instructing participants to prefer accuracy, which is caused by repetition, not by napping or time of day. Note: We advise that participants are instructed to prefer accuracy over speed when performing the SART and that a full practice session is included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]