Cognitive Change Battery: An Assessment for Serial Administration

ABSTRACT
Detecting change in neuropsychological functioning over time is critical for proper diagnosis and
management of many neurological psychiatric and psychological conditions It is well documented that most
commonly used cognitive assessments produce significant retest effects such as practice and regression to
the mean effects Retest effects can cause substantial changes in test scores between assessments and make
it virtually impossible to distinguish between true changes in cognitive performance and changes caused by
repeated testing Failure to account for such retest effects can lead to diagnostic disagreements failure to
detect deleterious effects of an illness or injury or inappropriate attribution of improved scores to recovery or
response to treatment
In this Phase I STTR application we propose to develop and evaluate the Cognitive Change Battery
CCB a non verbal tablet based cognitive assessment instrument for serial neuropsychological evaluations
The CCB adopts novel cognitive tasks that are resistant to practice effects and integrates them with a
Bayesian regression model to correct for regression to the mean and remaining practice effects
The complete test battery will measure four psychometrically distinct cognitive domains working
memory long term memory processing speed and executive inhibition The resulting battery will
provide clinicians with an instrument that a allows valid assessments of a patient s initial neurocognitive
status delivered as a composite score reflecting general cognitive performance and subtest scores for the four
distinct cognitive domains b enables unambiguous interpretation of changes in neurocognitive status over
time and c is composed of cognitive tests that do not require language and are therefore suitable for non
English speaking and language impaired populations
Phase of this project will determine the psychometric qualities of the CCB including the absence of retest
effects in a sample of N subjects For Phase of this project we will develop additional tests so that
each cognitive domain will be represented by at least two subtests and establish population norms for adults
age to years NARRATIVE
Current neurocognitive assessment batteries are ill suited for repeated administration due to significant
retest effects We plan to develop and evaluate an innovative tablet based cognitive battery the Cognitive
Change Battery CCB The CCB will provide the clinician with an easy to use psychometrically sound
repeatable assessment instrument that will improve diagnostic accuracy and management of neurological and
psychiatric conditions