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Test–Retest Reliability of Measures Commonly Used to Measure Striatal Dysfunction across Multiple Testing Sessions: A Longitudinal Study
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Test–Retest Reliability of Measures Commonly Used to Measure Striatal Dysfunction across Multiple Testing Sessions: A Longitudinal Study

Clare E Palmer, Douglas Langbehn, Sarah J Tabrizi and Marina Papoutsi
Frontiers in psychology, Vol.8, pp.2363-2363
01/12/2018
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02363
PMCID: PMC5770367
PMID: 29375455
url
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02363View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Cognitive impairment is common amongst many neurodegenerative movement disorders such as Huntington’s disease (HD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD) across multiple domains. There are many tasks available to assess different aspects of this dysfunction, however, it is imperative that these show high test–retest reliability if they are to be used to track disease progression or response to treatment in patient populations. Moreover, in order to ensure effects of practice across testing sessions are not misconstrued as clinical improvement in clinical trials, tasks which are particularly vulnerable to practice effects need to be highlighted. In this study we evaluated test–retest reliability in mean performance across three testing sessions of four tasks that are commonly used to measure cognitive dysfunction associated with striatal impairment: a combined Simon Stop-Signal Task; a modified emotion recognition task; a circle tracing task; and the trail making task. Practice effects were seen between sessions 1 and 2 across all tasks for the majority of dependent variables, particularly reaction time variables; some, but not all, diminished in the third session. Good test–retest reliability across all sessions was seen for the emotion recognition, circle tracing, and trail making test. The Simon interference effect and stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) from the combined-Simon-Stop-Signal task showed moderate test–retest reliability, however, the combined SSRT interference effect showed poor test–retest reliability. Our results emphasize the need to use control groups when tracking clinical progression or use pre-baseline training on tasks susceptible to practice effects.
Psychology cognitive function striatal impairment inhibitory control reliability cognitive impairment longitudinal emotion recognition

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