Clinical Utility of the Trail Making Test Practice Time

Abstract

The Trail Making Test (TMT) is one of the most frequently used measures in clinical neuropsychology. Data obtained from the TMT practice times were analyzed to determine their utility in predicting success and failure on the full version of the test and to allow establishment of criteria by which to judge administration or discontinuation of the full test. Results indicated that TMT practice times were useful in predicting successful completion of Part A and B of the TMT. Tables are provided which describe the classification accuracy of various TMT practice times. These tables allow clinicians to select a practice-time cutoff and then use the cutoff as a heuristic to assist in the decision to administer the remainder of that particular part of the TMT or discontinue the test. A 20-s cutoff resulted in optimal prediction of successful completion (< 180 s) of TMT Part A. A cutoff of 30 s optimally predicted successful completion (< 300 s) of TMT Part B.

Trail Making Test: Normative data for Turkish elderly population by age, sex and education

“…The main objective of this study was to achieve the standardization of TMT for Turkish population over 50 years of age, to provide proper cut-off values and instructions for practice and/or scoring of TMT in our patient population primarily. TMT focuses on executive functions, such as visual-motor screening, planning, cognitive set shifting, complex attention, deterioration of which are known to be important indicators for different types of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease and frontal lobe dementia [6,13,23,24]. The standardized form of TMT for Turkish population, presented in this report, can probably compensate for the present difficulties experienced in practice with the use of non-standardized form.…”

“…TMT is known to be sensitive for motor speed, visual-motor conceptual screening, complex attention and executive functions that are considerably affected by frontal lobe damage [2,3,13,22,23]. Part A is completed within a few seconds, and is quicker than Part B by participants with stroke or cerebral damage that have difficulty in Part B, as healthy participants.…”

“…Both parts of the test are sensitive to progressive cognitive decline; Part A alone can discriminate the patients with dementia from normal participants, and Part B can detect early stages of Alzheimer type of dementia [13,16,23,25].…”

Normative Indications for Xhosa Speaking Unskilled Workers on the Trail Making and Stroop Tests

“…The TMT is one of the five most frequently used neuropsychological tests (Camara, Nathan, & Puente, 2000;Lezak et al, 2004;Rabin, Barr, & Burton, 2005; Thompson et al, 1999). It consists of two parts, A and B, with increasing complexity between the two parts, and scores are timed to completion for each part (Reitan, 1956).…”

Administration and interpretation of the Trail Making Test

“…A cutoff time of 300 s is generally used to discontinue test administration and is therefore the typical maximum score. Specific cutoffs have been suggested based on total time to complete the practice versions of the tests 4 .…”