Ruff 2 and 7 Selective Attention Test: Normative data, discriminant validity and test–retest reliability in Greek adults

Abstract

Rapidly expanding interest in neuropsychological assessment in Greece has made the development of appropriate culture-specific normative data for core neuropsychological measures essential. In the present study, we sought to establish normative, test-retest reliability and discriminant validity data for the Ruff 2 and 7 Selective Attention Test in the Greek adult population. We administered the test using standard procedures to 218 healthy Greek adults (95 men), aged 17-80 years and two adult patient groups (26 detoxified opiate addicts and 23 HIV seropositive individuals). Using linear regression analyses, we examined the contribution of age, education and gender on Ruff 2 and 7 performance. We further examined test-retest reliability by administering the test on two occasions to 40 healthy adults, with an intersession interval of 12-14 weeks. The regression analyses revealed that age and education, but not gender, contributed significantly to participants performance, with older age and lower education contributing to poorer performance on Speed scores, but only education contributing moderately to Automatic Detection Accuracy scores. Test-retest reliability was very high (.94-.98) for Speed scores, and adequate to high (.73-.89) for Accuracy scores. Younger adults also demonstrated larger practice effects compared to older participants. The test appears to discriminate adequately between the performance of detoxified opiate addicts and HIV seropositive patients and matched healthy controls, as both patient groups performed more poorly than their respective control group. We present normative data for Speed and Accuracy scores stratified by age and education for the Greek adult population.

Effects of the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension Diet, Exercise, and Caloric Restriction on Neurocognition in Overweight Adults With High Blood Pressure

“…To examine treatment mediation, 2 dummy variables were created corresponding with these planned contrasts. To provide an interpretable measure of the clinical significance of any observed treatment effects, we used available standardized regression-based modeling strategies26,27 to estimate changes in predicted age using pretreatment and then posttreatment neurocognitive performance, holding education and demographic factors constant.…”

Measuring the Performance of Attention Networks with the Dalhousie Computerized Attention Battery (DalCAB): Methodology and Reliability in Healthy Adults

“…As accuracy measures, particularly those measured in healthy populations, tend to approach ceiling, it is possible that the Go/No-go and Item working memory performance accuracy measures with our current sample are not sufficiently varied to provide a representative account of test-retest reliability. This could be one reason why the ICCs for accuracy measures are often reported to be lower overall than the corresponding RT scores (e.g., Llorente et al, 2001 ; Messinis et al, 2007 ; Zabel et al, 2009 ; Hahn et al, 2011 ; Wöstmann et al, 2013 ). In the case of the DalCAB assessment presented here, participants were highly accurate in all presentations of both the Go/No-go and Item working memory tasks.…”

Postoperative cognitive dysfunction and mortality following lung transplantation

“…including Trail Making Tests A and B, 16 the Stroop test, 17 the Ruff 2&7 Test, 18 the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) Digit Symbol Substitution Test (DSST), 19 the WAIS Digit Span Test (DST), 19 the Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS) Verbal Paired Associates and Logical Memory subtests, 20 the Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWA), 21 and the Animal Naming Test. 22 These tests have been widely advocated for this psychometric properties 23,24 and sensitivity to subtle deficits in medical populations, particularly for frontal-lobe mediated functioning. 25 …”

“…the Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWA), 21 and the Animal Naming Test. 22 These tests have been widely advocated for this psychometric properties 23,24 and sensitivity to subtle deficits in medical populations, particularly for frontal lobe-mediated functioning. 25 The Stroop test 17 consists of 3 timed sections: word, color, and color-word.…”