Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychiatry Section, Developmental Neurosciences Research and Teaching Department, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, London, UK.
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, National Health Service Trust, London, UK.
Behav Res Methods. 2021 Apr;53(2):928-942. doi: 10.3758/s13428-020-01470-9.
There is increasing interest in the assessment of learning and memory in typically developing children as well as in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. However, neuropsychological assessments have been hampered by the dearth of standardised tests that enable direct comparison between distinct memory processes or between types of stimulus materials. We developed a tablet-based paired-associate learning paradigm, the Pair Test, based on neurocognitive models of learning and memory. The aims are to (i) establish the utility of this novel memory tool for use with children across a wide age range, and (ii) examine test validity, reliability and reproducibility of the construct. The convergent validity of the test was found to be adequate, and higher test reliability was shown for the Pair Test compared to standardised measures. Moderate test-retest reproducibility was shown, despite a long time interval between sessions (14 months). Moreover, the Pair Test is able to capture developmental changes in memory, and can therefore chart the developmental trajectory of memory and learning functions across childhood and adolescence. Finally, we used this novel instrument to acquire normative data from 130 typically developing children, aged 8-18 years. Age-stratified normative data are provided for learning, delayed recall and delayed recognition, for measures of verbal and non-verbal memory. The Pair Test thus provides measures of learning and memory accounting for encoding, consolidation and retrieval processes. As such, the standardised test results can be used to determine the status of learning and memory in healthy children, and also to identify deficits in paediatric patients at risk of damage to the neural network underlying mnemonic functions.
人们对正常发育儿童和神经发育障碍儿童的学习和记忆评估越来越感兴趣。然而，神经心理学评估受到缺乏标准化测试的阻碍，这些测试无法直接比较不同的记忆过程或不同类型的刺激材料。我们开发了一种基于学习和记忆神经认知模型的平板电脑配对联想学习范式，即配对测试。目的是：(i) 确定这种新的记忆工具在广泛年龄范围内用于儿童的效用，以及 (ii) 检验测试的有效性、可靠性和结构的可重复性。研究发现，该测试的收敛效度是充分的，与标准化测量相比，配对测试的测试可靠性更高。尽管两次测试之间的时间间隔较长（14 个月），但测试的重测可重复性仍表现为中等。此外，配对测试能够捕捉到记忆的发展变化，因此可以描绘记忆和学习功能在儿童期和青春期的发展轨迹。最后，我们使用这种新的工具从 130 名年龄在 8-18 岁的正常发育儿童中获得了正常数据。为了衡量言语和非言语记忆，提供了学习、延迟回忆和延迟识别的年龄分层正常数据。因此，配对测试提供了学习和记忆的衡量标准，包括编码、巩固和检索过程。因此，标准化测试结果可用于确定健康儿童的学习和记忆状况，也可用于识别处于神经网络记忆功能受损风险的儿科患者的缺陷。
