Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, London, UK.
Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, University College London, University College London, London, UK.
Behav Res Methods. 2024 Oct;56(7):7410-7426. doi: 10.3758/s13428-024-02427-y. Epub 2024 Jun 6.
Rapid adaptation to sudden changes in the environment is a hallmark of flexible human behaviour. Many computational, neuroimaging, and even clinical investigations studying this cognitive process have relied on a behavioural paradigm known as the predictive-inference task. However, the psychometric quality of this task has never been examined, leaving unanswered whether it is indeed suited to capture behavioural variation on a within- and between-subject level. Using a large-scale test-retest design (T1: N = 330; T2: N = 219), we assessed the internal (internal consistency) and temporal (test-retest reliability) stability of the task's most used measures. We show that the main measures capturing flexible belief and behavioural adaptation yield good internal consistency and overall satisfying test-retest reliability. However, some more complex markers of flexible behaviour show lower psychometric quality. Our findings have implications for the large corpus of previous studies using this task and provide clear guidance as to which measures should and should not be used in future studies.
快速适应环境的突然变化是人类行为灵活的标志。许多研究这一认知过程的计算、神经影像学，甚至临床研究都依赖于一种被称为预测推理任务的行为范式。然而，这个任务的心理测量质量从未被检验过，因此仍不清楚它是否真的适合在个体内和个体间水平上捕捉行为变化。我们使用大规模的测试-再测试设计（T1：N=330；T2：N=219），评估了任务最常用指标的内部（内部一致性）和时间（测试-再测试可靠性）稳定性。我们表明，捕捉灵活信念和行为适应的主要指标具有良好的内部一致性和整体令人满意的测试-再测试可靠性。然而，一些更复杂的灵活行为标志物表现出较低的心理测量质量。我们的研究结果对以前使用该任务的大量研究具有重要意义，并为未来研究应该使用和不应该使用哪些指标提供了明确的指导。
