Warneke Konstantin, Oraže Manuel, Plöschberger Gerit, Herbsleb Marco, Afonso Jose, Wallot Sebastian
Institute of Psychology, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany.
Institute of Human Movement Science, Sport and Health, University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
Eur J Neurosci. 2025 Apr;61(8):e70117. doi: 10.1111/ejn.70117.
Testing neurocognitive function is receiving growing attention in psychological and physical health research. To counteract the costs, reduced accessibility, and complexity of brain imaging (e.g., CT scans and fMRI) or function tests, neurocognitive performance tests (e.g., the Stroop test, the Trail Making Test, or the Choice Reaction Task) are commonly implemented. Although reliability is considered paramount when interpreting intervention effects, a detailed quantification of systematic and random errors is scarce. By recruiting 68 healthy participants from different age groups (7-64 years), we quantified population-specific measurement errors in the aforementioned neurocognitive tasks. The goal was to raise awareness about the impact of learning effects on reliability assessments and their interpretation. By performing five testing sessions with two trials per day, we observed significant learning effects from repeated testing. Trial-to-trial improvements of up to 50% were measured, accompanied by a random measurement error reduction from day to day. These learning effects were task and population specific, highlighting the need for caution when transferring reliability coefficients from other studies. The quantification of systematic and random measurement errors underscores the importance of conducting sufficient habituation sessions in neurocognitive tasks, as test protocols lack validity if they do not ensure reliability. Therefore, sufficient habituation sessions (i.e., until no meaningful learning effects can be observed) may be warranted when testing is repeated within short timeframes.
在心理和身体健康研究中,测试神经认知功能正受到越来越多的关注。为了应对脑部成像(如CT扫描和功能磁共振成像)或功能测试的成本、可及性降低以及复杂性,通常会采用神经认知表现测试(如斯特鲁普测试、连线测验或选择反应任务)。尽管在解释干预效果时可靠性被认为至关重要,但对系统误差和随机误差的详细量化却很少见。通过招募68名来自不同年龄组(7 - 64岁)的健康参与者,我们量化了上述神经认知任务中特定人群的测量误差。目的是提高人们对学习效应对可靠性评估及其解释的影响的认识。通过每天进行两次试验,共进行五次测试,我们观察到重复测试产生了显著的学习效应。每次试验的改进幅度高达50%,同时每天的随机测量误差也有所减少。这些学习效应因任务和人群而异,凸显了在借鉴其他研究的可靠性系数时需要谨慎。系统误差和随机测量误差的量化强调了在神经认知任务中进行充分习惯化训练的重要性,因为如果测试方案不能确保可靠性,其有效性就会受到影响。因此,当在短时间内重复测试时,可能需要进行充分的习惯化训练(即直到观察不到有意义的学习效应)。
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