A note of caution for clinicians using the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task.

In this study, a group of 30 university students were administered the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT) and their performance compared with that of an older group matched for ability on the National Adult Reading Test (NART). They were also compared on measures of memory (forwards and backwards digit span) and a timed visual search task. The younger participants showed significantly inferior performance on the PASAT. This is counter-intuitive considering that the test is viewed primarily as a measure of speed of processing. There were no differences on measures of short-term memory, but the older participants found fewer targets on the visual search task. The implications of this result for clinicians using the PASAT are discussed.