Web-based Testing
In addition to our ARC smartphone testing, we have also built a number of web-based cognitive testing options. By looking at pilot data, psychometric characteristics, issues of participant burden, ability to adapt linguistically/culturally, and the suitability of various types of tests for remote administration, we have created a number of measures that are being used in the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN) and the Memory and Aging Project (MAP) through the Knight Alzheimer Disease Research Center (ADRC).
Testing memory after a relatively long delay (7 days) produces robust separation between mutation carriers and non-carriers (Weston et al. 2018)
Of four versions of memory tasks we tested, the Word List recall and the Card Memory were the most robust.
In the World List recall, participants are given 12 items to remember in three learning trials. They are asked to remember them after a short delay (~10 minutes) and then after a long delay (~1 week).
In the Card Memory test, participants complete a task that is similar to the children’s memory game, in which they are shown 16 playing cards. They see them face up for eight seconds and are asked to study them. They have three learning trials in which they try to find matching cards. Finally, after a long delay (7 days), they are asked to try to remember the pairs of cards.
The ORCA test takes participants through a series of common Mandarin words that are presented along with a spoken English word. In this way, participants are taught to identify some common Mandarin words.
Participants are asked to take short lessons for 15 minutes each day over the course of 5 days. Each time a Mandarin character appears on teh screen and an English word is spoken, they are asked to respond intuitively and decide whether the English word correctly matches the Mandarin character or not.
They are measured each day on their retention of Mandarin characters.