title: Letter cancellation performance across the adult life span.
abstract: Letter cancellation tasks are paper and pencil tests widely used in clinical and research settings as quick measures of attention/concentration, visual-spatial scanning abilities, and visual-spatial dysfunctions such as spatial neglect. Despite their popularity, only a few studies have investigated effects of age on letter cancellation performance and no comprehensive large-scale adult life-span norms are available for any of the letter cancellation tasks. We have developed a letter cancellation test, and we report a normative data obtained from a partially stratified sample of 351 healthy adults between 18 and 91 years of age. The results show the expected large age-related decline in the speed of letter cancellation performance and no age-related differences in spatial distribution of cancellation errors. We also provide various equations for precise predictions of Cancel H test performance. The results of correlational analyses show high reliability and provide evidence for both convergent and divergent validity of our letter cancellation task.
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, Oregon State University, Corvallis 97331-5303, USA. bob.uttl@orst.edu
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Uttl
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pilkenton-Taylor
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D014796:Visual Perception