title: Normative data for the symbol cancellation test in young healthy adults.
abstract: Mesulam's (1985) symbol cancellation test (SCT) provides a measure of neglect, organizational process, and attention. Although the SCT lends itself to qualitative interpretation, normative data would be helpful for interpreting errors and time to complete this test. SCT normative data are provided for healthy young adults and the contribution of age, education, ethnicity, and gender to SCT performance is examined. Results were as follows: Age was significant (p < .05) and education approached significance (p = .06) as predictors of SCT performance, but percentile ranks revealed an unstable performance pattern across age and education. Thus, normative data for the SCT are provided for the entire sample (n = 136). Conclusions are as follows: Healthy young adults make few errors and complete the SCT in under 2 min, consistent with general findings (Mesulam, 1985). In addition, a relation likely exists between SCT performance and age and education, but a larger sample seems warranted to reliably model the pattern.
authors.affiliation: Brain Behavior Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. nlowery@bbl.med.upenn.edu
authors.forename: Natasha
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Lowery
authors.forename: J Daniel
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Ragland
authors.forename: Ruben C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Gur
authors.forename: Raquel E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Gur
authors.forename: Paul J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Moberg
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D004493:Education; D005006:Ethnicity; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000592:standards*; D012016:Reference Values; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*